The controversy has divided the Senate, caused strains in

B is a change in meaning. The controversy has caused the strain and not the division of senate.


In the original sentence there are actually 2 parallelisms:
1. divided the Senate, caused strains in the commission, and provoked public charges
2. provoked public charges bla bla bla and private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”

Option D is creating parallelism among all these 4 items mentioned above which is incorrect

Point 1 Actually choice E should be marked as A. That is the replica of the underlined text in the prompt.

2. It should be first established as to how many things did the controversy lead to. Maybe three things logically IMO: 1. divided the Senate 2. caused strains in the commission( it is not clear what the commission stands for. Maybe it refers to the Senate, but my doubt is whether one can downgrade a Parliamentary House to a level of a commission, a commission often being an ad-hoc committee) and 3. provoked public charges and private complaints. This the setting in choice E, a perfect foil in the context, I believe.

3. However if it is argued that the controversy just divided the Senate as the core problem, relegating the straining and provoking public and private complaints as an effect of the dividing, then there is a hole in that argument. That the controversy divided the Senate causing strains in the commission is acceptable but the second part of provoking public charges and private complaints cannot certainly be part of the division of the Senate. The division is inside the House and has nothing to do with protests outside the house in the country. We cannot participle the provoking part but should only tense it separately. So, B is logically flawed.

In addition, B is also structurally flawed by using the prepositional phrase “with private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”. It is not clear what the ‘with’ stands for. One cannot provoke public a charges with private complaints. Private complaints are a separate factor and hence should be conjugated with a coordinator such as ‘and ‘ and not separated by a comma.

4. The correct way to parse the prompt is:
The controversy has divided the Senate, caused strains in the commission, and provoked (1. public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority and 2. private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”). Now, we can see that the parallelism is in perfect play.

Kudos to Dom for spotting the correct choice.

A very good question indeed. Here we have the famous -ing modifier in a couple of answer choices. Remember that -ing modifier reflect the results of the action in the previous clause or modifies the clause before it.

Here :
The controversy has divided the Senate, causing blah blah -> is incorrect. The senate is not strained as a result of the controversy rather the controversy itself did 3 things : has divided the Senate, caused strains in the commission and provoked public charges. This leaves out C and E as the contenders. Now , between C and E, E has the parallel structure. by industry officials that .....and private complaints that ....Whereas C violates parallelism. by industry officials that the banking chief..... and that private complaints that he....

C wins.

For starters, the split between 'causing' and 'caused' or 'provoking' and 'provoked' is a false split. Both can make sense. If we want to describe a cause-effect relationship, we can use 'comma + ing' construction. Another usage can be a list of events - caused, provoked etc. Blind parallelism here can be fatal.

Eliminate A for dual use of comma+ing. It is not clear what the cause is for the effect of provoking - the division of senate or strains in commission. The second clause should be separated by 'and' to make the meaning clear.

Eliminate B for the dangling modifier in the end - 'with private complaints ..'. This also violates parallelism. Note that two things are being provoked - public charges and private complainants. These two clauses should be parallel to convey the intended meaning.

Eliminate C for blind meaningless parallelism. The sentence says something provoked public charges by industry officials that private complaints that... which is non-sensical.

Eliminate D for missing 'and' before provoked.

The correct structure is divided X, caused Y, and provoked A and B.

E follows sensible parallelism and hence is the answer.

I like B better. Cause and Effect. Divide in senate --> causing strain and provoking

E is the answer
Correct Parallelism
Caused X, and provoked x and y.

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The controversy has divided the Senate, caused strains in the commission, and provoked public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority and private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”


causing strains in the commission, provoking public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority, and private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”
Not parallel to "divided"

causing strains in the commission and provoking public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority, with private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”
Same as of A.

caused strains in the commission, and provoked public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority and that private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”
"That" separates this list of actions. To make it easier to understand this portion of the sentence you can remove some of it.

and provoked public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authorityand that private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”

As you can see "that" does not belong here.

caused strains in the commission, provoked public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority and private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”
There must be an "and" before "provoked"


caused strains in the commission, and provoked public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority and private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”
Perfect

I chose E and here are my reasons:

A is definitely wrong because in a list of things.. " causing strains in the commission", "provoking public charges by industry officials that the banking" the "that" introduces a new clause making the list nonparrallel.

Kindly note the ",and" which comes between "commission" and "provoked" is very important since it demarcates that a new clause not part of the list emerges.

Hence we are left with only C and E.

In option C.. that private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.” the "that" in bold is unnecessary since it does not act as either as a connector nor as an introduction to a new subject distorting the meaning.

Hence E.

Good question, TorGmatGod. I think we can safely say that the second type of sentence would require a careful read. I am not going to say that a sentence could not be constructed in this manner. It could come down to a stylistic choice of the author. (Consider the case in which the conjunction might be omitted for a poetic purpose—He showed up to work early every day, hoping to improve his circumstances, aiming to climb one rung of the corporate ladder at a time. Yes, both modifiers would be understood to comment on the main clause. And in case you are curious, this stylistic choice has a name: asyndeton.) Nevertheless, I have yet to lay eyes on such a sentence on the GMAT™ as a correct answer to a Sentence Correction question. As such, I would not worry too much about this sort of potential sentence. If I did come across one as an answer choice, I would look to see how other options dealt with the same expression of meaning, no different from how I would look at any other SC question.

I hope you find this information and advice useful. Thank you for thinking to ask.

- Andrew

Hi krndatta,

As best as I can tell, they're looking to test meaning in those options by asking us to take a call on whether we should go for a participle or a verb.

There's a controversy. That controversy has divided the Senate. We could reasonably expect such division to cause strains in a commission, but it's the part after that that we need to look at.

1. The controversy has divided the Senate, provoking public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority...

It's unlikely that the dividing of the Senate would provoke public charges by industry officials about something related to the banking chief. Why would industry officials speak up only once the controversy divided the Senate? Instead, it's more likely that the controversy itself provoked those calls. We could use this to take both A and B out.

hi,
the correct way to read this would be..
caused strains in the commission, and provoked public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority and private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.” ..
provoked public charges.... and private complaints....

why not D? do we need 'and' before proposed?

causing strains in the commission, provoking public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority, and private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”
Incorrect - becausing causing changes the meaning. It is the controversy which caused this not division over contoversy.
Verb-ed should be used.

causing strains in the commission and provoking public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority, with private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”
Same as A

caused strains in the commission, and provoked public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority and that private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”
that before private complaints does not have any antecendent.

caused strains in the commission, provoked public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority and private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”
and before provoked is missing for parallelism.

caused strains in the commission, and provoked public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority and private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”
This is correct.

The controversy has divided the Senate, caused strains in the commission, and provoked public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority and private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”


a)causing strains in the commission, provoking public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority, and private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”

b)causing strains in the commission and provoking public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority, with private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”

c)caused strains in the commission, and provoked public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority and that private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”

d)caused strains in the commission, provoked public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority and private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”

e)caused strains in the commission, and provoked public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority and private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.”

First the controversy did x & y
so Controversy has divided---- and Provoked so divided & provoked should be Parallel
Eliminate A & B
In D provoked, after "," specifies action of Senate hence wrong. eliminate
left with C & E
Eliminate C that private complaints that he is wordy
Option E Correct

This sentence has two different lists:
The controversy has
1.divided
2.caused strains
3.and provoked
1.public charges
2. private complaints
Only E obeys this parallelism..

Here :
The controversy has divided the Senate, causing blah blah -> is incorrect. The senate is not strained as a result of the controversy rather the controversy itself did 3 things : has divided the Senate, caused strains in the commission and provoked public charges. This leaves out C and E as the contenders. Now , between C and E, E has the parallel structure. by industry officials that .....and private complaints that ....Whereas C violates parallelism. by industry officials that the banking chief..... and that private complaints that he....

C wins

How E?

caused strains in the commission, and provoked public charges by industry officials that the banking chief is overreaching his authority and private complaints that he is “reckless” and “stubborn.” The was this reads is as if the banking chief is overreaching his authority AND private complaints - how can one overreach private complaints?

Something doesn't make sense for me here and this is why I chose B).

Eager to hear some further comments.

Jay