The Swedish Navy boasts of two Visby-class corvettes, ships with highl

Although I almost selected A, but correct answer should be C, as intricate and perfectly designed are used to modify the hulls of the ships and not the ships themselves. Except C & E all other options are modifying ships. With A, it sounds like ships are intricate and perfectly designed.

Also, "so intricate and perfectly designed" is correctly used for hulls. "Having been designed" is incorrect in option E.

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Need official explanation for this question.

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In my humble opinion, the trick to answering this question is to identify what exactly absorbs the radar waves. Now, looking back at the sentence we identify many nouns which could be the proper antecedents: corvettes, ships and hulls. The option that logically fits the bill is - hull. The carbon fiber hull absorbs the waves. Options C and E make it clear. Out of them Option C is a no brainer.

Forgive me if my explanation is incorrect. Have a great journey.

Expert's Global Official Explanation:

Meaning + Modifiers + Tenses

Understanding the intended meaning is key to solving this question; the intended meaning of the crucial part of this sentence is that “hulls” (and not “corvettes”) were intricately and perfectly designed; hence, “so intricately and perfectly that radar waves are almost completely absorbed by them” must clearly modify “hulls”; only choices C and E do that.

• “so A that B” is a correct, idiomatic construction.
• In a “noun + comma + phrase” construction, the phrase must correctly modify the noun; this is one of the most frequently tested concepts on GMAT sentence correction.
• An adjective can only modify a noun; it cannot modify another adjective; to modify an adjective, an adverb must be used; generally, adjective+ly leads to an adverb.

A. Trap. This answer choice incorrectly uses the phrase “designed so intricately and perfectly” to modify the noun “ships” rather than the noun “hulls”, altering the sentence to incorrectly imply that the ships are designed in an intricate and perfect manner; the intended meaning is that the hulls are intricate and perfectly designed.

B. Trap. This answer incorrectly uses the adjectives “intricate” and “perfect” rather than their adverb forms to modify the verb “designed”.

C. Correct. This answer choice uses the phrase “hulls so intricate and perfectly designed that” to modify the noun “hulls”, preserving the intended meaning of the sentence- that the hulls are intricate and perfectly designed. Further, through this modification, Option C avoids pronoun ambiguity by directly modifying the second instance of the noun “hulls” with the phrase “so intricate and perfectly designed” and maintains a correct, idiomatic construction “so A that B”.

D. Trap. This answer choice incorrectly uses the phrase “designed in such an intricate and perfect manner” to modify the noun “ships” rather than the noun “hulls”, altering the sentence to incorrectly imply that the ships are designed in an intricate and perfect manner; the intended meaning is that the hulls are intricate and perfectly designed.

E. This answer choice fails to maintain a correct, idiomatic construction “so A that B”. Further, Option E incorrectly uses the present perfect continuous tense verb “having been designed” to refer to an action that occurred in the past; the simple past tense is needed here.

C is the best answer choice.

Use of which would have been better? That would have avoided the redundancy of using hulls twice.

The Swedish Navy boasts of two Visby-class corvettes, ships with highly effective, carbon fiber stealth hulls, which are so intricate and perfectly designed that radar waves are almost completely absorbed by them.

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Expert's Global Video Explanation:

ExpertsGlobal5

I would start by appreciating the thoughts put behind in framing this ques. I have clearly understood the reasons behind incorrect answer choices. However, my query is wrt the correct answer choice i.e. C.

Choice C seems incomplete. "The Swedish Navy boasts of two Visby-class corvettes" followed by modifier+modifier. Normally, complete sentence would be boasts of....that...

Further, the sentence construction --- independent clause + , + modifier + , + modifier --- looks weird (also, as stated above, independent clause is so short and seems incomplete). Can you please provide few correct GMAT-like sentences involving this construction? TIA

Hello Kushchokhani,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, Option C forms a perfectly complete sentence.

This sentence begins with one independent clause - "The Swedish Navy boasts of two Visby-class corvettes" - then, the noun phrase "Visby-class corvettes" is modified by the appositive "ships with highly effective, carbon fiber stealth hulls"; in turn, the noun phrase "carbon fiber stealth hulls" at the end of this phrase is modified by the appositive "hulls so intricate and perfectly designed...".

One simple example of such a sentence is "John has malaria, a tropical disease spread by mosquitos, a type of flying insect."

Here, the independent clause is "John has malaria"; "malaria" is modified by the appositive "a tropical disease spread by mosquitos"; "mosquitos" is then modified by the appositive "a type of flying insect".

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

Though the above example seems fine, the original question seems to be of the construction- "John has malaria, a tropical disease spread by mosquitos, mosquitos so poisonous that humans are almost killed by them." making it awkward.

Hello Kushchokhani,

We hope this finds you well.

To provide a bit more clarity, Option C modifies "carbon fiber stealth hulls" with the appositive "hulls so intricate and perfectly designed..." to explain what "carbon fiber stealth hulls"; while this construction may be a bit awkward, it is perfectly grammatical and conveys the intended meaning.

Remember, on GMAT, it is not advisable to "play it by ear"; answer choices that may sound strange to us can be perfectly grammatical, and those that sound awkward can be perfectly correct.

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

Okay, I understand that. However, I am still confused as "hulls so intricate and perfectly designed that radar waves are almost completely absorbed by them" seems to be a mix of independent and dependent clause. The bold part seems to be independent, thereby it seems that complete correct sentence has comma splice issue.

Hello Kushchokhani,

We hope this finds you well.

To clear up your doubt "hulls so intricate and perfectly designed that radar waves are almost completely absorbed by them" is not a run on (as you might note, this phrase does not actually contain a comma); rather, it is a noun phrase - the main noun of the phrase is "hulls", and this noun is acted upon by the construction "so A that B", and idiomatic construction that describes cause (A) and effect (B).

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

Hi Expert, I marked choice A because I though that a verb-ed modifier, unlike a verb-ing modifier, sometimes can modifies the preceding noun entity even if we have a comma. Could we say that choice A is incorrect since there is no clear antecedent for the verb-ed modifier but accept the fact that sometimes it can modify the preceding noun entity?

Regards.

Hello Gio96,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, this reasoning is not exactly correct.

The noun phrase that precedes the modifier "designed so..." takes the form of a noun ("ships") modified by a prepositional phrase ("with highly effective, carbon fiber stealth hulls"), so the modifier acts upon the main noun of the phrase.

For example, "The patient in bed 3, diagnosed with dengue, is calling the nurse.": here, "diagnosed" refers to "patient", not "bed 3".

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

Thank you, I thought that a verb-ing or verb-ed modifier could modify also a prepositional phrase of a noun.

My doubt came with a sentence such as:
"He is considered the most intelligent people for his work, viewed by almost 10 million people".

Could we say that this sentence is correct and the verb-ed modifies the noun work? If yes, what is the difference between the two?

Regards.

Hello Gio96,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, this sentence could arguably be considered correct.

What makes this sentence different is that "for his work" is an adverbial phrase: it modifies the action "is considered the most intelligent people" rather than the pronoun "He". This means that the noun "work" is not part of a noun/pronoun phrase with a different main noun, so the particle can act directly on "work".

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

Bunuel In A, how is "designed" referring to the ships? Can you please elaborate on the concept?