Will2020 wrote:
Nihit wrote:
In the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States acquired 828.000 square miles for about four cents an acre, which more than doubled the country's size and that brought its western border within reach of the Pacific Ocean.
(A) In the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States acquired 828,000 square miles for about four cents an acre, which more than doubled the country's size and that brought
(B) For about four cents an acre the United States acquired, in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, 828,000 square miles, more than doubling the country's size and it brought
(C) With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the United States acquired 828,000 square miles for about four cents an acre, more than doubling its size and bringing
(D) The United States, in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, for about four cents an acre, acquired 828,000 square miles, more than doubling the country's size, bringing
(E) Acquiring 828,000 square miles in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States bought it for about four cents an acre, more than doubling the country's size and bringing
Hi
KarishmaB ryanstarr! Can you help me out with this question? Thank you!
Happy to!
The first thing to try to master in SC is identification: if you learn all the major grammar rules but don't know how to tell when those rules are being tested, the rules won't be particularly useful. The things to notice about this question are the abundance of commas, the
which vs.
, -ing split, and
especially the fact that phrases are changing position in the answer choices. These features point to a
Modifiers question.
In the world of Modifiers,
wh- words (such as
which,
who, sometimes
where, and others) are a gift, because they follow a pretty regular, reliable rule: grammatically, they modify the noun or noun phrase that immediately precedes them. In this case, for instance, the
which in (A) would grammatically modify
acre or
four cents an acre. But that's only half the battle. We also need to consider what the modifier
should be modifying in terms of its intended meaning. This modifier should is describing something that
more than doubled the country's size, so it probably doesn't make sense for it to be grammatically linked to
acre or
four cents an acre. So (A) is out.
The other major topics being tested in this question is
Parallelism, which can be observed especially in the split after the
and that shows up toward the end of the answer choices. Let's go answer by answer through just that part of the remaining options:
(B) more than doubling ... and it brought <-- bad parallelism: eliminate
(C) more than doubling ... and bringing <-- good parallelism
(D) more than doubling ... bringing <-- no parallelism in this case because there's no and
(E) more than doubling ... and bringing <-- good parallelism
At this point, we're left with answers (C), (D), and (E). Because (C) and (E) are structured similarly at the end, it's worth comparing them to (D). Is (D) right to do away with the parallel structure that's in all of the other answer choices? Essentially, no. While it seems as though it should technically be okay to string together two
, -ing adverbial modifiers one after the other, it's basically never done in a correct answer. Essentially, there's a good meaning reason for it here: both the
doubling of the United States' size and the
bringing of its western border within reach of the Pacific Ocean are consequences of the United States' acquiring the 828,000 square miles. However, the way (D) is structured,
bringing ends up modifying the part that starts with
doubling, as this kind of
, -ing modifier tends to latch on to the nearest verb, verbal, or clause. Moreover, (D) has another improper string of modifiers earlier on (
in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, for about four cents an acre, acquired). In this case too both modifiers should be describing
acquired, and they could be placed better to reflect that (for instance, on either side of
acquired). Eliminate (D).
Answer (C), by contrast, correctly places those two modifiers on either side of
acquired, making it pretty promising. On the other hand, answer (E) turns the part with
acquired into an opening modifier and so leaves the later modifiers
doubling and
bringing to modify
bought. But it wasn't the
buying for four cents an acre that doubled the United States' size or brought its western border within reach of the Pacific; rather, it was the acquisition of all the land that did so. Add to that the fact that (E) has a pronoun issue (
it either refers improperly to
828,000 square miles and has an agreement issue or refers illogically to
the Louisiana Purchase--you can't buy a
purchase), and we must let it go, leaving
(C) as the correct answer.As a side note, I know this is kind of a haphazard way to move through the answer choices--modifiers to parallelism to modifiers with a pronoun thrown it at the end for funsies--but the truth is that modifier questions often feel chaotic because of their tendency to have words and phrases move around, so a certain measure of opportunism is beneficial. When the answers are pretty different from each other, it helps to latch onto anything that you happen to notice (such as the parallel structure at the end of most of the answers) and focus on just that aspect for a moment. Tough stuff!
_________________
Ryan Starr
Manhattan Prep
EA,
GMAT, and
GRE Instructor
https://www.manhattanprep.com