Sunspots, vortices of gas associated with strong electromagnetic

Hi, GMATGuruNY

While looking through your elucidations, I encountered your post in another form: you said that

a VERBless clause invariably serves to modify a main clause that is in the PRESENT TENSE. Since the Magoosh sentence is not in the present tense, it is not viable.
The Magoosh sentence: Although opposing slavery on philosophical grounds, jefferson owned plantations with several hundred slaves.


I also wrote that While[I was] looking through your elucidations, I encountered your post in another form.
Does this rule also apply for While?
I always write a subordinate conjunction + present participle with a main clause that is in another tense, not present.
Now, I have a doubt about writing so!

Could you please explain why the main clause must be in the present tense?
Is it just a rule that we have to remember or is there some logic behind it?

Thank you very much beforehand!

Why can't we just reject B on this basis unless there is typo in B sentence.

Can someone please explain why option D is incorrect?

Dear pramitmishra0607,

I'm happy to respond. First of all, let me commend you, my friend, for asking an excellent question! It's clear that you put tremendous thought and effort into the question you are asking, and that's wonderful. Asking excellent questions is one of the habits of excellence!

The answer to this is subtle. The word "although" is a subordinate conjunction, and as such, it introduces a full clause, a dependent clause. It must be followed by a full clause. The catch, though, is that small words, e.g. [pronoun] + ["to be" verb], in the clause can be dropped if they are implied, so what is printed on the page will not look like a full clause, but it really is a full clause.

For example, from SC13 above:
Though it is called a sea, the landlocked Caspian is actually . . .
The words "it is" are implied, and with those, what follows "though" is a full clause.

From SC36 above:
. . . it is indicative that the economy, although it is growing slowly, is not nearing a recession.
Again, the word "it is" are implied, making what follows "although" a full clause.

In SC17 above, there's no way to put in a pronoun plus an auxiliary verb to turn what's following the "although" in (C) & (D) into full clauses.
(C) appear on the surface of the Sun as dark spots although they never are sighted at the Sun's poles or equator.
That doesn't work. The word "sighted," by its very nature, is a participle that is not part of an ordinary full verb. (D) is even worse: I have no clue what anyone would put in front of "having been sighted"---we can't really change perfect participles into full verbs.

That's the difference between, on the one hand, SC13 & SC36, and on the other hand, SC17. In the former two, we can insert an implied [pronoun] + [auxiliary verb] to turn what's there into a full verb. In the latter, we do not have that option, so the construction is wrong.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

(C) appear on the surface of the Sun as dark spots although they never are sighted at the Sun's poles or equator.
That doesn't work. The word "sighted," by its very nature, is a participle that is not part of an ordinary full verb.

What's wrong with these sentence?
I, although being poor,am a honest guy

Posted from my mobile device

How can something (here spot) be visible on a surface of Sun? This sentence should come under universal truth. Why we cannot use appear over here? I am so confused on this.

Sunspots, vortices of gas associated with strong electromagnetic activity, are visible as dark spots on the surface of the Sun but have never been sighted on the Sun’s poles or equator.

I've a doubt in option A
There is no comma before but
If I am not wrong don't we use a comma in order to join 2 independent sentences while using a fanboy conjunction?
Since there no comma isn't it a comma splice?

Hi sarthakaggarwal,

We can read the original sentence like this:

1. Sunspots... are visible as dark spots on the surface of the Sun but have never been sighted on the Sun’s poles or equator. ← But joins two verbs, are and have been sighted.

Generally speaking, the rule that a comma must be used before a coordinating conjunction that joins two ICs isn't particularly reliable, and I don't recommend using it.

Hi Marcab,

Let’s begin from the basic, relative pronoun modifiers, or for that matter any noun modifier, modifies the immediate preceding noun entity. This noun entity can be a single word or a noun phrase. If the modified entity is a noun phrase, then the number of the head of the noun entity decides the number of the verb. Let’s take a set of examples here:
1. The box of nails that are rusted is kept on the table.
2. The box of nails, which is black in color, is kept on the table.

In sentence 1, relative pronoun “that” refers to “nails”. The verb after “that” is plural that makes it clear that the DC is talking about the “nails”.

In sentence 2, “which” refers to “the box”. Here again the verb “is” tells us what “which” stands for.

Now, this is a very common confusion that a subject cannot lie in the prepositional phrase. Here I would like to elaborate a bit. This rule that subject cannot be in the prepositional phrase only applies to the SV number agreement.
In both above mentioned examples, the verb of the IC is “is” because the subject of the sentence is “the box”. In such constructions, “nails” or the noun entity that lies in the prepositional phrase cannot be the subject. Hence the number of the subject decides the number of the verb.

However, this rule does not apply to the modification of the relative pronouns. Relative pronouns can refer to any noun in the noun phrase preceding it, even if that noun lies in the prepositional phrase as is evident form the above mentioned examples.

Now intheofficial question of Sun SPots, I have already explained in my earlier post, why "which" cannot refer to "dark spots". You can understand the reasoning by reading the article "Noun Modifiers can refer to far away nouns" the link to which has been provided in that post.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha