The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo : Sentence Correction (EA only)

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

02 Nov 2017, 11:01

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soodia wrote:

Hi GMATNinja

I have a basic problem with this question. if we split the sentence and delete non-essential modifier we have
1)The single-family house constructed by the Yana was conical in shape,
2)its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine, and banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.

two Ic cannot join each other with a comma
am I wrong?

Ah, I think I see where the confusion is coming from. The 2nd phrase ("its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark... and banked with dirt...") isn't an independent clause at all. "Overlaid" and "banked" are both modifiers here -- NOT verbs. So the entire phrase (beginning with "its framework") is actually just an absolute phrase, which is basically a type of noun (accompanied by tons of modifiers in this particular case) that's used to modify the preceding sentence.

In other words, the phrase that you have listed as #2 above is just giving us more information about phrase #1, and phrase #2 definitely is not an independent clause. Tricky!

chesstitans wrote:

how not to mistake "banked" for "was banked for"? I mean, how to know which parallels with which?

The best way to think about parallelism in this question is to react to each individual answer choice, and figure out how the parallelism works in each. Notice how I wrote the full explanation above: for each answer choice, I figured out what followed the parallelism trigger "and", and went from there. The parallelism turns out to be illogical in certain answer choices, but not in others.

Explanation is available here: https://gmatclub.com/forum/qotd-the-sin ... l#p1854761. Let me know if that doesn't clear it up.

I hope this helps!

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

24 Mar 2018, 23:56

The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American people who lived in what is now northern California, was conical in shape, its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine, and banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.

(A) banked with dirt to a height of
(B) banked with dirt as high as that of
(C) banked them with dirt to a height of
(D) was banked with dirt as high as
(E) was banked with dirt as high as that of

HI GMATNinja,

How in Option C banked them with dirt to a height of, "banked " is a verb but not an adjective?

Banked should modify poles

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

26 Mar 2018, 10:01

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NandishSS wrote:

The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American people who lived in what is now northern California, was conical in shape, its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine, and banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.

(A) banked with dirt to a height of
(B) banked with dirt as high as that of
(C) banked them with dirt to a height of
(D) was banked with dirt as high as
(E) was banked with dirt as high as that of

HI GMATNinja,

How in Option C banked them with dirt to a height of, "banked " is a verb but not an adjective?

Banked should modify poles

You're correct that "banked" SHOULD be an adjective that modifies "its framework of poles", and that's exactly what happens in the correct answer. In the explanation above for answer choice (C), I was just pointing out that it doesn't make sense for "banked" to be an adjective. And then I presented a hypothetical: what if "banked" is functioning as a verb instead? And it turns out that it can't do that, either. See above for more.

I hope this helps!

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

05 Jun 2018, 22:39

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Wonderful explanations BY egmat and GMATNinja
I have one minor doubt in this question. What is the correct usage of " to a height of" and "as high as".
As per my understanding "as high as" should be followed by a definite attribute and not a range.
Is this correct ?

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

06 Jun 2018, 08:57

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Raksat wrote:

Wonderful explanations BY egmat and GMATNinja
I have one minor doubt in this question. What is the correct usage of " to a height of" and "as high as".
As per my understanding "as high as" should be followed by a definite attribute and not a range.
Is this correct ?

Ooh, interesting question, Raksat! I'd never thought about that, to be honest, but I think you're right: I don't think it makes sense to say "as high as three to four feet". If we're saying "as high as", then we should specify an absolute maximum value ("four feet", in this case), not a range. Good call.

To be fair, this isn't the sort of thing that I would bet my life on - you'll see far more serious errors in many GMAT answer choices, so I'd be conservative about it. But fundamentally, I think you're 100% spot-on. Nice observation.

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

12 Feb 2019, 12:19

When deciding between (A) and (D), I personally think that it makes sense to say "The single-family house ... was banked with dirt ..."

Thus, I wouldn't feel comfortable eliminating (D) based on that meaning. In other words, I think (D) would be just as attractive if it had instead read:
was banked with dirt to a height of

The problem I find with (D) is the phrase "as high as three to four feet". If something is "as high as three to four feet", then it would mean the same thing and would be much more succinct to say "as high as four feet". Thus, I believe the author intended to say "to a height of three to four feet". This has been discussed earlier by GMATNinja and Raksat.

Finally, I don't agree with egmat's statement:

egmat wrote:

A thing that we must bear in mind is that the function of the original sentence is not only to provide one of the five answer choices. The original sentence presents the context. In absence of any other information, we must rely on the context set by the original sentence to understand the intended meaning.

Here is an example where the original sentence has the wrong meaning:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/the-ability- ... 81390.html

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

12 Feb 2019, 13:13

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anujag24 wrote:

Option A and D have confused me

A: its framework...banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet
Here, the portion in blue is an ADVERB serving to modify banked, expressing HOW the framework was BANKED.
Question: HOW was the framework banked?
Answer: It was banked TO A HEIGHT OF THREE TO FOUR FEET.

D: its framework...banked with dirt as high as three to four feet
Here, the portion in red seems to be an adjective describing dirt.
Question: What KIND of dirt?
Answer: Dirt AS HIGH AS THREE TO FOUR FEET.
Not the intended meaning.
The intention here is not to describe the type of dirt but to express how the framework was banked.
Eliminate D.

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

24 Mar 2020, 23:23

chunjuwu wrote:

Source : GMATPrep Default Exam Pack

The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American people who lived in what is now northern California, was conical in shape, its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine, and banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.

(A) banked with dirt to a height of

(B) banked with dirt as high as that of

(C) banked them with dirt to a height of

(D) was banked with dirt as high as

(E) was banked with dirt as high as that of

Verbal Question of The Day: Day 15: Sentence Correction

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Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America
By Theodora Kroeber
University of California Press, 1961

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Annotation 2019-08-18 192153.jpg

The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American people who lived in what is now northern California, was conical in shape, its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine, and banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.

(A) banked with dirt to a height of

(B) banked with dirt as high as that of

(C) banked them with dirt to a height of

(D) was banked with dirt as high as

(E) was banked with dirt as high as that of

IMO A

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

09 May 2021, 02:16

Experts Please help ,

Option A , ambiguity -

1) The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American people who lived in what is now northern California, was (X) conical in shape , its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine, and (Y) banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet .

2) The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American people who lived in what is now northern California, was conical in shape, its framework of poles (X) overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine, (Y) and banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.

Isn't option A ambiguous in parallelism ?.

I see two parallel structures which could be derived and therefore creating different meanings .
Isn't this ambiguity a significant enogh to eliminate option A) .

AND WHEN SHOULD I CONSIDER PARALLELISM AMBIGUOUS !

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

20 May 2021, 12:02

gmatexam439 wrote:

souvik101990 wrote:

Verbal Question of The Day: Day 15: Sentence Correction

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The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American people who lived in what is now northern California, was conical in shape, its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine, and banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.

A. banked with dirt to a height of
B. banked with dirt as high as that of
C. banked them with dirt to a height of
D. was banked with dirt as high as
E. was banked with dirt as high as that of

Every question of the day will be followed by an expert reply by GMATNinja in 12-15 hours. Stay tuned! Post your answers and explanations to earn kudos.

GMATNinja : Why can't a house be banked? I thought that the house had been banked; therefore I ended up selecting "D".
The statement never explicitly states that the house CAN'T be banked.
In my opinion I don't feel that banking of house is awkward either. So why is "D" incorrect.

Please help me with this.
Regards

I understand what you are saying, I still have doubts about the provided explanations. I actually feel that there is an implicit was before the verbs "overlaid" and "banked", because the frame cannot "overlay with barks himself", nor "bank himself". In other words, someone had to overlay the frame with barks and bank the frame with dirt:

The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American people who lived in what is now northern California, was conical in shape, its framework of poles [was] overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine, and [was] banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.

But even if this is the case "banked with dirt" still modifies "framework of poles", so the parallelism is kept with the non-underlined text:
The house
+was canonical..,
+its frame was
-overlaid..
-banked..

In order for banked to modify the house the non underlined section should have a structure similar to
The house
+was canonical..,
+overlaid with..,
+banked with..,

Having said all of this I think that there's a definite reason to eliminate option D

D. was banked with dirt as high as three to four feet -> "as high as x to y" is incorrect, if you want to give a range instead of a single value you would say "to a height of x to y feet"

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

08 Jun 2021, 08:12

Hi GMATNinja,
Just a quick question to enhance my understanding.

Let say hypothetically the non-underlined portion said "it framework of poles was overlaid...."

Could we in this case go with option D considering parallelism.

Thanks in advance for all your help.

Nik

GMATNinja wrote:

This one is pretty tricky, in my opinion. We’re mostly dealing with parallelism here, but it's not as straightforward as I’d like.

Quote:

A. banked with dirt to a height of

The underlined portion follows the word “and”, so we definitely need to think about parallelism. Here, the word that follows “and” is “banked.” In this case, "banked" is an adjective.

So what is “banked” parallel to? Well, “overlaid” is our nearest adjective, and that makes some sense: “its framework overlaid with poles… and banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.” Not bad! That makes sense: the framework was banked with dirt. Keep (A).

Quote:

B. banked with dirt as high as that of

The only difference between (A) and (B) is the pronoun phrase, “that of.” “That” is a singular pronoun here, so it needs a singular antecedent. And we don’t have good candidates: “dirt” is the nearest singular noun, but that doesn’t make sense: “banked with dirt as high as the dirt of three to four feet.” Nope.

You can try the same thing with other singular nouns in the sentence (pine, cedar, bark, framework, house, etc.), but once you try to insert them into the sentence in place of “that”, you'll see that none of them make any logical sense. So (B) is gone.

Quote:

C. banked them with dirt to a height of

This is a little bit more subtle, but once “them” is added to the sentence, things get weird. The issue isn't necessarily that "them" is ambiguous (sure, there are a few different plural nouns that "them" could refer back to, but the nearest one, "slabs", is arguably OK). The real problem is that the parallelism doesn't really work. If "banked" is parallel to "overlaid", it doesn't make sense anymore: "its framework of poles... banked them with dirt"?!

OK, so what if "banked" is actually a verb, and it's parallel to "was"? That wouldn't make sense, either: "The single-family house constructed by the Yana... banked them with dirt." (C) is gone.

Quote:

D. was banked with dirt as high as

The verb phrase "was banked" follows "and", so it has to be parallel to some other verb phrase. "Was conical in shape" seems to be our best option, but that wouldn't make much sense, since it would imply that "The single-family house constructed by the Yana... was banked with dirt." And that's not quite right: the framework of poles was banked with dirt -- not the entire house. That's why it makes more sense to leave "banked" parallel to "overlaid", as in option (A). Eliminate (D).

Quote:

E. was banked with dirt as high as that of

(E) has the same pronoun error as (B), and the same parallelism/logic error as (D). So we’re left with (A).

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

08 Jun 2021, 15:43

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NikhilJose wrote:

Hi GMATNinja,
Just a quick question to enhance my understanding.

Let say hypothetically the non-underlined portion said "it framework of poles was overlaid...."

Could we in this case go with option D considering parallelism.

Thanks in advance for all your help.

Nik

The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American people who lived in what is now northern California, was conical in shape, its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine, and banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.

Your proposal: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American people who lived in what is now northern California, was conical in shape, its framework of poles WAS overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine, and WAS banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.
Identify core: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, ~~a Native American people who lived in what is now northern California,~~ was conical in shape, its framework of poles WAS overlaid ~~with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine,~~ and WAS banked with dirt ~~to a height of three to four feet.~~
>> <NOUN> <HELPING VERB> <MAINVERB >, <NOUN> <HELPING VERB>< VERB> and <HELPING VERB> <VERB>
You can see it's a sentence construction error. 2 independent clauses connected only with a COMMA
SO in your proposal new construction would be wrong too

I hope it helps

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

11 Jun 2022, 05:19

Hi Experts,

What does "the framework of poles banked with dirt" mean in this sentence.

Thanks

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

11 Jun 2022, 08:26

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KittyDoodles wrote:

Hi Experts,

What does "the framework of poles banked with dirt" mean in this sentence.

Thanks

Basically there's are wooden poles arranged in a conical way (sort of like the poles of a tipi) that serve as the skeleton of the structure, and then that skeleton is wrapped in bark or other things. After that, dirt is kind of pushed up against its lower sides to a height of 3-4 feet, so its lower wall is sort of clad on the outside with dirt. If you've seen an ice cream cone partially dipped in chocolate, that might serve as a good analogous illustration. This dirt bank/half-wall served to keep rain from flooding into the house.

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

11 Jun 2022, 08:42

ryanstarr wrote:

KittyDoodles wrote:

Hi Experts,

What does "the framework of poles banked with dirt" mean in this sentence.

Thanks

Basically there's are wooden poles arranged in a conical way (sort of like the poles of a tipi) that serve as the skeleton of the structure, and then that skeleton is wrapped in bark or other things. After that, dirt is kind of pushed up against its lower sides to a height of 3-4 feet, so its lower wall is sort of clad on the outside with dirt. If you've seen an ice cream cone partially dipped in chocolate, that might serve as a good analogous illustration. This dirt bank/half-wall served to keep rain from flooding into the house.

Thanks for the quick reply.

Why would the below parallelism in Option D be incorrect.

"The single-family house constructed by the Yana was conical in shape and was banked with dirt as high as three to four feet".

I rejected this option just because the end of option A "to a height of three to four feet" was better compared to this option.

Thanks

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

12 Jun 2022, 04:55

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KittyDoodles wrote:

ryanstarr wrote:

KittyDoodles wrote:

Hi Experts,

What does "the framework of poles banked with dirt" mean in this sentence.

Thanks

Basically there's are wooden poles arranged in a conical way (sort of like the poles of a tipi) that serve as the skeleton of the structure, and then that skeleton is wrapped in bark or other things. After that, dirt is kind of pushed up against its lower sides to a height of 3-4 feet, so its lower wall is sort of clad on the outside with dirt. If you've seen an ice cream cone partially dipped in chocolate, that might serve as a good analogous illustration. This dirt bank/half-wall served to keep rain from flooding into the house.

Thanks for the quick reply.

Why would the below parallelism in Option D be incorrect.

"The single-family house constructed by the Yana was conical in shape and was banked with dirt as high as three to four feet".

I rejected this option just because the end of option A "to a height of three to four feet" was better compared to this option.

Thanks

Hello, KittyDoodles,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, Option D incorrectly maintains parallelism between "was conical in shape" and "was banked with dirt", incorrectly implying that the single-family house constructed by the Yana was banked with dirt; the intended meaning is that the house's framework of poles was banked with dirt; please remember, elements of a sentence should only be parallel is they play the same role in the sentence; here, "conical in shape" is an attribute of the house itself, and "banked with dirt" is an attribute of the house's framework.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

14 Jun 2022, 08:15

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KittyDoodles wrote:

ryanstarr wrote:

KittyDoodles wrote:

Hi Experts,

What does "the framework of poles banked with dirt" mean in this sentence.

Thanks

Basically there's are wooden poles arranged in a conical way (sort of like the poles of a tipi) that serve as the skeleton of the structure, and then that skeleton is wrapped in bark or other things. After that, dirt is kind of pushed up against its lower sides to a height of 3-4 feet, so its lower wall is sort of clad on the outside with dirt. If you've seen an ice cream cone partially dipped in chocolate, that might serve as a good analogous illustration. This dirt bank/half-wall served to keep rain from flooding into the house.

Thanks for the quick reply.

Why would the below parallelism in Option D be incorrect.

"The single-family house constructed by the Yana was conical in shape and was banked with dirt as high as three to four feet".

I rejected this option just because the end of option A "to a height of three to four feet" was better compared to this option.

Thanks

To be honest, I'm in the same boat as you--I think that the parallelism in option (D) is at least logical enough to be acceptable. After all, if the framework of poles is banked with dirt, the house itself is also banked with dirt. That does leave its framework of poles overlaid ... pine as a kind of awkward modifier for the first part of the parallel structure, but it's not a dealbreaker--there are worse modifiers out there. As such, like you, I would look to the to a height of vs. as high as split for confirmation that (A) was better than (D). Finding two things not to love about (D) (that comparison and the awkward modifier) seals the deal for me.

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Re: The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo [#permalink]

14 Jun 2022, 08:15

GMAT Sentence Correction (EA only) Questions

The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American peo