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Updated on: 12 May 2022, 03:57
Originally posted by Ritesh on 27 Nov 2006, 23:20.
Last edited by sayantanc2k on 12 May 2022, 03:57, edited 3 times in total.
Last edited by sayantanc2k on 12 May 2022, 03:57, edited 3 times in total.
Renamed the topic and edited the question.
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B
Be sure to select an answer first to save it in the Error Log before revealing the correct answer (OA)!
Difficulty:
25%
(medium)
Question Stats:
76% (01:31) correct
24%
(01:43)
wrong
based on 9731
sessions
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Time
Result
Not Attempted Yet
Seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep, but it ran 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, the Erie Canal connected the Hudson River at Albany to the Great Lakes at Buffalo, providing the port of New York City with a direct water link to the heartland of the North American continent.
(A) Seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep, but it ran 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, the Erie Canal connected
(B) Seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep but running 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, the Erie Canal connected
(C) It was seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep, and ran 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, but the Erie Canal, connecting
(D) The Erie Canal was seldom more than 40 feet wide or 12 feet deep and it ran 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, which connected
(E) The Erie Canal, seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep, but running 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, connecting
(A) Seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep, but it ran 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, the Erie Canal connected
(B) Seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep but running 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, the Erie Canal connected
(C) It was seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep, and ran 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, but the Erie Canal, connecting
(D) The Erie Canal was seldom more than 40 feet wide or 12 feet deep and it ran 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, which connected
(E) The Erie Canal, seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep, but running 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, connecting
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09 Oct 2013, 14:52
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NewKid123
Dear NewKid123
I'm happy to help with this one.
I like this question. What's the source?(A) we have a modifier "seldom more than ..." in parallel with an independent clause "it ran ....", a failure of parallelism. Then, we get a run-on sentence --- two independent clauses separated only by a comma. See:
https://gmat.magoosh.com/lessons/916-run-on-sentences
This choice is incorrect.
(B) [modifier] "but" [modifier], [subject][verb] .... all correct. This is promising.
(C) "It was ..." (independent clause), "and ran" (verb in parallel, so far, so good), "but the Erie canal" [modifier][modifier]
This is a failure of parallelism --- after that comma and "but", we need either a full verb or a complete independent clause, and we get neither. For more on parallelism, see:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/parallelis ... orrection/
This is incorrect.
(D) Misplaced modifier!! A classic mistake!! "... the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, which connected the Hudson River at Albany to the Great Lakes at Buffalo ..." The canal did that connecting, not the wilderness of upstate NY. The canal is the intended modifier, but the modifier is nowhere near the canal. This is a violation of the Modifier Touch Rule --- see:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/modifiers- ... orrection/
(E) The missing verb mistake!! Another oldie but goodie!! This choice has modifier after modifier --- it has a perfectly good subject, "The Erie Canal" at the beginning, but this subject has absolutely no verb. There is no full verb anywhere in the sentence, only participial modifiers. See
https://gmat.magoosh.com/lessons/914-the ... rb-mistake
Thus, the only completely correct choice, and hence the only possible answer, is (B).
Does all this make sense?
Mike
10 Jan 2018, 21:38
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Quote:
This is a hot mess. We start with a modifier (“seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep”) that needs to describe “the Erie Canal”, but then it takes an eternity to actually get to any mention of the canal. That’s not OK.
Similarly, the pronoun “it” is an awfully long way from its referent (“the Erie Canal”). It can be OK for a pronoun to precede the noun it refers to, but it’s awfully confusing when the “it” is THIS far away from “the Erie Canal.”
Finally, it’s hard to make sense of the phrase beginning with “but.” Logically, I guess the phrase “but it ran 363 miles…” is trying to provide a counterpoint to the fact that the Erie Canal is “seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep.” But it’s not structured correctly: “seldom more than 40 feet wide…” is a modifier, and I don’t think a dependent clause starting with “but” could logically provide a counterpoint for a modifier – the initial phrase would need to be an independent clause, not a modifier.
But even if your eyes glazed over reading that last paragraph, there are plenty of other reasons to eliminate (A).
Quote:
I don’t think this sounds great, but I don’t have a problem with it, either. The entire phrase before the comma is just one big, complicated modifier, telling us more about the Erie Canal: it’s “seldom more than 40 feet wide” but runs "363 miles across upstate New York". Fair enough. All of those things reasonably describe the canal.
If you're skeptical: notice that “but” is doing something different in (B) than in (A). In (A), “but” is followed by “it ran..” – so we have a full clause (dependent, in this case) in (A). In (B), “but” is followed by an “-ing” modifier, “running 363 miles…” – and that “-ing” modifier serves as an adjective that modifies the Erie Canal. That's really not a problem at all: the phrase "running 363 miles..." is parallel to the phrase "seldom more than 40 feet deep...", since they both modify a noun ("the Erie Canal").
I don’t see any other potential issues, so let’s keep (B).
Quote:
This one is such a hot mess that it’s oddly tricky to explain why it’s such a hot mess.
The first problem here is that the word “it” is an awfully long way from its referent, “the Erie Canal.” It’s OK to have a pronoun precede its referent on the GMAT, but it’s pretty confusing when there’s so much stuff between the “it” and “Erie Canal.”
Another is that the “but” doesn’t really make sense where it’s placed. The sentence is trying to draw a contrast between the canal’s small size (“seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep”) and… well, basically everything else in the sentence, including the fact that it runs 363 miles across the state. So if anything, the “but” needs to be placed BEFORE the phrase “ran 363 miles…”
And then the phrase “but the Erie Canal…” needs a verb somewhere. The sentence starts with an independent clause (“it was seldom more than 40 feet wide…”), and then we have “but” followed by a noun – so we’re going to need a verb next for this to make any sense. And it never happens – we just have more modifiers (“connecting” and “providing”).
But if you just read (C), said “holy poop on a stick, this is a mess”, and crossed it out, that’s cool, too.
Quote:
It’s pretty easy to eliminate (D) based on the modifier “which connected…” Noun modifiers beginning with "which" generally need to modify the immediately preceding noun (or at least a noun that's reasonably close!). So (D) seems to be saying that either “upstate New York” or maybe “the wilderness of upstate New York” connected the Hudson River to the Great Lakes, and that makes zero sense.
You could also argue that it’s illogical to use “and” to connect the phrase “the Erie Canal was seldom more than 40 feet wide…” with “it ran 363 miles.” Ideally, the canal’s small width and depth should be contrasted with its length – so a “but” would be more appropriate.
So (D) is out.
Quote:
This thing is basically just a string of modifiers and dependent clauses, and it isn’t actually a sentence at all. We have: “The Erie Canal, (modifier), (dependent clause), (modifier), (modifier).” Not cool.
So we can eliminate (E), and we’re left with (B), even though it arguably sounds kinda funny.
10 Oct 2013, 16:41
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mahendru1992
Ah! I didn't notice the and/or distinction. This is a perfect example of changing the meaning to what the sentence is trying to say.
The sentence is trying to say ----
The Erie Canal is seldom more than 40 feet wide
and also
The Erie Canal is seldom more than 12 feet deep
That's the intended meaning. It is trying to say that each one of those conditions is true. How do we say that in combined form?
This is a very common mistake --- combining negative statements (the word "seldom" is a mild negative). People think that because there's an "and" between the two overall ideas, there should be an "and" between the individual elements. This is WRONG.
The sentence
"The Erie Canal is seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep"
technically implies: What's rare is the combination, the stretches where the canal is simultaneously more than 40 feet wide and more than 12 feet deep. It's only a statement about the combination stretches, where both conditions are met. In other words, this sentence allows for all kinds of stretches where it is much wider than 40, as long as its shallow, or much deeper than 12, as long as its narrow. That's what is allowed by this phrasing, and this is not what the sentence is trying to say. The sentence is trying to say that (1) the condition "more than 40 feet wide" is a rare condition, and separately, (2) the condition "more than 12 feet deep" is a rare condition. Both are rare individually --- it's not the combination that's important at all. The correct way to convey this is:
"The Erie Canal is seldom more than 40 feet wide or 12 feet deep"
Similarly,
One cannot vote if one is under 18. True.
One cannot vote if one has a felony record. True.
How do we combine these into a single true statement. Many people make the mistake:
One cannot vote if one is under 18 and has a felony record.
That would be an illogical statement saying that the only folks forbidden to vote would be teenagers with felony records, a rare group. According to that red sentence, teenagers with no criminal record and felons over the age of 18 both would be allowed to vote, which is blatantly untrue.
The correct way to say this is:
One cannot vote if one is under 18 or has a felony record.
If the GMAT gives a mistake structure in the original, the job is to figure out the correct way to communicate what the original sentence is trying to say. The "not ... and" structure is almost always a mistake: see OG13, SC #21.
I hadn't noticed this split --- this increases my respect for this question even further.
Does all this make sense?
Mike
