Prairie dogs live in tight-knit colonies, called coteries, of roughly

GMATNinja mikemcgarry DmitryFarber sayantanc2k chetan2u GMATNinjaTwo daagh


As the above person has highlighted the doubt about the modifier verb-ing , I request you to please comment on this.
Even I have the same understanding and need to clear out my doubts once and for all..


The earlier posts say that
"Consisting is modifying colonies"

Now even if we drop "called coteries " and rewrite the sentence :

Prairie dogs live in tight knit colonies that have roughly a dozen, consisting....

Now while solving the question I knew that consisting has to refer back to colonies, but the COMMA before " consisting" threw me off as I've been taught that if verb ING modifier follows a comma , then it either present the result of the he preceding clause or information about the action ( here-"live")

A fellow member said that the forgeries is just a modifier and hence can be dropped but even when we drop it there is still one more comma which is potential error in the sentence as per my learning.
Please comment on this.
I've suffered a great loss due to this rule

Posted from my mobile device

I feel your pain. What this comes down to is that any "rule" involving commas is going to have exceptions, both because modifiers are so often set off by commas and because commas can be used in unconventional ways to improve the clarity of a sentence.

Take a silly example: "Much to my dismay, I found my child gnawing a hole in a box of dish detergent." Here, "gnawing" modifies "child" and there's no comma, so this is the construction we're accustomed to.

But now imagine that I want to insert another modifier describing where I found my child: "Much to my dismay, I found my child in the linen closet gnawing a hole in a box of dish detergent." At first read, it kind of sounds as though the linen closet is eating the box of detergent! To make it clearer to the reader that this isn't the case, I'd likely include a comma after "closet." An absolute rule? No. But it's a reasonable choice.

It's more or less the same thing in this example. Consider the relevant clause without the comma: "Prairie dogs live in tight-knit colonies, called coteries, of roughly a dozen consisting of several breeding females." We've got the two modifiers in red between "colonies" and "consisting," so in this instance it seems as though "consisting" is referring to the closest noun, "dozen." By including the comma after "dozen," the writer is signaling to the reader that we can't assume "consisting" is modifying "dozen," but rather, that we have a series of modifiers ("called coteries," "of roughly a dozen," and "consisting"), all of which refer back to "colonies." Is this ideal? No. But it also isn't definitively wrong, and the other four answer choices all contain more severe errors.

The big takeaway: no comma rule is absolute, and commas aren't generally a deciding factor on official GMAT questions. And when there is a violation of what seems to be fairly standard comma usage, it's almost certainly because a non-essential modifier has made the sentence more difficult to understand, and the comma is there to create a clearer meaning. If a comma is tripping you up, look for other decision points.

I hope that helps!

Though I marked this question correct by using POE method, still, I have few doubts.

(D) of roughly a dozen, consisting of several breeding females that often stay together for their entire lives, one or two breeding males that tend to switch coteries frequently, and the females’ new pups.

First doubt:
Here, we have used "that" to modify a plural noun. eg. females that, males that..
Before attempting this question, I was told that "that" is used to modify singular noun.

Second doubt:
This sentence seems as below structure.
Clause, consisting of x, y and z. Is it so?

Please help me clear these doubts.

If "that" is used as a modifier -- technically a relative pronoun, if you like jargon -- it can absolutely be used to describe a plural noun. For example, "The blood-spattered halloween costumes that my daughter picked out were all entirely inappropriate for a toddler." Here, "that" is correctly modifying "costumes."

If "that" is used as a nice, normal pronoun -- a demonstrative pronoun, if you're into terminology -- it must refer to a singular noun. For a plural noun, we'd use "those." "The costumes my daughter is considering are far more blood-spattered than those of her squeamish peers." Here, "those," a conventional pronoun, refers to "costumes."

For a more in-depth look at the various uses of "that," check out this article.

I hope that helps!

GMATNinja


Apart from the pronoun errors you mentioned in option A, is the "that" after the first comma correct.
Can this be a decision point.

I personally feel that this "that" is not wrong. Can you please help.

Good question! I wouldn't say the "that" is incorrect. It's certainly confusing, as there are multiple modifiers separating "that" from the word it modifies, "colonies." But you could argue that the same confusion applies to "consisting" referring to "colonies" in (D), which we know is correct. So I'd rely on the pronoun problems and the resulting confusion to eliminate (A).

I hope that helps!

GMATNinja

Hey, I was wondering if another reason to rule out (E) would be because of a subtle meaning change.

(E) seems to imply in the beginning of the sentence that the prairie dogs live in these colonies with other kinds of animals..

Let me know, thanks.

P.S I went through a bunch of SC material, and built a solid foundation; I got to 70% success rate by self study. It's not until I watched your 7 videos on sentence correction and applied the approaches you mentioned that I got my success rate to a consistent 90%. Big big thank you.

I think that's valid. Just remember that changing the meaning isn't automatically WRONG, exactly. But if an option introduces an unclear or less-logical meaning -- as is the case with (E) -- we can eliminate it from contention. Nicely done!

Notice, also, that (E) contains two independent clauses, "Prairie dogs live in tight-knit colonies," and "each coterie includes several breeding females." Because there's no conjunction connecting them, we have a run-on sentence here, another good reason to give (E) the boot.

Thank you for the kind words - glad to hear that those videos have been helpful!

Hi GMATNinja

Thanks for lovely explanation of all choices. I would like to point out one more error in choice (C).
"with several breeding females that often stay together".
Here "with" means Prairie dogs live with several breeding females.......
So meaning is different here. Females.males & pups are subset of Prairie dogs.

Kindly confirm my understanding.
Regards,
Rahul Singh

Yep! The prepositional phrase is problematic, but it's problematic because it creates an illogical meaning, not because it changes the meaning. (If the initial meaning is unclear or illogical, we'd want to change the meaning!)

But you're exactly right about the problem in (C):

Prairie dogs live in tight-knit colonies... with several breeding females...

It doesn't make sense to write that the dogs live with breeding females, as this makes it sound as though there are two groups: one consisting of dogs and one consisting of breeding females. It's more logical to write that the breeding females are among the prairie dogs, as you correctly noted.

Nice work!

I don't understand the concept of "comma splice". How do you know the separation is improper?

As mentioned in this post and a few others on this thread, a comma splice occurs when there are two full sentences improperly separated by a full comma.

• "Mike went to the grocery store, he saw his ex-girlfriend." - Incorrect. A comma, by itself, can't connect two complete sentences (independent clauses).
• "Mike went to the grocery store, and he saw his ex-girlfriend." - Now it's okay. A comma+conjunction CAN connect two full sentences.

Stripping out some of the modifiers, choice (E) boils down to,

"Prairie dogs live in tight-knit colonies, each coterie includes..."

This has the same problem as the first example above. We have two full sentences connected by just a comma: (1) "Prairie dogs live in tight-knit colonies" and (2) "Each coterie includes..."

I hope that helps!

Hi GMATNinja , I have a doubt with verb+ING MODIFIER in option (D) of roughly a dozen, consisting of several breeding females that often stay together for their entire lives, one or two breeding males that tend to switch coteries frequently, and the females’ new pups.

It should modify whole previous clause , not the previous noun . If so , it doesnt make sense with doer of previous action (live). Am i missing something here.

In option D, I really got confused with the usage of comma + verb-ing construction - , consisting. Such construction is used to modify the prior action and address either the how aspect of the result of that action. Not really sure how the comma + verb-ing construction here makes sense

There's no rule that says that an -ing modifier MUST modify the previous clause. An -ing modifier can absolutely function as a nice, boring adjective and modify a noun (for more on that, check out this article).

In this case, what is it that consists of (1) several breeding females, (2) one or two breeding males, and (3) the females’ new pups? To answer that question, let's first simplify things a bit. Notice that "called coteries, of roughly a dozen" gives us more information about the tight-knit colonies. If we drop those modifiers, we are basically left with:

"Prairie dogs live in tight-knit colonies consisting of (1) several breeding females, (2) one or two breeding males, and (3) the females’ new pups."

So, what consists of (1), (2), and (3)? The tight-knit colonies, right? So "consisting" functions as a regular adjective here.

Can -ing words modify clauses? Absolutely. Can they only modify clauses? Nope, they can also modify nouns.

I hope that helps!

Hi GMATNinja,

Thanks for this wonderful explanation. I got this question wrong because of a conceptual gap in comma+ing modifiers.

As per my understanding "comma+ -ing modifier" should modify the subject of the preceding clause in order for it to hold true- including and during are the two exception to this rule.

I know these -ing modifier can. (a) show cause and effect of preceding clause (b) show "how aspect" of previous clause (c) Or, just be logical extension of preceding clause, but in any case they should modify the doer of previous clause.

Eg: Sun rose early, shinning brilliantly across the sky. In this case "shining" should modify "Sun". In different terms, Sun shone brilliantly across the sky, this is the kind of logic I have developed for "comma + -ing modifiers".

So in this case: Prairie dogs live in tight-knit colonies, called coteries, of roughly a dozen, consisting of several breeding females that often stay together for their entire lives, one or two breeding males that tend to switch coteries frequently, and the females’ new pups.

as per the logic Consisting should modify the subject of preceding clause Viz. Prairie dogs, but this wont make sense? It is the colonies that contain several females....... and not "Dogs".

Can you help where I am going wrong ?

Good question!

Bear in mind that another way we can use an -ing modifier is to describe the preceding noun. For example:

Tim screamed at the child defacing his property with elaborate spray-painted portraits of Smurfs.

Here, "defacing" is modifying "child," rather than the entire previous clause. You probably didn't have any trouble recognizing that. But "defacing" could still modify "child," even if there were another modifier in between.

Tim screamed at the child, a mischievous lad named Banksy, defacing his property with elaborate spray-painted portraits of Smurfs.

It might be tempting to think that because the "-ing" comes after a comma, it has to modify the whole clause. But we need to pay attention to context here. That comma is only there as part of a pair of commas introducing the modifier "a mischievous lad named Banksy."

If we remove that modifier, the sentence becomes identical to the first example, so "defacing" works the same way -- it still modifies the "child."

Same deal here. Take another look at the relevant portion of (D):

Now we have two modifiers set off by commas: "called coteries" and "of roughly a dozen."

Without those modifiers, we'd have the following construction: "Prairie dogs live in tight-knit colonies consisting of several breeding females." So "consisting of several breeding females" is actually describing the noun "colonies." It's just hard to see this in (D) because of the intervening modifiers. Tricky, but also totally acceptable.

I hope that helps!