Five fledgling sea eagles left their nests in western Scotland this su

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-



Choice A: This answer choice maintains subject-verb agreement and proper pronoun use throughout the sentence. Moreover, this answer choice correctly utilizes a different verb form in the subordinate clause. Thus, this answer choice is correct.

Choice B: This answer choice features a subject-verb disagreement between "eagles" and "brings". Thus, this answer choice is incorrect.

Choice C: This answer choice repeats the error found in Option B. Additionally, it is unclear what the pronoun "it" refers to. Thus, this answer choice is incorrect.

Choice D: This answer choice repeats the pronoun ambiguity error found in Option C. Moreover, as the second clause is illustrating the results of the first clause the verb "brought" should not parallel the verb "left". Thus, this answer choice is incorrect.

Choice E: This answer choice repeats the parallelism error found in Option D. Thus, this answer choice is incorrect.

Hence, A is the best answer choice.

To understand the concept of "Avoiding Pronoun Ambiguity on GMAT", you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):



All the best!
Experts' Global Team

This seems like a fairly simple question, but let's be careful. This could be tricky: there is only one word underlined – which means that you can't use multiple rules to eliminate options here.

Let’s look at C and D first?

What is ‘it’ doing here? What does it refer to? There is no clear referent/antecedent and this is not a placeholder pronoun.

What about ‘brings’ and ‘brought’ ?
Seagulls --> left nests --> and brings (incorrect)
Seagulls --> left nests --> and it brought (incorrect)

Eliminate Options B, C, D, and E. You are now left with Option A – ‘bringing’

‘Bringing’ is a present participle modifier after the clause ‘… western Scotland this summer’ which indicates the result/effect of the clause.

Option A is the right answer.
Hope this helps!

it here may be ref to either western Scotland or summer as these two are the only singular existing...
IMO choice D is wordy ...moreover, for it to function as a placeholder, there are certain conditions for e.g
1) to postpone infinitive
2) to postpone THAT clause...n so on..
n since it is doing none of these functions, it is not required..
Also choice A is a classical example of verb+ ing modifier that is showing the result of the action of the preceding clause...
thats my 2 cents on this..

(A) bringing - Correct Choice
(B) and brings - and brings forms a clause for which there will be no subject
(C) and it brings - it does not refer to any noun/pronoun clearly
(D) and it brought - it does not refer to any noun/pronoun clearly
(E) and brought - Awkward clause formation by the use of "and brought"

The confusion here is in A and E but it becomes clear once you look at the meaning. The eagles leaving and bringing are not happening simultaneously BUT because the eagles left the number of wild birds was raised.

Anyone can correct if my reasoning is wrong.

PARALLELISM, MEANING


Five fledgling sea eagles left their nests in western Scotland this summer, bringing to 34 the number of wild birds successfully raised since transplants from Norway began in 1975.



(A) bringing ----------- CORRECT.


(B) and brings ------------ Incorrect parallelism and wrong verb number. "bring" is a verb and could only be parallel to "left". However, the subject would be "eagles", which is a plural subject.


(C) and it brings ------------- "eagles" are not an "it". In case they are using "it" as an idiomatic holder, then it would be ambiguous.


(D) and it brought ---------- "eagles" are not an "it". In case they are using "it" as an idiomatic holder, then it would be ambiguous.


(E) and brought ----------- Changes the meaning. "brought" would be parallel to "left", whose subject is EAGLES. This answer implies that the "brought" was an action intentionally done by the eagles, which makes no sense.

egmat

I've seen this question on some of your materials when you were trying to explain verb-ing modifiers, and I've consistently got confused.

I've learned that one of the requirements of comma + verb-ing modifiers is that the doer of the modified action and the doer of the modifying action have to be the same. For example, "Joe became the CFO of the company, increasing his salary significantly." Here, this sentence is incorrect because although Joe is the doer of "became", Joe is not the doer of "increasing his salary". Instead the doer of "increasing his salary" is the event of "Joe becoming CFO". Therefore, this sentence should be corrected to "Joe became the CFO of the company, a move that increased his salary significantly."

Here in this sentence, I am failing to see how the doer of the modifying and modified actions are the same.

Five fledgling sea eagles left their nests in western Scotland this summer, bringing to 34 the number of wild birds successfully raised since transplants from Norway began in 1975.

From my understanding, the modified action here is "left their nests" and the modifying action here is "bring the number to 34." However, the doer of "left their nests" are the eagles but we can't say that the doer of "bring..." is also the "eagles"; instead, it's the event of the eagles leaving their nests that is the "doer". Therefore shouldn't this sentence be corrected to "Five fledgling sea eagles left their nests in western Scotland this summer, a move that brought to 34 the number of wild birds successfully raised since transplants from Norway began in 1975."?

GMATNinja ChiranjeevSingh TommyWallach AjiteshArun

if any other experts might also provide some insight to this because I am seriously confused about this topic of "doer" - I've also seen a bunch of other questions that have confusing constructions such as this. Thank you in advance!

Hello jlo1234,

We hope this finds you well.

Having gone through the question and your query, we believe we can resolve your doubt. Here, the "doer" of both actions are the "Five fledgling sea eagles", as it was the action of the sea eagles leaving the nest that, in turn, brought the number up to 34.

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

GMATNinja AndrewN

I understand that we can use other factors to eliminate (B) and (E), but I want to know whether it is risky to eliminate (B) and (E) because there is a comma before "and" (We use COMMA + CONJ when we have a list containing more than 3 items or 2 sentences)

Hello, Tanchat. I would say that making an automatic elimination on the basis of comma + and + phrase would be hasty. We typically see such a construct if a lengthy phrase or clause separates two elements, which we can call X and Y, especially when X might contain a description with an and toward the end. (It might seem on the first read as though Y was an extension of X.) There are several examples of this exact construct appearing in the correct answer to an official question, so again, do not be too quick to write off an answer choice on this consideration. Here are just three examples that have been published in the Official Guide through the years:

1) Being a United States citizen...

2) Covering 71 percent of Earth's surface...

3) Developed by Pennsylvania's Palatine Germans...

If you study the above questions, you will see that in some contexts, comma + and + phrase may improve the clarity of the sentence.

Thank you for thinking to ask.

- Andrew

AndrewN KarishmaB

Why "it" can't be a placeholder pronoun here?
How to check placeholder pronoun in a sentence?

Placeholder 'it' is used when there is no referent to the pronoun but syntax of the language requires it or when the referent appears later.

It is raining. (no referent)
It is obvious that she will not come.
'it' refers to 'that she will not come'
We can re-write it as 'That she will not come is obvious.' though it becomes a little unwieldy.

In (A), we cannot consider 'it' a placeholder because it isn't acting as one.
What brought the number to 34? The fact that 'five fledgling sea eagles left their nests.' So the most appropriate structure here is comma + verb-ing (denoting cause-effect)

Hi ExpertsGlobal5. I have three queries :

1. In option D you wrote

Moreover, as the second clause is illustrating the results of the first clause the verb "brought" should not parallel the verb "left"

Can you please illustrate this?

2. Also in option E. Clealy "Left" and "Bought" is parallel. What is the reason for rejecting E?

3. Eagle is doer of "Left". But Eagle left --> the act of leaving--> brought the count to 34. What is the correct way to identify if eagle is the doer or act of eagle leaving is the doer. Is this relevant to GMAT question constructs?

Think about it:

Does this even make sense:
Five fledgling sea eagles left their nests in western Scotland this summer, and
Five fledgling sea eagles brought to 34 the number of wild birds successfully raised since transplants from Norway began in 1975.

Did 5 fledgling sea eagles bring to 34 the number of bird successfully raised? No. The action of these 5 leaving the nest is what brought the number to 34. It is the effect of their leaving the nest.

So option (E) is incorrect. Option (A) correctly explains what happened.

Also, use of 'it' here is not correct. We could use 'it' as a placeholder for a 'that clause' appearing later but we don't use 'it' to refer to a clause appearing before.

Hello MissionAdmit,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your queries,

1. Different parts of a sentence are meant to be parallel if they serve the same function. Here, the part of the sentence after the comma is meant to convey the result of an action described in the first clause, so unless the clauses are linked by a conjunction that conveys cause and effect (for example "so"), they should not be parallel.

2. Option E is incorrect for the same reason as described above.

3. Both interpretations are logical, but directly ascribing the act of bringing up the number of birds to the eagles, without appropriate conjunction, fails to convey the cause-effect element of the sentence's meaning.

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