Nobody knows exactly how many languages there are in the world, partly

Hello akt715,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, we would like to elaborate on the meaning of the "between A and B" structure seen in Option A.

What this structure refers to is the act of distinguishing either between a language and the sub-languages within it or between a language and the dialects within it.

In other words, here, "A" is "a language" and "B" is "the sub-languages or dialects within it"; B consists of two parts, both of which are contrasted against A.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

1. First of "between.." Jumps out to me. "between" requires "and". Also a Parallelism trigger.

Eliminate D and E.

2. pronoun "them" logical refer to "a language". But Noun is singular. So Eliminate B, D and E.

3. In option C, "who have tried counting it.." here "it" has no clear refferent. Also since "it" is a singular pronoun. How can one count "it"?. for counting one need plural noun/pronoun.

usage of Present tense " typically find"..... convey the meaning that it happens regularly... which is clearly not the case....

Hi DmitryFarber GraceSCKao KarishmaB GMATNinja egmat
avigutman - I see that some experts have used this as a decision point - "try to X" and "try X-ing"

I read Dmitry's Post and GMAT Ninja's post about this issue but I am not able to logically understand the difference between these 2 structures

I have attempted to understand via an analogy

Please let me know your thoughts !



In the first -->

• this sentence is in the past tense
• the sentence implies this was a "Habit" of mine in the past

In the 2nd -->

• this sentence is also in the past tense
• the sentence emphasises not the "Habit" of eating per se
• The sentence emphasises the "Eating" -- this emphasises the verb (perhaps my jaws hurt or my gums bled when I was eating carrots)

I think this difference is too subtle though

Thoughts ?

I agree, jabhatta2.

Both look ok to me -
... those who have tried to count have found ...
or
... those who have tried counting have found ...

Though GMAT often prefers the use of to-infinitive (which means that you will find it more often in correct answers) but I wouldn't eliminate based on this distinction.
Here, options using 'counting' have errors in them as discussed in my post on page 1.

I'll echo Karishma and Avi here, and add that your example is a little different than the official one.

While "I hated eating carrots," isn't technically wrong, it's less than ideal, because there's more than one way to interpret "eating." Is it modifying "carrots," in the sense that the subject hates the type of carrots that people eat, but is okay with, say, decorative carrots? Or is it modifying "hated" and is simply conveying that the subject hates to eat this particular food?

In a vacuum, I wouldn't get rid of it for this reason alone, but I'd keep the potential confusion in mind when I'm evaluating alternatives.

In the official example, there's no ambiguity with the phrase "those who have tried counting," because without a noun next to "counting," there's only one possible interpretation of what "counting" could be doing here: it's conveying the action that people have tried to do.

The takeaway: there's no rule here, so don't generalize about whether the GMAT prefers "to verb" or "verb-ing." Take each case on its own. If one is clearer or more logical than the other, then you can use it as a decision point. If you're not sure -- and there will be times when you won't be sure, or when either construction could work -- then just move on to other issues.

I hope that helps!

DmitryFarber

Thank you for your helpful explanation.

To clarify, I was initially focused on the -ing parallelism between "distinguishing" and "counting." Would Choice C be correct if the second "it" was removed? --> "and the sub-languages or dialects within it, but those who have tried counting typically find"?
I realize that choice A has correct parallelism with the repetition of "have." Thank you for your time.

Correct idiom is distinguish between A and B
d) and e) are out
c)the second refers to a language. Doesnt makes any sense if there is a single language what is the problem in counting it
d) them refers to sub languages/dialects and makes no sense at all