abhishekmayank wrote:
Hi,
In the correct option A, the verb tense "escaped" doesn't sync properly with the verb tense of "cause" in the later part of the sentence. It suggests that "escape" happened once at a time, but the effect of one time event of "escape" is that it keeps on causing the storm.
A. Sun, a discovery suggesting that a gigantic number of particles escaped
Hi
AndrewN,
egmat : Could you please shed light on it?
Hello,
abhishekmayank. You have to be careful when you look at a sentence not to project something such as parallelism onto it when the grammatical pieces may be different. How about we start by taking a look at the sentence?
Quote:
Recently, some astronomers spotted a gap in the extended outer atmosphere of the Sun, a discovery suggesting that a gigantic number of particles escaped into space as geomagnetic storms that at times cause damage to the Earth’s satellites and power grids.
Notice that within the modifying phrase—
a discovery...—we have two
separate embedded clauses, those that begin with
that. You can tell that they are NOT parallel clauses because there is no
and to link them together:
that... and that... Thus, the sentence can tell us what the discovery suggested in the past tense—namely, that
particles escaped—while at the same time offering commentary on
geomagnetic storms in general in the present tense by employing a relative clause. It is understood that such storms can
at times cause damage, not that these particular geomagnetic storms
caused damage. To be honest, once I realized the latter clause was modifying
storms, I ignored the rest of the sentence, knowing that it had no bearing on the underlined portion. A different sentence could, in fact, be written with
caused in place of
cause, though. It just depends on what the author means to convey.
I hope that helps clarify your concern. Thank you for thinking to ask.
- Andrew