sabrinaZ wrote:
JarvisR wrote:
Around 1900, fishermen in the Chesapeake Bay area landed more than seventeen million pounds of shad in a single year, but by 1920, over-fishing and the proliferation of milldams and culverts that have blocked shad migrations up their spawning streams had reduced landings to less than four million pounds.
(B) that blocked shad from migrating up their spawning streams had reduced landings to less
Hi experts,
GMATNinja,
mikemcgarry,
daaghPlease help..
I came back for this question because I got the following question wrong.
1.The first pulsar, or rapidly spinning collapsed star, to be sighted was observed in the summer of 1967 by graduate student Jocelyn Bell, but the discovery was not announced until February 1968.
2.Although the first pulsar, or rapidly spinning collapsed star, to be sighted was in the summer of 1967 by graduate student Jocelyn Bell,
it had not been announced until February 1968.
I know "it" used in sentence 2 makes it not the better choice, but the
OG said the past-perfect verb tense is inappropriate in the concluding clause.. I don't understand why it is inappropriate... Is it because both time happened in the past, and 1968 clearly happened after 1967, so we use single past? But why in the quoted question, "blocked shad...had reduced landings to less by 1920" is the right verb tense?
Thanks in advance!
Interesting question! First, I'd take anything you read in an official explanation with a grain of salt. The explanations aren't written by the same folks who write the questions, and so while some explanations are good, others are a little suspect.
Here's how I think they're reasoning: there's a difference between a concrete action completed at a specific time in the past, and a more abstract action that occurs over a prolonged period of time. Consider two examples:
1) By late 2019, the Tampa Bay Raptors had won a single NBA championship.
In this case, the team won their title at a specific time (June 2019) and this completed action occurred before another past tense marker (late 2019.) Therefore, it makes sense to use the past perfect ("had won") here.
Compare that with the following:
2) The Tampa Bay Raptors did not win a title until 2019.
This sentence is more like the second option in the official question. Now the action --
not winning a title -- doesn't occur at a specific time. It's not like you can point to May 13, and say "that's the day they failed to win the title!" Failing to do something is more abstract. So in this case, because we don't have a concrete action completed at a specific time before another past tense marker, it's fine to use the simple past, "did."
That said, am I 100% confident that it's definitively wrong to write "The Tampa Bay Raptors
had not won a title until 2019?" No. I'm not. And I think it's misleading to make it sound as though it's an obvious grammatical error. After all, 2019 was the past, and the team wasn't winning the title before that year, so it's not like this reasoning is totally outlandish. It just doesn't feel as ironclad as the first sentence when you certainly needed to use "had."
And for what it's worth, if I encountered the second construction on the exam, I'd look for a clearer error before eliminating an answer choice. As you noted, the "it" in the second official example seems to be standing in for "a sighting," a noun that doesn't show up elsewhere in the sentence. This is a much better reason to get rid of that option than the supposedly faulty usage of the past perfect.
I hope that helps!