Over the next few years, increasing demands on the Chattahoochee River

The word "decrease" can be a verb or a noun:

• "With a steady diet of doughnuts and fried pickles, I decreased the size of my belly." - Here, "decrease" is a verb. (Though the content of the sentence may not be totally reasonable.)
• "After dieting for several months, I noticed a decrease in the size of my belly." - Here, "decrease" is a noun.

Choice (C), for example, uses the structure, "making them [verb]". Let's look at a few simpler examples that use a similar structure:

• "The robber held the hostages at gunpoint, making them beg for mercy."
• "When the tourists arrived in Argentina, the locals made them dance the tango."
• "There are too many people in this pub, so I will start talking about the GMAT to make them leave."

Similarly, in choice (C), we have, "... rob the oysters there of their flavor, making them decrease in size." In this case, "decrease" is an action, just like the underlined verbs in the three examples above.

I hope that helps!

Hi Sir,

Great explanation!!!
So I understand here decrease is a verb with subject being them.
Then how do we interpret the SV pairs in the given sentence:
The medicine makes the baby grow small. Or even in your 2nd example(made them dance the tango)

baby should not be the subject of grow because it is the object of the sentence.

Over the next few years, increasing demands on the Chattahoochee River, which flows into the Apalachicola River, could alter the saline content of Apalachicola Bay, which would rob the oysters there of their flavor, and to make them decrease in size, less distinctive, and less in demand.

(A) which would rob the oysters there of their flavor, and to make them decrease in size,
(B) and it would rob the oysters there of their flavor, make them smaller,
(C) and rob the oysters there of their flavor, making them decrease in size,
(D) robbing the oysters there of their flavor and making them smaller,
(E) robbing the oysters there of their flavor, and making them decrease in size,

Dear All,

I request for more detailed reply on parallelism in D and E. According to me "decrease in size" is noun phrase. I am not clear about "smaller", "less distinctive" and "less in demand".

Thanks in advance

Dear All,

I request for more detailed reply on parallelism in D and E. According to me "decrease in size" is noun phrase. I am not clear about "smaller", "less distinctive" and "less in demand".


GMATNinja @Veristaskarishma bb Bunuel egmat

Thanks in advance

There’s a lot of funny-sounding stuff in this one: two consecutive “which” modifiers in some answer choices, plus it’s really, really hard to quickly say “oysters there of their flavor” five times in a row. But by now, you don’t care about “sound” on SC… right?


The first thing that jumps out at me is the underlined “which” modifier. I don’t think that it makes a whole lot of sense: “Apalachicola Bay” certainly doesn’t “rob oysters there of their flavor”, and neither does “the saline content of Apalachicola Bay.” The alteration of the saline content robs oysters of their flavor – but that’s a verb here (“could alter”), and “which” generally doesn’t modify a verb on the GMAT.

The parallelism is also a huge problem here. The phrase “to make” follows the “and”, so we’d need another infinitive verb earlier in the sentence. But I don’t see anything that could possibly work.

So we can eliminate (A).


Hopefully, the word “it” jumps out at you whenever you see it. You’re looking for a singular referent, but in this case, I don’t see a lot of great options: we have the saline content, Apalachicola Bay, or a couple of different rivers, but none of those are really performing the action of robbing oysters of their flavor. It’s the alteration of the saline content – caused by increasing demands on the Chattahoochee River – that rob the oysters of their flavor. So the pronoun “it” is wrong.

Plus, we have some funky parallelism stuff going on here: “rob the oysters there of their flavor, make them smaller, less distinctive, and less in demand.” I’d be OK if there was an “and” before “make”: that way, “smaller”, “less distinctive”, and “less in demand” could all be parallel to each other.

But in this case, the list makes no sense: it’s a hodgepodge of verbs (“rob” and “make”) and modifiers (“less distinctive” and “less in demand”). (B) is definitely out.


This one is tricky! It looks like “rob” is parallel to the verb “could alter”, and I guess that’s OK: “… increasing demands on the Chattahoochee River… could alter the saline content… and rob oysters there of their flavor…” That doesn’t sound too bad, but we could argue that the alteration of the saline content is the thing that robs the oysters of their flavor, not the “increasing demands on the river” – so the two verbs “rob” and “could alter” probably shouldn’t be parallel to each other. That’s awfully subtle, and you shouldn’t feel badly if you didn’t notice that there’s a problem with it.

The other issue with (C) is the parallelism at the end of the sentence: “making them decrease in size, less distinctive, and less in demand.” So “less in demand” and “less distinctive” are both modifiers. Fair enough. But then “decrease in size” is a verb phrase, which can’t be parallel to those two modifiers.

Nasty stuff, in my opinion. (C) is gone.


This sounds weird. “Robbing the oysters there of their flavor and making them smaller…” Hm, that’s a mouthful. Say it five times fast, and you probably won’t want to choose it as your answer.

But it’s right. “Robbing the oysters there of their flavor” is now a modifier, giving us more information about the entire previous clause about increasing demands on the river, and alterations of the saline content. That makes perfect sense: the entire, long-winded situation – beginning with the “increasing demands” on the river – robs oysters of their flavor, so the “-ing” modifier is perfect.

And the parallelism at the end of the sentence is great, too: “making them smaller, less distinctive, and less in demand.” Three parallel modifiers, all describing what happens to the oysters.

Let’s keep (D).


The comma after “flavor” is a minor issue. In general, the GMAT doesn’t spend a lot of time testing us on the subtleties of comma usage, but there’s no real need for the comma here, since “robbing” and “making” are very nicely parallel with each other. Don’t lose sleep over this, since it’s rarely – if ever – a deciding factor on these questions.

The bigger issue is the parallelism error at the end of the sentence: just as in (C), “decrease in size” isn’t parallel to “less distinctive” and “less in demand,” since “decrease” is a verb. And that’s the best reason to eliminate (E), and settle for (D).

I am a bit confused about the part above here. I never thought X, and Y type of sentence structure could be parallel. Usually if it's a ", and" X and Y will both be independent clauses right? For example in the sentence "I love eating ice-cream, and I also like chocolate" I wouldn't say these two are parallel, more like two independent clauses sewn together.

GMATNinja