ravigupta2912 wrote:
EMPOWERgmatVerbal - Could you please check my PoE here?
A. enough has been provided with which the kids can be distracted for several hours and they will not have -- "with which" is the incorrect usage of "with" preposition.
B. enough has been provided to distract the kids for several hours, thus not having -- sentence structure is main clause 1, modifier 1, modifier 2. Grammatically, modifier 2 here is referring back to modifier 1 and not main clause which is the intention of sentence.
I have a general question here. Can modifier 2 in general refer back to the main clause under any situation? Or am I misconstruing "enough has been.." as a modifier when it is an
independent clause with "enough" as the subject and "has been provided" as the verb, "to bla bla hours" as the object?
C. that they have provided enough to distract the kids for several hours and not have -- illogical verb sequence. the "worry" is in future and hence "will" is needed. "and not have" is actually present perfect and incorrect (its still a verb, just an illogical one). "have" One can argue that "would" will be better here since its a hypothetical.
D. they have provided enough to distract the kids for several hours and will not have -- Correct.
E. they have provided enough to distract the kids for several hours and thus not having -- Parallelism error. "they have provided X" (element 1 is a clause) and "thus not having.." (gerund) are not parallel to each other.
Thanks for asking
ravigupta2912!
I think your logic in how you answered the question is pretty good. You can also check out the official explanation in the comments above for how we tackled it.
To answer your specific question about option B, let's look at what the entire sentence would look like with option B plugged in:
Parents hope that by giving their children access to games and streaming movies during road trips, enough has been provided to distract the kids for several hours, thus not having to hear “Are we there yet?” repeatedly.You are on the right track when you ask if the phrase "enough has been provided to distract the kids for several hours" is, in fact, an independent clause! It is!
The main problem with option B is that the independent clause is this:
Enough has been provided to distract the kids for several hours.
What's the subject of this sentence?
Enough
THIS is our problem - by changing the subject of the sentence to "enough," the two modifiers don't make sense because they're both supposed to be referring to parents. Since "parents" do not appear anywhere in the independent clause, the modifiers CANNOT refer to them. In options D & E, they introduce the pronoun "they," which CAN easily stand in for "parents." When you add in a pronoun that can easily stand in for "parents," now the 2 modifiers can easily refer to the subject in a way that makes sense.
Of course, in the end, you'll end up eliminating option E because of the wrong verb tense, leaving you with option D.
I hope that helps clear things up!