The Anasazi settlements at Chaco Canyon were built on a spectacular

B.

The key to this question is to identify the what is it that 'connected by a complex regional system of roads' is trying to modify.

Surely, it can't be rooms (rooms connected by roads?), and can't be Chaco canyon or the spectacular scale. Hence, it leaves us with only one option - engineered structures, and only option B uses the modifier correctly.

Hope this makes sense!

Shivikaa04

The Anasazi settlements at Chaco Canyon were built on a spectacular scale, with more than 75 carefully engineered structures, of up to 600 rooms each, were connected by a complex regional system of roads.

A) scale, with more than 75 carefully engineered structures, of up to 600 rooms each, were - INCORRECT, as it changes the intended meaning of the sentence. As per this sentence, the Ansazi settlements were connected by complex system of roads which is incorrect as the engineered structures are ideally connected by a system of roads
B) scale, with more than 75 carefully engineered structures, of up to 600 rooms each, CORRECT , perfectly displays the intended meaning of the sentence. Also the usage of "EACH" is correct as it is referring to Engineered Structures which are ultimately connected by complex system of roads. This is what is the intended meaning of the sentence
C) scale of more than 75 carefully engineered structures of up to 600 rooms, each that had been - INCORRECT, each is modifying rooms and its not the rooms that are interconnected but the engineered structures are interconnected by complex system of roads. Building and connected both the events took place at the same time, not at different points of times hence past perfect tense had been cannot be used
D) scale of more than 75 carefully engineered structures of up to 600 rooms and with each - INCORRECT as in Option D there is no clarity on what "EACH" is referring to .
E) scale of more than 75 carefully engineered structures of up to 600 rooms, each had been INCORRECT, each is modifying rooms and its not the rooms that are interconnected but the engineered structures are interconnected by complex system of roads. Also usage of had been is incorrect. Building and connected both the events took place at the same time, not at different points of times hence past perfect tense had been cannot be used

Kindly give KUDOS if my explanation helped

is the usage 'scale of more than'....in C,D,E correct?

That part is not correct. A spectacular scale of 75 structures makes no sense, as "scale" cannot have structures. The structures portion instead helps us understand what the sentence means by "spectacular scale".

https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... t2236.html
Check out Ron's explanation:

choice a is a run-on - it tries to have two main verbs without using any sort of subordinating element. if you take out modifiers, adjectives, etc., you're left with the following: the settlements were built with structures were connected. that's bad.

choice b is correct: it uses a nonessential modifier set off by commas ('of up to 600 rooms each'), which, if eliminated, yields the intact and legitimate sentence ...carefully engineered structures, connected by... (with another nonessential modifier).

choice c:
- 'scale of' doesn't make sense
- you can't say 'each that had...' (can't follow 'each' with a relative pronoun - if you're going to use a relative pronoun, it has to come directly after the thing it's trying to modify)
- no justification for using the past perfect ('had been') - that verb, if there's a verb there at all, should be in the simple past (the same tense as everything else in the sentence, because everything described in the sentence is contemporaneous)
- it doesn't make sense to use 'each' AFTER the comma, because it's not true that each structure was connected with a road system. instead, the road system connected all of the structures with each other, which is nowhere close to the same thing. (having 'each' BEFORE the comma makes sense, because it's actually true that each of the structures comprised up to 600 rooms.)
analogy:
the USA comprises 50 states, each of which is united by a federal government --> wrong (the implication is that each state has its own federal government)
the USA comprises 50 states, all of which are united by a federal government --> correct
the USA comprises 50 states, (all) united by a federal government --> correct, whether you have 'all' or not

choice d:
- 'scale of' doesn't make sense
- the use of AND sets up ostensible parallelism, but the two structures given aren't parallel (one starts with of and the other with with)

choice e is also a run-on sentence (you'll see this if you reduce it to its 'skeleton', a la choice a)

Hello experts,
I eliminated CDE on the basis of -spectacular scale of more than 75 carefully engineered structures.

Scale is generally used for measurements or it describes the size of a structure(In this context, although there are many scales to measure- pressure, temperature etc.)

scale of more than 75 engineered structure sounds illogical to me as if someone took more than 75 different scales to show how spectacular were they.

where as in B, meaning is clear, settlements were built along with(at the same time) 75 engineered structures.

Am I right?

Hello dcoolguy,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, your reasoning is largely correct; the phrase "scale of more than 75 carefully engineered structures" does not convey a coherent meaning.

Kudos.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Is the phrase "with more than 75 carefully engineered structures" modifying the verb "built"?

Well, I suppose it could modify the verb "were built." Or perhaps the entire clause: "The Anasazi settlements were built". Or maybe it modifies the "scale"?

More importantly, do these distinctions actually affect the meaning? Not really -- the reader has the same understanding of what's going on, regardless of how we label the modifier.

Since it doesn't affect the meaning -- and since you'll never have to label that sort of thing on test day -- it's not worth worrying about in this case.

I hope that helps a bit!

Explained by RonPurewal

choice a is a run-on - it tries to have two main verbs without using any sort of subordinating element. if you take out modifiers, adjectives, etc., you're left with the following: the settlements were built with structures were connected. that's bad.

choice b is correct: it uses a nonessential modifier set off by commas ('of up to 600 rooms each'), which, if eliminated, yields the intact and legitimate sentence ...carefully engineered structures, connected by... (with another nonessential modifier).

choice c:
- 'scale of' doesn't make sense
- you can't say 'each that had...' (can't follow 'each' with a relative pronoun - if you're going to use a relative pronoun, it has to come directly after the thing it's trying to modify)
- no justification for using the past perfect ('had been') - that verb, if there's a verb there at all, should be in the simple past (the same tense as everything else in the sentence, because everything described in the sentence is contemporaneous)
- it doesn't make sense to use 'each' AFTER the comma, because it's not true that each structure was connected with a road system. instead, the road system connected all of the structures with each other, which is nowhere close to the same thing. (having 'each' BEFORE the comma makes sense, because it's actually true that each of the structures comprised up to 600 rooms.)
analogy:
the USA comprises 50 states, each of which is united by a federal government --> wrong (the implication is that each state has its own federal government)
the USA comprises 50 states, all of which are united by a federal government --> correct
the USA comprises 50 states, (all) united by a federal government --> correct, whether you have 'all' or not

choice d:
- 'scale of' doesn't make sense
- the use of AND sets up ostensible parallelism, but the two structures given aren't parallel (one starts with of and the other with with)

choice e is also a run-on sentence (you'll see this if you reduce it to its 'skeleton', a la choice a)

ExpertsGlobal CrackVerbal
please explain the answer in detail

Let’s first understand the logic of the sentence. The original sentence tells us that the Anasazi settlements had more than 75 structures and that these structures were connected by a complex system of roads.

Let’s look at the options:

The Anasazi settlements at Chaco Canyon were built on a spectacular scale, with more than 75 carefully engineered structures, of up to 600 rooms each, were connected by a complex regional system of roads.

A. scale, with more than 75 carefully engineered structures, of up to 600 rooms each, were

The non-underlined section already says, “The Anasazi settlements at Chaco Canyon were built on a spectacular scale”. Why would I need to say “were” again? Had the non-underlined section only said, “The Anasazi settlements at Chaco Canyon”, probably you could have thought of using ‘were” But in this sentence, “were” is not needed.

B. scale, with more than 75 carefully engineered structures, of up to 600 rooms each,

In this option, “of up to 600 rooms each” is extra, non-essential information about the 75 structures. “of up to 600 rooms each” tells us that each of the 75 structures had up to 600 rooms. So, the entire sentence, without the non-essential element, reads: “The Anasazi settlements at Chaco Canyon were built on a spectacular scale, with more than 75 carefully engineered structures connected by a complex regional system of roads.” When we remove the non-essential construction, we can see that the sentence tells us that the structures were connected. Looks good.

C. scale of more than 75 carefully engineered structures of up to 600 rooms, each that had been

This option seems to imply that each of the 600 rooms was connected by a complex regional system of roads. We know from the original sentence that the 75 structures were connected by a complex system of roads. This option changes the meaning of the sentence.

D. scale of more than 75 carefully engineered structures of up to 600 rooms and with each

We have a similar problem with “each”

E. scale of more than 75 carefully engineered structures of up to 600 rooms, each had been

We have a similar problem with “each”

Option B is the best option here.

Hi KarishmaB,

The Anasazi settlements at Chaco Canyon were built on a spectacular scale, with more than 75 carefully engineered structures, of up to 600 rooms each, were connected by a complex regional system of roads.

D) scale of more than 75 carefully engineered structures of up to 600 rooms and with each
Why D is incorrect?
"with each" is parallel to what before "and"?
The Anasazi settlements at Chaco Canyon were built of structures - It makes sense to say meaning-wise that "settlements have these structures" according to B and "settlements were built of these structures" doesn't make sense in D. Is my reasoning correct?

Thank you for your time

Yes, we cannot put 'and' here in (D) since we want to modify the structures. 'and' suggests equal and parallel elements which they are not.

Also, 'more than 75 carefully engineered structures of up to 600 rooms... etc' describe the scale. To give characteristics, we can use 'with.'

So 'spectacular scale, with ...' makes sense but not 'spectacular scale of...'

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