Pure play of parallelism and logical reference for the pronoun ‘which’
Written and imitating are participial modifiers that befit the context. It is wrong to think that a past participle cannot be combined with a present participle. There are official examples to prove this point.

We can dispose of the pronoun issue of ‘which’ in one stroke that it is wrongly referring to the tablets rather than to the inscriptions. But then arguments surface that on the tablets is an essential prepositional modifier and therefore the inscriptions indeed are the logical reference. However, even after winking at this issue, we can still arrive at the right answer.

A. written with natural inks and imitated --- pseudo parallelism; meaning changes that the stone tablets imitated the Incas; it is the inscriptions that imitated. Here 'imitated' is a working past tense verb and not a past participle

B. written with natural inks and imitating --- Correct

C. which were written with natural inks that imitated ---What imitated the Inca?; definitely not the natural inks.

D. which were written with natural inks and imitating --- structurally unparallel; this sentence is trying to join a subordinate clause with a phrase by using the parallel conjunction ‘and’

E. which was written with natural inks and which imitated --- which 'was written' is plain S-V number mismatch


P.S. eighth century B should be eighth century B.C., I suppose.
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Imitating signifies the role that these inscriptions are still playing. If you choose A, you are saying that these inscriptions imitated some style. What does that mean? Are they not doing it now? As they are still telling us some style, we will use imitating.

Notice that 'Written' is in Past form because those inscriptions were written in the past. It is not that someone is still writing those.

Please try to decode the sentence meaning while answering any SC questions.
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There is a parallelism error 3-2 split of imitating vs imitated in comparison with written.
Thus B and D can be eliminated.
C gives a wrong meaning that inks imitated calligraphy style whereas inscriptions on tablets do that.
Out of A and E, A looks concise and good.

Researchers report that the earliest surviving Mohican inscriptions on stone tablets, written with natural inks and imitated the Inca style of calligraphy, date from the eighth century B.

A. written with natural inks and imitated-> does not modify preceding clause

B. written with natural inks and imitating-> both correctly modify preceding clause

C. which were written with natural inks that imitated->which refers to stone tablets - does not make sense

D. which were written with natural inks and imitating->which refers to stone tablets - does not make sense

E. which was written with natural inks and which imitated->which refers to stone tablets - does not make sense

Awaiting OA.
Hope I am right!

Rgds,
Dhruva

Thanks. I was confused b/w A and B.

I thought that past participle require past participle modifier.
Moreover, for -ed modifier it is tough to decide whether its working as modifier or as a verb.

I ask the question, is subject doing that work, then -ed is verb else modifier. ( as per e-gmat)

In this case, I asked " Is inscription doing the imitation". I was not sure about this. I thought NO. The inscription are not actually doing the work of imitation. So, its modifier and thus can be parallel.

Pls advice.

If you parse the clause and analyze the meaning, you will get to know the nuance. The text means that 1. Mohican inscriptions on stone tablets, (were) written with natural inks --- this is fine; written is a past participle.

2. If we add the same ‘were’ to the second part, it doesn’t work— (Mohican inscriptions on stone tablets) were imitated the Inca style – this is meaningless. Hence ‘imitated’ must be the action word of what the Mohican inscriptions did; therefore it is a past tense verb and not a past participial modifier like written. Please do not doubt whether an inscription can do any action. The action is meant figuratively.
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I was confused between A and B.. but why do we choose imitating in place of imitated? i chose A because it was in past tense. can someone please explain why imitating is the correct answer?

Thanks for your wonderful explanation daagh.
just to clarify, we ARE allowed to parallel two participial (past or present) in a participial phrase to modify subject, correct?

C. written with natural inks and imitating

in this case written || imitating is acceptable, evidently.

One more follow up question, does similar parallelism rule apply for absolute phrase/modifier?

Thanks
RzS

Hello TheRzS,


Thank you for the query.


The entities that perform the same function in the sentence can make a parallel list. Structurally, they may not look identical, but because they perform the same function in the sentence, they become part of the same list.

Same is the case with this e-GMAT sentence in which written, a verb-ed modifier, is perfectly parallel to imitating, a verb-ing modifier, because both modifiers modify the same noun entity Mohican inscriptions on stone tablets.


At e-GMAT, we call such lists Imperfect Lists because the parallel elements in such lists structurally do not appear similar. In fact, we have an elaborate article on the same topic that contains many official examples of such questions that have "imperfect parallel list". This article named e-gmat Article - Parallelism: Imperfect List can be viewed in clicking on the following link:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/parallelism-imperfect-list-142791.html


I would also be glad to help you with the other follow up question. Can you please elaborate a bit more on the same, preferably with a reference sentence, so that I can provide you relevant information?

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
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Official explanation:
The past continuous tense “were imitating” conveys the meaning that the Greek inscriptions were continuously imitating something. Since the sentence presents general information about the Greek inscriptions in the past context, Simple Past Tense Verb should be used. -> D is wrong.

According to Kaplan, patterns in B and D often appear in the actual exam.

I got the correct answer, but past participle modifier is doing the same job as incorrect choices with "which"?

Researchers report that the earliest surviving Mohican inscriptions on stone tablets, written with natural inks and imitated the Inca style of calligraphy, date from the eighth century B.


A. written with natural inks and imitated - at the time that the Mohican inscriptions were written, it was imitating the Inca style of calligraphy. Hence, we need to have the present progressive form of the verb 'indicate'.

B. written with natural inks and imitating - has no error. Hence, (B) is the right answer choice.

(C), (D), and (E) all have 'which' that tries to modify 'written'; this modification action does not make sense. Hence, eliminate (C), (D), and (E).

If you find this explanation helpful, please do give it a kudos.

how does 'which ' modify 'written ' ?
is it incorrect to use 'which' after a ',' (comma) here?