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605-655 (Medium)|   Grammatical/Rhetorical Construction|   Parallelism|   Subject Verb Agreement|                                 
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The first trenches that were cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar 29 Jun 2023, 11:37
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tsraeroshad
I understand that E might be the best among the lot.
But I can't come terms with how this is correct:

".....simultaneously with but also independently...."

Can someone help me with this. Also could you show any other example where such a construction is used.
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The correct answer choice uses

simultaneously with but independently of

All the best,

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The first trenches that were cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar 01 Jul 2023, 09:04
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tsraeroshad
I understand that E might be the best among the lot.

But I can't come terms with how this is correct:

".....simultaneously with but also independently...."

Can someone help me with this. Also could you show any other example where such a construction is used.
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We attempted to address the parallelism in an earlier post: https://gmatclub.com/forum/the-first-tr ... l#p2946556 - check it out, and let us know if you still have questions!
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The first trenches that were cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar 22 Oct 2023, 14:45
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Quote:
The first trenches that were cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar, Syria, have yielded strong evidence for centrally administered complex societies in northern regions of the Middle East that were arising simultaneously with but independently of the more celebrated city-states of southern Mesopotamia, in what is now southern Iraq.


(A) that were cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar, Syria, have yielded strong evidence for centrally administered complex societies in northern regions of the Middle East that were arising simultaneously with but

(B) that were cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar, Syria, yields strong evidence that centrally administered complex societies in northern regions of the Middle East were arising simultaneously with but also

(C) having been cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar, Syria, have yielded strong evidence that centrally administered complex societies in northern regions of the Middle East were arising simultaneously but

(D) cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar, Syria, yields strong evidence of centrally administered complex societies in northern regions of the Middle East arising simultaneously but also

(E) cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar, Syria, have yielded strong evidence that centrally administered complex societies in northern regions of the Middle East arose simultaneously with but

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We, normally, can't omit the that when that refers to the subject of the clause. So, how did we omit that in choice E?
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The first trenches that were cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar 31 Oct 2023, 23:33
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I'll copy my response to the same question from the MPrep forums:

There aren't a lot of rules about what we can't omit, partly because that would imply that we always use a certain word, such as "that," to create modifiers. It's true that if we said "The first trenches were cut," then "were" would be the main verb. Since we want that part to be a modifier, we'd need to say "The first trenches THAT were cut."

However, it is quite common to use participles (past tense forms of verbs) to create modifiers. In this case, we don't need THAT to introduce them:

The plan proposed by the mayor was surprising.
Artifacts found at the site include arrow heads and carvings.

Notice that in both the cases above, the first "verb" we see is really just a modifier. "Proposed by the mayor" modifies "plan" and "found at the site" modifies "artifacts. Similarly, in the original sentence, "cut into a site" modifies "trenches." We COULD choose to introduce any of these modifiers with "that were/was," but we don't have to, and normally the GMAT won't.
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The first trenches that were cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar 30 Nov 2025, 09:08
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