Until Antoine Lavoisier proved otherwise in the eighteenth century

My suggestion for your question.
Simple past vs Past perfect.
We use Simple Past if we give past events in the order in which they occured. However, when we look back from a certain time in the past to tell what had happened before, we use Past Perfect.

In this question, clearly we do not talk about sequence of events. However, we use the point - Until Antoine Lavoisier proved otherwise - which happened in the past to look back other action (in the past) happened before it. Clearly, past perfect is correct.

ANALYZE THE QUESTION:

Until Antoine Lavoisier proved otherwise in the eighteenth century, many scientists had believed that combustion released phlogiston, an imaginary substance whose properties were not fully understood.

a) many scientists had believed that combustion released phlogiston, an imaginary substance whose properties were not fully understood
Correct. Past perfect + active voice --> good grammar.

b) many scientists believed that phlogiston was an imaginary substance released by combustion and its properties were not fully understood
Wrong. "its" refers to "combustion" or "substance" --> ambiguous.

c) phlogiston was an imaginary substance whose properties were not fully understood and which many scientists had believed was released by combustion
Wrong. Passive voice "was released..." is not necessary.

d) phlogiston, an imaginary substance whose properties were not fully understood, was believed by scientists to be released by combustion
Wrong. "believed by X to be Y" --> not preferable in GMAT. (refer idiom chapter in MGMAT - sentence correction - page 150).

e) many scientists had believed that phlogiston was released by combustion and was an imaginary substance whose properties were not fully understood
Wrong. Between A and E, A is better by using active voice. E, however, uses passive voice.

Hope it helps.

I think that this question brings into open too much of hair-splitting about the use of past perfect when even clear time references are in place. I feel that use of past perfect to describe deeper past of the two past events is neither correct nor incorrect; it is optional when the pastness of the two events happens to be a recent event. For example, look at this sentence.

Vietnam had never won a single gold medal in the Olympics, until Hoang Xuan broke the jinx on Saturday, the 6th of August 2016 by winning the men's 10-metre air pistol event and securing his country’s first award

This above sentence is much game as is the following.

Vietnam never won a single gold medal in the Olympics, until Hoang Xuan broke the jinx on Saturday, the August 6, 2016 by winning the men's 10-metre air pistol event and securing his country’s first award.

I feel the distinction between the two is more notional and optional than real.

However, as we travel deeper back, it becomes somewhat more hazy and maybe we need the past perfect, in spite of the time liners. Look at this

India had been under a savage British Rule until a half-naked fakir, M.K Gandhi with his toothless smile won a decisive freedom for his country on midnight of August 15, 1947.

Now with the passage of time, we feel it is better to put the past perfect in place, in order to make clear the sequence, despite the presence of the time liner ‘until’.





Coming to the present question, my choice will be for A, not necessarily because it uses the past perfect but because it is more active and dynamic, while B and E, the nearest contenders may take backstage for simply being passive and missing on the ‘that’ parallelism.

Timesline - prior scientists used to belive something else. later UA proved something. first one should have past perfect later one should have simple past. only A and E are following that and both are grammatically correct. but E has wrong meaning.

A. many scientists had believed that combustion released phlogiston, an imaginary substance whose properties were not fully understood

E. many scientists had believed that phlogiston was released by combustion and was an imaginary substance whose properties were not fully understood --- Cause of and both clauses are in parallel. cause of this, following part has changed the meaiong of whole thing.

For option A - Passive voice ( 'whose properties were not fully understood ' ) has been used like option E. So why has E been chosen as priority over A for POE ? Thanks in advance.

E is wrong not because of passive voice. E changes the meaning vastly. That phlogiston is an imaginary substance is a description of the author. E says that the scientists themselves believed it to be an imaginary stuff. One might see the difference in meaning between A and E.

soumya170293 , as daagh notes, passive voice is not the issue.
Meaning distinguishes A from E. daagh wrote

The choice between options A and E is not a close call,
although the difference might be hard to see.

A) many scientists had believed that combustion released phlogiston, an imaginary substance whose properties were not fully understood

Many S had believed that C released P, [description of P] . . .

In A, phlogiston is followed by an appositive phrase [description of P]
that clarifies "phlogiston." This clarification makes sense. "Phlogiston" is a strange word.

The appositive does not suggest that the scientists
believed phlogiston to be imaginary.

E) many scientists had believed that phlogiston was released by combustion and was an imaginary substance whose properties were not fully understood

If the red typeface does not help much, try inserting words that are implied by the sentence.

Many S had believed that P was released by C and [BELIEVED THAT P] was an imaginary substance . . . .

Did the scientists believe that phlogiston was an imaginary substance?

On the one hand, if scientists believed that combustion was actually releasing phlogiston,
then they did not believe that phlogiston was "an imaginary substance."

On the other hand, if scientists believed that phlogiston WAS an imaginary substance,
then those scientists did not believe that combustion produced phlogiston.
(How does a real phenomenon produce an imaginary something?)

Option E, in other words, is logically inconsistent. Eliminate it.
The correct answer is A.
Hope that helps.

The sentence written is grammatically correct.

Option A : The use of Past Perfect Tense (Had + Verb) is correct since it's the earlier of the two past events
Event 1. Scientists "had believed" that combustion released phlogiston (Past Perfect)
Later of the two event: It was "proved" , written in Simple Past.

Furthermore, phlogiston, is correctly modified by : - "an imaginary substance whose properties were not fully understood".

I am a little confused, what "Until Antoine Lavoisier proved otherwise in the eighteenth century" should modify to? Shouldn't it modify the phlogiston rather than many scientists? Not sure on the modification part of this sentence. However, the options with phlogiston are incorrect due to several other reasons, but is the placement of the first sentence modifying scientist correct?
daagh

porwal

Until Antoine Lavoisier proved otherwise in the eighteenth century --This is not a modifier. This is a dependent clause followed by the main clause after the comma. The whole structure is a complex sentence. The modifier part comes at the end of the main clause, wherein phlogiston is described by the appositive modifier "an imaginary substance". Hope things are clear.

In addition, by bringing the phlogiston to the fore as the subject of the main clause, we have to go through a passive voice structure as done in C and D. Would it be so preferable?

Dear IanStewart AjiteshArun MartyTargetTestPrep GMATGuruNY ccooley DmitryFarber RonPurewal,

When "until" is a time marker, can both simple past and past perfect tense be used?

In this question, past perfect tense is used to describe an event up UNTIL a certain point.

However, according to OA from GMATPREP, a simple past is used instead:

A bit confused here. Please help sir!

I agree with you (and with GMATPrep). The OA here might, technically speaking, be grammatically acceptable, but I don't think it's good writing, and the simple past is a better choice. If you think of these two sentences:

I believed Joe's story until the evidence proved otherwise.

I had believed Joe's story until the evidence proved otherwise.

both are technically correct, but the first is much better than the second. The past perfect is normally used to indicate an event that was completed prior to another past event in a sentence. Borrowing a couple of sentences from the internet:

I had finished work when you called.
The thief had escaped when the police arrived.

in both cases, the first events (finishing work, escaping) were completed events when the subsequent event (calling, police arriving) occurred. Contrast with these:

I finished work when you called.
The thief escaped when the police arrived.

and in both cases, the first events (finishing work, escaping) were simultaneous with, or precipitated by, the subsequent event (calling, police arriving). In the original sentence, what "many scientists believed" was a continuing event up until the point in time when Lavoisier "proved otherwise". That's the meaning the simple past conveys. There's certainly no need to use past perfect in the original sentence, and since using past perfect suggests that the scientists stopped believing whatever they believed prior to Lavoisier "proving otherwise", it seems to me that simple past is the clearer and more logical choice (though strictly speaking, either choice is technically correct). So I don't like the OA to this question, even if it's preferable to the other answer choices. I also don't understand how scientists could have believed that combustion produced an "imaginary" substance -- that makes no sense -- but that's a secondary issue. It's not an official question, and I'd suggest devoting most or all of your Verbal practice to official questions.

Dear IanStewart,

I've found more evidence for the use of past simple with "until".
This further corroborate what you said above sir





Dear DmitryFarber ccooley RonPurewal,

Could you give one instance from official source in which PAST PERFECT is used with UNTIL?

Also RonPurewal also said that https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... 04-15.html

egmat
Can you please help with verb sequencing in this sentence?
It is clear that "Until Antonie proved otherwise..." is the later event whereas "scientist believing..." is the former. I cant see any meaning ambiguity here. Why did we use past perfect here ?

Hello from the GMAT Club VerbalBot!

Thanks to another GMAT Club member, I have just discovered this valuable topic, yet it had no discussion for over a year. I am now bumping it up - doing my job. I think you may find it valuable (esp those replies with Kudos).

Want to see all other topics I dig out? Follow me (click follow button on profile). You will receive a summary of all topics I bump in your profile area as well as via email.