Signs of the decade-long boom in construction dot the waterfront of

generis All the choices have "begun" without the helping "have/has/had". I believe one of the choices had "began" than "begun". Because, "began" is the simple past tense form of "begin", and it does not need any helping, or auxiliary verbs, such as "has/have/had". But, "begun", meanwhile, is the past participle form of the same verb. It, therefore, should be used with helping verbs. I hope I am not missing something here. If I have, then I will learn something new today.

A) a dozen luxury apartment building projects are being carried out in one particular stretch, most of them begun only recently.
two independent clause split with a comma

B) a dozen luxury apartment building projects carried out in one particular stretch, most of them begun only recently.
so here "a dozen...."is just a big noun with "carried out..." acting as a participial modifier. here we have two subjects a dozen...+ most of them"

C) a dozen luxury apartment building projects are being carried out in one particular stretch, of which most of them begun only recently.
"of which" is misplaced, it seems like modify "stretch"

D) a dozen luxury apartment building projects are being carried out in one particular stretch, most of them which were begun only recently.
"most of them which" is not correct

E) a dozen luxury apartment building projects are being carried out in one particular stretch, most of which begun only recently.
Correct

My answer is (A). It took me 02:04.

(A) "a dozen luxury apartment building projects are being carried out in one particular stretch" is an independent clause.
"most of them begun only recently" is an absolute phrase: Noun + past participle.

(B) "a dozen luxury apartment building projects carried out in one particular stretch" is not a clause. There is no requirement that a clause must be used after em-dash. But to have the correct meaning that "Signs of the decade-long boom in construction dot the waterfront of Kirkland", (A) is better.

(C) This version contains two major issues.
(1) In seemingly a relative clause, “most of them begun only recently” does not contain verb.
(2) No reason for using "of which most of them". The author might mean "most of which" instead.

(D) "which were begun only recently" modifies "most of them", but then what is verb for "most of them"?

(E) "most of which" should introduce a relative clause. However, there is no verb.
Consider: most of which were begun only recently.

seems like we have different responses, generis, waiting for official answer.

The OA will be automatically revealed on Monday 16th of May 2022 12:29:28 AM Pacific Time Zone

Before that, do take a look at my answer, in which I place great confidence.

zhanbo,

I have great confidence in your answers as well, and following your posts and great explanations

However, I could not understand the explanation for how D and E are incorrect. Could you please explain what verb you mention is needed to rectify them, and clarify the “relative clause”?

Thanks!

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Hi, gandalfthegreat

The relative clause (read more at https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and- ... e-clauses/) must be a clause: Every clause must have a verb (and virtually all clauses in GMAT also must have a subject).

In (E), we seem to have one independent clause followed by an unrestrictive relative clause.
A dozen luxury apartment building projects are being carried out in one particular stretch, most of which begun only recently .
We think it is a relative clause because of the use of "most of which", in which "which" is the relative pronoun.
In the relative clause, its subject is "most of which" = "most of the luxury apartment building projects"
But there is no main verb for the subject.
We do see "begun", which is past participle of "begin". But we know that a past participle itself cannot be the main verb. (a past participle can pair with a helper verb such as "have / be" to constitute the main verb.)
So (E) fails to construct a valid relative clause. It can be fixed by adding "were" before "begun".

In (D), the relative clause ("which were begun only recently") is valid *, and it modifies "most of them".
A dozen luxury apartment building projects are being carried out in one particular stretch, most of them which were begun only recently.
But if we remove the relative clause, we get:
a dozen luxury apartment building projects are being carried out in one particular stretch, most of them
We could not place the added phrase "most of them" after the comma with the rest of the sentence. Take a look at the following sentence:
We have to practice for GMAT tests, some of us
If you can see the issue with the sentence above, well, (E) suffers the same fatal error.

* Also, Take note that, as a restrictive relative clause, "that were begun only recently" should be used in the place of "which were begun only recently". This rule is not really honored in British English. In American English / GMAT, however, such a distinction matters.

PyjamaScientist , your sentence correction analysis here, as usual, is excellent, but yes, you are missing something.

To your credit, what you are missing is not an easy catch. Look for a modifier rather than a verb phrase.

Remember that past participles, all by themselves, can be and often are adjectives.

One setting in which you might see “begun” as an adjective is in an appositive.
(If you want technical terminology, begun in this case would be a “reduced relative clause,” or more specifically, a “reduced adjective clause.”)

→ The American constitutional experiment, begun in 1776, may perish in the next few years under the toxic weight of the far right.

→ Picasso’s Guernica, first seen by the public in 1937, could have been painted in the spring of 2022 in Ukraine.

The best way for any aspirant to learn sentence construction is to read a little bit of theory and quite a few examples.
What you are looking for is described surprisingly well and simply in this short article, here, though in addition I would be absolutely certain to read this short article, here.

Good spotting.
All of you really should read the examples contained in both articles to which I link, even if they seem weird.

I hope what I have provided helps a bit.

generis
Thank you so much. I had never come across this usage of "begun", and I always mistook it for a verb phrase that needs its helping verb.

Thank you for your insightful article, looking forward to the OE. Though my vote's is for (A).

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