Since the end of the recently extended recession, prices for all of th

This is fun, we're already seeing some disagreement on this one!

There are a bunch of moving parts on this question, but one of the major issues is the verb tense. "Since the end of the recession..." requires present perfect tense. Other than that, we have some fun stuff with pronouns ("that of") and some little meaning-based issues.


The verb tense is OK here, but there are a couple of weird bits. "Recently extended recession" doesn't really make a whole ton of sense, considering that we know that the recession is already over. (Head-nod to this official GMAT question with a similar phrase in it.) "Five-year high levels" isn't necessarily wrong, but it's definitely not ideal: "five-year highs" is much clearer.

If you're not totally certain about these two issues, you could be conservative and hang onto (A) for now, but we'll see that there's a better choice below.


The "recently extended recession" issue is the same as in (A). And more importantly, the verb tense is definitely wrong: "Since the end of the recession... prices rose" doesn't work, since we need present perfect tense here ("have risen") to indicate that the action continues into the present. Eliminate (B).

Notice also that there's no reason to care about the difference between "each" and "all", since those words are not subjects, and therefore do not affect the form of the verb.


I'm still not crazy about "five-year high levels", but the bigger issue here is the pronoun phrase "that of." "That" is a singular pronoun here, but it's clearly trying to refer back to the plural noun "prices." Eliminate (C).


(D) has the same verb error as we saw in (B). So we can ditch (D) as well.

This looks good! The verb, pronoun, and meaning errors are all fixed in (E), so this one is the correct answer.
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Since the end of the recently extended recession, prices for all of the major commodities sold at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, including niche agricultural goods such as orange juice and cheese, have been rising to five-year high levels.

'Recently' modifies the adjective extended. However, the text wants to convey is that the recession was the recent one and that it was an extended one. That is the reason two coordinate adjectives such as recent and extended are required.

'Five-year highs' is a correct financial jargon; 'five-year high levels' implies that there is a special level named 'five -year high level.'


A. recently extended recession, prices for all of the major commodities sold at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, including niche agricultural goods such as orange juice and cheese, have been rising to five-year high levels.--- 'recently extended' is wrong diction in the given context.

B. recently extended recession, prices for each of the major commodities sold at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, including niche agricultural goods such as orange juice and cheese, rose to five-year highs.--- 'recently extended' is wrong.

C. recent, extended recession, prices for all of the major commodities sold at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, including that of such niche agricultural goods as orange juice and cheese, have risen to five-year high level -

1. Including 'those of' should have been used rather than 'that of.'
2. five-year high level is not correct diction.

D. recent, extended recession, prices for each of the major commodities sold at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, including niche agricultural goods such as orange juice and cheese, rose to five-year highs------ Past tense 'rose' is a wrong verb when since has been used.

E. recent, extended recession, prices for each of the major commodities sold at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, including such niche agricultural goods as orange juice and cheese, have risen to five-year highs --- correct.

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Thanks, this explanation is helpful but when I read "recently extended recession" and "recent, extended recession" I don't see the difference in meaning?

bpdulog, maybe this can help:

I saw the recently extended version of the movie Gladiator.
--> there was a movie, which was recently extended by adding some archive footage or whatever. I saw that thing.

I saw the recent, extended version of the movie Gladiator.
--> there was a recent and extended version of the movie Gladiator that I saw.

Similarly, in this question,

Since the end of the recently extended recession [bla bla]
since the end of [different modifier] recession
--> there was a recession which was extended recently

Since the end of the recent, extended recession [bla bla]
core: since the end of the [modifier] recession
--> there was a recent and extended recession which came to an end...

bpdulog

Adverbs being modifiers can modify a verb or an adjective but not a noun. In this case, the adverb 'recently' cannot modify recession but only the adjective extended. On the contrary, an adjective cannot modify another adjective but it can modify only a noun. That is the reason both the adjectives 'recent' and 'extended' individually and jointly modify the recession. This is a big difference.
One may frequently encounter such usages in GMAT
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Hello GMATNinja,
Can you please explain why "recent" and "extended' are separated by a comma and not by an "and"?

No problem! If you have two adjectives describing the same noun, it's typically fine to separate those adjectives with a comma. Take a silly example: "The tired, frustrated father lashed out at his daughter, angrily informing the toddler that sea shells are not funny-looking potato chips."

For all intents and purposes, the comma plays the same role that "and" would. (In fact, the test typically offered to determine whether two adjectives can be separated by a comma is whether "and" would work just as well. Because "the tired and frustrated father" is a logical construction, "the tired, frustrated father" is fine, too.)

I hope that helps!
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Hi GMATNinja

The example that you just mentioned, shouldn’t it be tired *and* frustrated? What you just said goes against the concept of parallelism. If there is a list of 2 things, those 2 things have to be separated by a comma ie A and B.... if there are 3, we have to say ... A, B and C. That is how we know that the list is of 3 things. The comma denotes the end of a list.


Posted from my mobile device

As stated in my earlier post, there's absolutely nothing wrong with separating two adjectives with EITHER a comma or an "and." So both of these are completely fine:

• The ambitious, intelligent student achieved a 780 on the GMAT.
• The ambitious and intelligent student achieved a 780 on the GMAT.

Neither of these violate any rules of parallelism. If you see an "and", then it's true that "and" must connect two (or more) elements in the same form. But if we're just talking about a pair of parallel adjectives, there's no rule that says that we need an "and."

I hope this helps!
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The subject-verb pair in E is:

Since the end of the recent, extended recession, prices for each of the major commodities sold at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, including such niche agricultural goods as orange juice and cheese, have risen to five-year highs.
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What is the role of "recent........recession" for this sentence? Is it modifier? If yes, what types of modifier it is?

Posted from my mobile device
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That part of the sentence is:

Since (preposition) the end (noun) of (preposition) the recent, extended recession (noun) (recent and extended are both adjectives for the noun recession)

Since the end of something...

The end + (of + noun phrase) is just a bigger noun phrase.

Since something...

Another example:
Since yesterday
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Hi GMATNinja,

I went with option A and eliminated option E because I thought there was the following antecedent issue in option E:


… recent, extended recession, prices for each of the major commodities sold at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, including such niche agricultural goods as orange juice and cheese, have risen to five-year highs

I thought that prices was the main noun, the pink portion was a modifier to the main noun, and therefore the green portion was modifying prices, not commodities. That is why I thought the green portion was wrong: "the prices […], including such agricultural goods as orange juice and cheese,"

I see that we must accept that the green portion is not modifying Prices, but Commodities. How can we test for this kind of issues?
Thanks!

Choice (A) has the exact same "issue". In fact, ALL five choices do! Sure, there's a bit of ambiguity there -- maybe the "including..." phrase could modify "prices". But since all five choices have the same tiny bit of ambiguity, we don't have to worry about it! Also, in this case, it's fairly obvious that the "major commodities", not the "prices", include agricultural goods.

Unfortunately, there are no concrete rules for this sort of thing, and I certainly wouldn't immediately eliminate something just because of mild ambiguity. If you can eliminate choices that break obvious rules (i.e. subject-verb or pronoun agreement), great. Otherwise, you simply have to compare what's left and see if there are any significant meaning differences between the answer choices.

I hope that helps!
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In a bubble, there's nothing inherently wrong with "have been rising". Stripping out some modifiers and reordering choice (A), we have, "Prices have been rising since the end of the recession." This implies that the prices started to rise at the end of the recession and that the prices are still rising in the present. There's nothing wrong with that.

But "... have been rising to five-year high levels" is a bit confusing. Does that mean that prices are currently at five-year highs? Or are the prices still approaching five-year highs? And choice (A) has some other issues, as described in this post.


There is a subtle distinction between "prices for all commodities" and "prices for each of the commodities". You can argue that "each" is more appropriate because it emphasizes the fact that we are talking about individual prices for each individual commodity (instead of referring to the commodities collectively).

Luckily, as explained in this post, we don't need to worry about that distinction, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.
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GMATNinja!

I have a issue with option E.
I do agree that option E is most perfect choice but don't you think that it should be "price of each of the commodities" instead of "prices for each of the commodities".
Each commodities is referring a singular entity so I need price here.

Please help me clear this issue.

Since the end of the recently extended recession, prices for all of the major commodities sold at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, including niche agricultural goods such as orange juice and cheese, have been rising to five-year high levels.

The sentence begins with Since, the tense that follows should be have+verb. Eliminate B and D.

A. recently extended recession, prices for all of the major commodities sold at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, including niche agricultural goods such as orange juice and cheese, have been to five-year high levels. Are the prices still rising? I am not sure. The sentence does not tell me whether the prices are continuing to rise.

B. recently extended recession, prices for each of the major commodities sold at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, including niche agricultural goods such as orange juice and cheese, rose to five-year highs.

C. recent, extended recession, prices for all of the major commodities sold at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, including that of such niche agricultural goods as orange juice and cheese, have risen to five-year high levels.

D. recent, extended recession, prices for each of the major commodities sold at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, including niche agricultural goods such as orange juice and cheese, rose to five-year highs.


E. recent, extended recession, prices for each of the major commodities sold at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, including such niche agricultural goods as orange juice and cheese, have risen to five-year highs.
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As suggested in my last post, using the plural "prices" instead of "price" makes it clear that EACH of the major commodities has its OWN price (and that the commodities don't all share the SAME price). We are referring to multiple individual prices, so the plural "prices" is okay.


Yes, there is a subtle meaning difference. Again, if we go with "... have been rising to five-year high levels", does that mean that prices are currently at five-year highs? Or are the prices still approaching five-year highs?

If we use "have risen to five-year high levels", we KNOW that the prices have already hit five-year highs. The meaning is more clear if we use "have risen to", so that's another vote in favor of (E).
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Hi Gmat Ninja,

can you please tell me is it a 700+ level question?