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Researchers have found that individuals who have been blind from birth

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CrackverbalGMAT

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We can use parallelism to eliminate the first couple of options and use tense inconsistencies to get to the right answer.

Option B – ‘thus never saw’ is a tense shift. The non-underlined portion says ‘who have been blind’. Eliminate.

Option D – ‘never having seen’ is again not consistent with the tense used in the sentence. Eliminate.

Option E – ‘never having seen’. Same as D. Eliminate.

Between Options A and C, you will notice that C uses the past tense in place of present tense.

Option C – ‘nevertheless made hand motions’. This is an unjustified tense jump. Eliminate.

Option A is the best choice.

Hope this helps!

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21 Jul 2020, 04:31

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egmat

Hi,

Researchers have found that individuals who have been blind from birth, and who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture even when conversing with another blind person.

Error Analysis

1. All the subjects and verbs make sense and agree in number with each other – “who (refers to individuals) with “have never seen”, “individuals” with “make”, “people” with “do” and “they” with “will”.
2. All the verbs are written in correct tenses.
3. Pronoun “they” correctly refers to “individuals”.
4. All the modifiers are placed correctly and they modify the correct entities.
5. Entities “who have blind…” and “who thus have never seen” are parallel. So are entities “individuals… make hand motions” and “sighted people do”. So are “that individuals…” and “that they will gesture…”.
6. The sentence use correct idiom “ X as abc as Y”.
7. This sentence is correct as is.

POE:

Choice A: who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture: Correct for the reasons stated above.

Choice B: who thus never saw anyone gesturing, nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequent and in virtually the same way as sighted people did, and that they will gesture” Incorrect. 1. “who have been blind” and “who thus never saw” are not parallel. 2. From verb tense point also, use of past tense to talk about an action that is still performed by blind people is incorrect. 3. Adjective “frequent” cannot modify verb “make”. 4. Again, use of past tense “did” to talk about the general fact that is true of the present content is incorrect.

Choice C: who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless made hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, as well as gesturing: Incorrect. 1. Use of past tense “made” is incorrect because the sentence is stating a general fact in the present context. 2. Use of “as well as” introduces a new list per which “made” and “gesturing” should be parallel but they are not. 3. Also “as well as” violates the parallelism between “that individuals…” and “that they…”.

Choice D: thus never having seen anyone gesture, nevertheless made hand motions when speaking just as frequent and in virtually the same way as sighted people did, as well as gesturing: Incorrect. 1. Use of “having seen” violates parallelism. 2. Also, this is the wrong tense to use in the context. 3. Use of past tense “made” is incorrect. 3. Adjective “frequent” cannot modify verb “make”. 4. Again, use of past tense “did” to talk about the general fact that is true of the present content is incorrect. 5. This choice repeats the errors of the use of “as well as” as in choice C.

Choice E: thus never having seen anyone gesture, nevertheless to make hand motions when
speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and to gesture: Incorrect. 1. This choice repeats the errors of the use of “having seen” as in Choice D. 2. Use of “to” between subject “individuals” and verb “make” is incorrect. 3. “to gesture” is not parallel to “that individuals…”.

Hope this helps.
Thanks
Shraddha

Posted from my mobile device

Hi shraddha

Why " who have been...." And " who thus have never..." are not parallel?

Thanks in advance.

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GMAT8055

Why " who have been...." And " who thus have never..." are not parallel?

Hi GMAT8055, they are parallel (both of them modifying individuals) and I believe Shraddha does mention this in her post.

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07 Aug 2020, 23:41

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Researchers have found that individuals who have been blind from birth, and who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture even when conversing with another blind person.

(A) who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture

(B) who thus never saw anyone gesturing, nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequent and in virtually the same way as sighted people did, and that they will gesture

(C) who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless made hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people, do, as well as gesturing

(D) thus never having seen anyone gesture, nevertheless made hand motions when speaking just as frequent and in virtually the same way as sighted people did, as well as gesturing

(E) thus never having seen anyone gesture, nevertheless to make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and to gesture

Explanation:

Option A looks the best choice among all. As in this one -

1. Both the subordinate clauses correctly introduced by THAT("that individuals…as sighted people do" & "that they will gesture…with another blind person") Hence parallelism maintained.

2. The verb tenses are logical and parallel: who have been blind and who have never seen indicate a condition that began in the past and continues in the present;

3. Make and do refer to present actions. The verb make (hand motions) is correctly modified by the adverb frequently to show how the action of the verb is carried out.

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24 Dec 2020, 20:14

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Isn't there a problem with "they will gesture" at the end of the underlined portion in options A and B? Is it ok to change tense in this manner?
The meaning of the sentence is - Researches have concluded that blind people gesture just as sighted people do, and they will do this in the future even while talking to blind people.
Is this interpretation correct?

It's not really a change to future tense.

"Will," and, in the past tense, "would," can be placed in front of an action verb to indicate that the action described is habitual. Here are a present tense example and a past tense example.

The present tense example is about what Monica habitually does when faced with a dilemma.

The past tense example is about what Alex did habitually when he was younger.

So, in this question, "will gesture" conveys what blind people often do when conversing with other blind people.

Of course, the simple present "gesture" would have worked just as well as if not better than "will gesture." So, it's possible, or even probable, that the writer of the question used the confusing "will gesture" to make the correct answer seem a little off. Sentence Correction question writers often make moves like that one in order to make Sentence Correction questions more challenging.

"Anyone gesture" was a bit confusing for me as anyone can be singular or plural. I eliminated BCDE and marked correct choice but was not sure about A because of this reason.

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Quote:

(A) who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture

Will only be able to eliminate it once we go through other options.

Quote:

(B) who thus never saw anyone gesturing, nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequent and in virtually the same way as sighted people did, and that they will gesture

Saw is incorrect because the action started in the past and is still valid.
Sighted people do the same gesture, which they did in past. So, did is not a right thing from logic

Quote:

(C) who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless made hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people, do, as well as gesturing

"Have never seen" is correct.
blind people are making such gestures. Hand gestures are a habit, hence, "make" is right. C uses made.
Incorrect

Quote:

(D) thus never having seen anyone gesture, nevertheless made hand motions when speaking just as frequent and in virtually the same way as sighted people did, as well as gesturing

Same as C

Quote:

(E) thus never having seen anyone gesture, nevertheless to make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and to gesture

Having seen is incorrect. Blind people have to see only once to make the gesture; they need not keep on looking to make a gesture.

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Errors gallore in this one...A is immediately clearly correct, but let's go through the choices anyway.

Researchers have found that individuals who have been blind from birth, and who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture even when conversing with another blind person.

(A) who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture
Correct. We need the present perfect tense "have never seen" ...the fact that blind people are blind from birth and their never seeing anyone started in the past and carries into the present...any other tense would be incorrect.

(B) who thus never saw anyone gesturing, nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequent and in virtually the same way as sighted people did, and that they will gesture

Error 1: "thus never saw" ...you need the present perfect tense
Error 2: "frequent" should be the adverb "frequently"
Error 3: "did" should be "do"

(C) who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless made hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people, do, as well as gesturing

Error 1: "made" should be "make" . Why? Because its an enduring characteristic of blind people ...
Error 2: why is "do" set off by commas? It shouldn't be...

(D) thus never having seen anyone gesture, nevertheless made hand motions when speaking just as frequent and in virtually the same way as sighted people did, as well as gesturing

Same violations as B.

(E) thus never having seen anyone gesture, nevertheless to make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and to gesture

The infinitive 'to make hand' is wrong...'make' suffices.

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AndrewN - I had the same doubt on several "commas", and it has been nicely explained here. Just a quick (and lame) question on this. Request you to please help me with this fundamental query.

Quote:

This list is of some specific individuals about whom the researchers have found the above things:
1. Who have been blind from birth.
2. Who have never seen anyone gesture.

I understand these 2 items in the list are separated by a comma. But why is there a comma after this list ends (between "gesture" and "nevertheless")?
Researchers have found that individuals who have been blind from birth, and who thus have never seen anyone gesture , nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture even when conversing with another blind person.

manyu2409

abid1986

Abdul29

Researchers have found that individuals who have been blind from birth, and who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture even when conversing with another blind person.

A) who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture even when conversing with another blind person.
B) who thus never saw anyone gesturing, nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequent and in virtually the same way as sighted people did, and that they will gesture
C) who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless made hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people, do, as well as gesturing
D) thus never having seen anyone gesture, nevertheless made hand motions when speaking just as frequent and in virtually the same way as sighted people did, as well as gesturing
E) thus never having seen anyone gesture, nevertheless to make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and to gesture

This one gave me a headache.

I am not able to understand the structure of this question.
As fas as I know Comma + and has two usage : when there is an independent clause or when there are 2 or more item in the list.
so in the sentence ,and who thus have never been .. is neither and independent clause nor an item in the list.
So what is the exact usage over here and please explain the entire grammatical strucutre in individual clauses and list.

Hi abid1986,

You have correctly mentioned the two usage of ‘comma + and’. I think the problem you faced here is in breaking the sentence into clauses and that’s the reason you could not identify the function of ‘comma + and’ in this sentence.

Following is the grammatical structure of the sentence. You can find the subjects in the green and verbs in the blue.

• Researchers have found (C-1)
o that
• individuals (C-2)
o who have been blind from birth, (C-3)
o and who thus have never seen anyone gesture, (C-4)
• nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as (C-2 continued...)
• sighted people do, (C-5)
o and that they will gesture even when conversing with another blind person. (C-6)

PARALLEL LIST- I

This list is of a certain things that the researchers have found:
1. Individuals make hand motions when speaking
2. And they will gesture even when conversing with another blind person.

This list of items is connected using ‘comma + and’.

PARALLEL LIST- II

This list is of some specific individuals about whom the researchers have found the above things:
1. Who have been blind from birth.
2. Who have never seen anyone gesture.

I think this one answers your first question. These are the two items in the list that are connected using ‘comma + and’.

COMPARISON

o Individuals make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do.

The two clauses ‘individuals make hand motions’ and ‘sighted people do’ are compared using ‘as…..as’.

Hope this helps!

Manyu

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Pankaj0901

AndrewN - I had the same doubt on several "commas", and it has been nicely explained here. Just a quick (and lame) question on this. Request you to please help me with this fundamental query.

Quote:

This list is of some specific individuals about whom the researchers have found the above things:
1. Who have been blind from birth.
2. Who have never seen anyone gesture.

Hello, Pankaj0901. The reason the second comma is in place after the parallel entity is that that second entity is more like an aside, extra information about the same group of people, than a truly separate group. So, whereas coordinate adjectives might see one comma between two separate entities—e.g., He lived a happy, healthy life.—this sentence conveys information in a different way by adding that second comma, as in, He lived a happy, not a sad, life. In both my sentence and the one you asked about, the information bound by the commas more or less interrupts the main clause, offering commentary on something within it before moving on.

I hope that helps clarify the matter. Thank you for thinking to ask.

- Andrew

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Thank you AndrewN. If I understood correctly- It is the case where the additional information at the end of the sentence is separated.

He lived a happy, healthy life.
There is no comma between "healthy" and "life": Is this comma removed because "healthy" is just one word (like in the example below there is a comma)?

He lived a happy, not a sad, life.
Is the comma between "sad" and "life" optional here? Can we remove this comma (like in example above)?

It seems like I have missed some point. (Really sorry

)

AndrewN

Pankaj0901

AndrewN - I had the same doubt on several "commas", and it has been nicely explained here. Just a quick (and lame) question on this. Request you to please help me with this fundamental query.

Quote:

This list is of some specific individuals about whom the researchers have found the above things:
1. Who have been blind from birth.
2. Who have never seen anyone gesture.

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Pankaj0901

)

The fault may lie on my end, Pankaj0901. Both sentences that I wrote, reproduced above in bold, were correct, but for different reasons. In the first, the two adjectives could be transposed without a problem: He lived a healthy, happy life. That is why we place a comma between the adjectives. This stands in contrast to the comma-less version of back-to-back adjectives in a restrictive context: He drives a big blue auto. That is, it would not make sense to rearrange those adjectives: He drives a blue big auto.

In the second sentence, we are gaining additional information on some part of the main clause, so that extra information can be treated as an aside, something to rope off with double commas. The main clause is simply He lived a happy life. Since not a sad comments on or defines happy, we drop it into the middle of the clause and surround it with commas.

In the sentence at hand, we see a long-winded version of the same, only within an embedded that clause:

Quote:

The double commas add clarity to the sentence in that we understand that the main thought (within the embedded clause) is being put on hold for a moment while we get additional information about that original thought.

I hope that better illustrates what I was aiming to say. If not, I can take a third crack at it.

- Andrew

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I think I got your point. But, to have more clarity, let me share my thoughts below.

AndrewN

In the sentence at hand, we see a long-winded version of the same, only within an embedded that clause:

Quote:

Now let's please consider the 3 sentences below:

1. Original sentence
Researchers have found that individuals who have been blind from birth, and who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture even when conversing with another blind person.

As explained by someone in one of the posts above: These are items of the list, hence are separated by commas before "and".
Researches have found that individuals:
- who have been blind from birth
AND
- who thus have never seen anyone gesture
My Question:
We have comma pair around the phrase ", who thus...gesture,":
1. Because this phrase is providing additional information? - If this is the answer, I get the point.
2. Or, because this is part of the items-list? - If this is the answer, I am still not clear why do we need a comma before "nevertheless".

2. Comma between "gesture" and "nevertheless" removed
Researchers have found that individuals who have been blind from birth, and who thus have never seen anyone gesture nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture even when conversing with another blind person.
My Question 3:
Is this sentence correct? What is the ambiguity if this is wrong?

3. Both commas removed around the "who..." phrase
[/b]Researchers have found that individuals who have been blind from birth and who thus have never seen anyone gesture nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture even when conversing with another blind person.
My Question 4:
Is this sentence correct?

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I will add my thoughts to your own, below.

Pankaj0901

I think I got your point. But, to have more clarity, let me share my thoughts below.

Now let's please consider the 3 sentences below:

1. Original sentence
Researchers have found that individuals who have been blind from birth, and who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture even when conversing with another blind person.

As explained by someone in one of the posts above: These are items of the list, hence are separated by commas before "and".
Researches have found that individuals:
- who have been blind from birth
AND
- who thus have never seen anyone gesture
My Question:
We have comma pair around the phrase ", who thus...gesture,":
1. Because this phrase is providing additional information? - If this is the answer, I get the point.
2. Or, because this is part of the items-list? - If this is the answer, I am still not clear why do we need a comma before "nevertheless".

1. is correct; 2. is not. When you join two items in a list, you do not typically place a comma before the second item. I say typically because there might be a rather lengthy first item, perhaps one that itself contains an and, and for the sake of clarity, a comma might help the reader understand that the first part is over and the second is beginning.

Pankaj0901

2. Comma between "gesture" and "nevertheless" removed
Researchers have found that individuals who have been blind from birth, and who thus have never seen anyone gesture nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture even when conversing with another blind person.
My Question 3:
Is this sentence correct? What is the ambiguity if this is wrong?

No, the sentence is not grammatically sound. Either the second who clause is an aside, in which case it should contain double commas to mark it as non-essential, or it should be considered essential information and should be comma-free.

Pankaj0901

3. Both commas removed around the "who..." phrase
[/b]Researchers have found that individuals who have been blind from birth and who thus have never seen anyone gesture nevertheless make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture even when conversing with another blind person.
My Question 4:
Is this sentence correct?

Yes, the above sentence actually works: Researchers have found that individuals who X and who Y + [verb]. The commas from the original sentence may help us with pacing and clarity, considering the length of X and Y, but they are not essential to communicate the same idea.

Phew! I say we call this one done and dusted. I hope you will agree.

- Andrew

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Quote:

Phew! I say we call this one done and dusted. I hope you will agree.

Definitely AndrewN. This is helpful anyway, thank you. I was not sure if it was worth breaking my head for.

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Thank you very much for detailed explanation. I have one concern about this question. As we always say pronouns refer to the closest noun. Here "...and that they will gesture", I am confused that "they" may refer to "people" because "people" is the closest noun to "they". It seems I am wrong. Can you please explain?

egmat

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Dear experts,

In (C), who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless made hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people, do, as well as gesturing.

I have seen many posts tell that "as well as gesturing" is wrong.
But gesturing can be parallel with speaking.

who thus have never seen anyone gesture, nevertheless made hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people, do, as well as (when) gesturing.

Am I wrong? please elaborate on this one.

Also, Is "made" definitely wrong?

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Break down of A:
Researchers have found that individuals (main subject) who have been blind from birth ,and(parallelism trigger) who thus have never seen anyone gesture (parallel to: who have been blind), (start of dependent clause) nevertheless make (main action/verb) hand motions when speaking just as frequently and (parallelism trigger)in virtually the same way (parallel to: frequently) as sighted people do,

and that (new independent clause starts) they will gesture even when conversing with another blind person.

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03 Aug 2022, 07:44

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Tanchat

That's a nonsense interpretation, because it ends up saying "made hand motions when speaking ... and when gesturing...".
"Made hand motions when speaking" makes perfectly reasonable sense.
"Made hand motions when gesturing", though, does not—because gesturing already means "making hand motions"!

More generally, you should try to figure out what the sentence 'wants' to say (= the intended meaning) at the beginning of the problem—when you'll get to see all the words together in one place. Even if choice A is incorrect, as it will be 80% of the time, it will still be MUCH easier for you to deduce the intended meaning of the sentence at that point than later, when you're looking at answer choices that only contain part of the sentence (and that you would need to rejoin with the rest of the sentence to deduce the meaning).

In this problem, you should figure out at the outset that the sentence is describing 2 things that congenitally blind people do:
• make hand motions when speaking (like sighted people)
• gesture even when conversing with another blind person
These are the only two actions that make sense in parallel in the context of the sentence as a whole.

Having figured that out, you'll be able to reject a wide range of incorrect interpretations, such as the one you're asking about here, efficiently.

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29 Aug 2022, 20:27

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Abdul29

I have 2 questions.

1. who have been blind from birth and who thus never saw anyone gesture => how is "never saw" breaking the parallelism. I know that it's not right to say "never saw" in this context and that "have never seen" is more appropriate, but it's puzzling to hear that they are not parallel (as quoted in other posts).

2. They make hand motions when speaking just as frequently and in virtually the same way as sighted people do.
I was thrown off by the parallelism between the two as. I was expecting an adverb after the and to be parallel with frequently, something like as frequently and accurately as.
Or is it that in virtually the same way is parallel to just as frequently??
They make hand motions when speaking just as frequently as and in virtually the same way as sighted people do.

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30 Aug 2022, 05:06

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smbbourne007

Abdul29

Hello smbbourne007,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your queries,

1. You are correct here. The error here is not one of parallelism but rather one of tense; E incorrectly uses the simple past tense verb "saw" to refer to an action that concluded in the past but continues to affect the present; remember, the present perfect tense (marked by the use of the helping verb “has/have”) is used to describe events that concluded in the past but continue to affect the present, and the simple past tense is used to refer to events that concluded in the past.

2. Yes; in virtually the same way and just as frequently are parallel elements - adverbs that act upon the same verb phrase - joined by conjunction ("and" in this case).

To understand the concept of "Simple Tenses" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~2 minutes):