In the Nazca region of Peru, an area famous for the Nazca lines, enorm

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION



THE PROMPT

You can see that this sentence is long.

Scan the options quickly before you even look at the sentence.

The options are incredibly similar.

Ninety percent of the time, in this context (a long, convoluted prompt with options that vary only a little), you will think that you are facing a difficult construction (say, apposition or an absolute phrase) when in fact you will be facing something basic, such as a subject that lacks a verb.

What makes this sentence hard is the fact that a lot of words look like possible subjects and even more words look like possible verbs.

So we'll focus on finding the most important parts: the subject and the verb.

Breaking the sentence down:

In the Nazca region of Peru
. . . an area famous for the Nazca lines,
. . . . . . . . enormous geometric images [???]
. . . . . . . . . . . . carved
??? Wait.

Is that word, carved, a verb? Doubtful. Geometric images cannot themselves carve anything.

Okay, so "carved" is a past participle (a verbED).
Carved must therefore be an adjective that modifies the noun images.

STOP THERE.
We are quite far in. We are looking for the main subject. We have not yet found it. Now we know that we must read the rest of the sentence carefully.

Take a breath through your nose, exhale through your mouth (no kidding), and read a little bit more slowly than usual.

Remember that unless a sentence is inverted (in which case we know the subject might be hard to locate), in English, the subject shows up pretty quickly.

The standard sentence structure is subject → verb → object.

"In the Nazca region of Peru" is an introductory prepositional phrase that almost certainly tells us something about the subject, the verb, or the whole main clause.

What does it modify?
→ → most immediately, it modifies an area famous for the Nazca lines

→ → it could also modify the whole sentence, if everything that follows the second phrase modifies that phrase.

Introductory prepositional phrases are among the most versatile of modifiers.

They do not have to follow rules as strictly as five other kinds of introductory statements do.
You can read about the six (or seven?) kinds of introductory statements and what they should modify in my post, here.

Although introductory prepositional phrases can merely "set the stage" for the rest of the sentence, most of the time they do modify the main clause.

At least in the prompt, the subject of the main clause seems to be an area.
Verb?

THE OPTIONS

• an area is the only plausible subject

• no main verb exists
→ carved cannot be the main verb.
-- Geometric images would have to be the subject.
-- But geometric images do not themselves carve anything.
Geometric images are carved (by people).
Carved is thus a past participle adjective (a verbED) that describes the noun geometric images.

→ retrieved and made cannot verbs in the main clause
-- Both retrieved and made belong to that.
-- That refers to hydraulic system, is a result of the Nazca lines and is not the subject of the sentence.
-- The relative pronoun that "eats up" the available verbs.

-- This trap is one of GMAC's favorites.
-- Takeaway: if a possible subject is followed by a relative pronoun (that, which, or who), look to see whether the relative pronoun "eats up" the verb(s). If so, the sentence is "incomplete" because the main subject lacks a verb.

• the subject appears to be an area.
No main verb exists.
No main verb? No sentence.
ELIMINATE A


• we still do not have a verb. This fact may be easier to see because the which are clause is set off by a comma.
-- Which is an adjective clause that describes the noun lines.
-- Except in very rare cases not present here, the object of a preposition cannot be the subject of a sentence, so lines cannot be the subject.

• if we shorten the sentence, we have
→ In the Nazca region of Peru, an area famous for the Nazca lines, which are enormous geometric images carved . . . . .[more description of the lines]

• the subject must be an area
Now we face the same problem as that in (A): no verb exists for the subject.
ELIMINATE B


• although the language and phrasing may seem strange, it is okay to say Nazca lines that are enormous geometric images (the lines actually are enormous geometric images). But we still lack a verb for what should be the main subject.

→ area is not paired with its own verb
ELIMINATE C


• With the word "in" removed, the subject of the sentence is now the Nazca region
• no verb exists to be paired with that subject, either.
ELIMINATE D


• Bingo.
Subject: The Nazca region of Perus
Verb: is
Subject complement: an area famous for the Nazca lines [(which are) enormous geometric images (that were) carved into XYZ to form a hydraulic system that did P and Q.

The answer is E.

COMMENTS

To everyone who attempted an answer: well done on the courage front!

To JonShukhrat : Generally, huge congratulations: beautifully executed and well-deserved.
Specifically, thank you for helping on this question. +2 (ahem, zhanbo ?)

zhanbo , you were brave. Brave is good.
vijk and winterschool -- you were both brave and correct. Well done. Kudos to all.