In choice A, what is the subject of "have recorded"? If the subject is Kensington Stone and we apply the subject-verb agreement rule, itwould be "has recorded". Can someone please explain?

We can think of the sentence as:
"The Stone [was said to have] recorded an encounter."
In other words:
The Stone itself recorded an encounter; some unknown speakers said so.
We can reword the original lengthy sentence using two clauses:
"Some people in the past claimed (that) the Stone magically recorded an encounter."

Another example:
"My friend [was said to have] scored 800 on the GMAT."
Reworded:
"I said (that) my friend scored 800 on the GMAT."
The first way de-emphasizes the importance of the speaker and/or makes the speaker unclear.

"[It/a subject] is said [another clause]" is used to relay what people often say now about [It].
"[It/a subject] was said [another clause]" is used to relay what people often said in the past about [It].

A) No errors other than it means some rock was magically showing writing on itself.
B) It's incorrect to use the present tense "to record" because the sequence of events was this: in the past, the Stone purportedly recorded an event, then people gossiped, then people thought it was a scam - or the recording and gossiping happened concurrently. In either case, the recording happened in the past, so we cannot use "was said to record."
C) The sentence becomes a run-on sentence with this answer choice.
D) The sentence becomes a run-on sentence with this answer choice.
E) It sounds awkward and is probably incorrect to break up "which was" with an inserted clause. There are so many pauses if we use this answer choice.

A) is the clearest choice and has no errors.

In was said to have recorded, was said is the verb. To have recorded is an infinitive. There is no singular/plural call to be taken with infinitives.
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Thanks Mystery123 for the kind words, and I apologize for the delayed response!

I'm not sure I have a whole lot to add on this one, though. As already discussed, choices (C), (D), and (E) are all sentence fragments. The subject of each sentence is "the Kensington Rune Stone", but none of those options gives us a main verb for that subject:


Here we essentially have, "... the Kensington Rune Stone, a slab of rock, said to have recorded {...} and thus cited as evidence." If we strip out the modifiers, we basically have: "The Kensington Rune Stone... said to have recorded and cited as evidence."

In this sentence, "said" and "cited" are just modifiers (specifically participles, if you like grammar jargon) that modify "the Kensington Rune Stone".... so we basically have the subject of the sentence ("Kensington Rune Stone") and a whole bunch of modifiers.

In other words: there is no main verb for the subject, so we have a sentence fragment. Eliminate (C).


(D) has a similar issue. We have, "... the Kensington Rune Stone, a slab of rock, which was said to record {...} and thus cited as evidence." Stripping out the modifiers, we're left with, "The Kensington Rune Stone, which was said to record and cited as evidence."

The phrase beginning with "which" is just a noun modifier (modifying the "Kensington Rune Stone"), so we basically have the subject of the sentence ("Kensington Rune Stone") and a bunch of modifiers. Again, there is no main verb for the subject, leaving us with another sentence fragment. Eliminate (D).


You can probably guess what I'm going to say about (E). This time, we have "... the Kensington Rune Stone, a slab of rock, which, said to have recorded {...}, was thus cited as evidence." Stripping this down further, we have, "The Kensington Rune Stone, which was cited as evidence."

Again, we have the subject and a bunch of modifiers, but we do not have a main verb. (E) is another sentence fragment, so it can be eliminated.

So we're left with (A) and (B). mikemcgarry did an excellent job explaining why (B) is wrong in this post, but I'll add a few additional thoughts:


We could probably drive ourselves nuts discussing the difference between "was said to have recorded" or "was said to record" -- honestly, I'm not sure that either of those is clearly WRONG, exactly.

The bigger issue is that (A) uses "thus was cited" while (B) uses "thus being cited". In (A), we have a parallel list of verbs: "... the Kensington Rune Stone 1) was said... and 2) was cited..." The parallelism looks great, because it's clear that the stone accomplished two things: it "was said to have recorded an encounter" and it "was cited as evidence that Europeans explored North America..." Cool.

I can't make any sense of the phrase beginning with "being" in (B), though. There are cases when "being" is completely fine, but in this case, I think it's trying to modify the entire previous clause, and that's generally not an acceptable use of "being" on the GMAT. (More on "being" in this article.) Besides, it just doesn't make a lot of sense meaning-wise: I'm having a hard time understanding how the phrase "...being cited as evidence for European exploration..." modifies the previous clause "...the Kensington Rune Stone... was said to record an encounter..."

That seems like a pretty solid reason to ditch (B) and stick with (A).

I hope that helps!
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this a gmat prep question, please tag it

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Done. Thank you.
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A--- I agreed verbally ( I = subject verb =agreed verbally = adverb)
B--- I verbally agreed ( I = subject verb =agreed verbally = adverb)

B is wrong because adverb must follow the verb .

Also, adverb can modify or precede an adjective only.

Am i correct with the above contentions ?


Regards
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