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

Dear EMPOWERgmatVerbal,

Thanks for the explanation. I am basic in Grammar so, please bear with me for basic questions
I request for detailed explanation of "decrease in size versus smaller"

bb generis GMATNinja

Thanks in advance

jkbk

No, not at all because 'is running' is not a noun. One can't separate 'running' from 'is' and say, running is a gerund (noun) and therefore 'which' can refer to it. It will be absurd to say 'he' is equal to 'running'.

The official explanation of C is the following:
"The comma before the conjunction and signals that an independent clause will follow and, but a verb phrase follows instead. The series of phrases following making them lacks appropriate parallelism."

I understand why C is wrong generally, but got confused by this explanation. Do they mean, an independent clause as a noun+verb structure should follow ',and'?
EMPOWERgmatVerbal GMATNinja ?

The official explanation of C is the following:
"The comma before the conjunction and signals that an independent clause will follow and, but a verb phrase follows instead. The series of phrases following making them lacks appropriate parallelism."

I understand why C is wrong generally, but got confused by this explanation. Do they mean, an independent clause as a noun+verb structure should follow ',and'?
EMPOWERgmatVerbal GMATNinja ?

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).

Hi foryearss, the present participle robbing is preceded by a comma in D.

Such Participial phrases modify the subject of the preceding clause. In this case, the preceding clause is:

Chattahoochee River could alter the saline content of Apalachicola Bay

The subject of this clause is Chattahoochee River. So, the present participle phrase robbing the oysters there of their flavor..... is correctly modifying Chattahoochee River.


That's correct.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses Present Participial Phrases, their application and examples in significant detail. If someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.

How can "robbing" correctly modify the Chattahoochee River ? When the sentence says robbing the oysters there of their flavor.....

Hi Kriti, please refer to my post later in this thread, wherein I have amended that in option D, the present participial phrasae robbing.. modifies increasing demands (on the Chattahoochee River).

In addition to this, such participial phrases generally describe/present a result of the previous clause.

Perhaps, a simpler example will help:

Peter studied hard, acing the exam.

Again, the present participial phrase acing the exam is modifying Peter (in the sense that Peter is the agent of acing) and in addition, acing the exam is a result of Peter studying hard.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses Present participial phrase, its application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.

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.

Also, you stated "such participial phrases will always modify the subject of the preceding clause".

In this sentence the preceding clause to "robbing" is "could alter the saline content of Apalachicola Bay"; the subject of this clause is "saline content"

Hi

How can "robbing" correctly modify the Chattahoochee River ? When the sentence says robbing the oysters there of their flavor.....

"Chattahoochee River" is not robbing the oysters of its flavors nor is the" increasing demand".. the "saline content of Apalachicola Bay" is doing that. Hence, "robbing" should be modifying "saline content of Apalachicola Bay".

My question here is: how do we know with certainty what "robbing" is modifying? Hence, how is D correct?

GMATNinja daagh EMPOWERgmatVerbal

Great question, Kritisood!

Let's look at the correct answer to see more clearly how the modifiers work.

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, robbing the oysters there of their flavor and making them smaller, less distinctive, and less in demand.

Let's make this even simpler by eliminating some of the extra modifiers that are placed there to confuse readers:

...increasing demands on the Chattahoochee River...could alter the saline content of Apalachicola Bay, robbing the oysters there of their flavor and making them smaller, less distinctive, and less in demand.

Subject: increasing demands
Verb: could alter
Object: the saline content of Apalachicola Bay

If we take out all that extra "stuff," we're left with a pretty basic sentence. So - WHAT is robbing the oysters of flavor? Increasing demands on the Chattahoochee River. Modifiers that start with -ing words modify the SUBJECT of the previous clause, which in this case is "increasing demands."

By adding in the object and an extra modifier phrase, it confuses readers as to what the modifiers are referring back to.

I hope this helps! Please tag us at EMPOWERgmatVerbal if you have any other questions!

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.