The overall slackening of growth in productivity is influenced less by

Comparing (C) and (E), we essentially have:

• (C) The overall slackening of growth in productivity is influenced... by the coming to an end of a period.
• (E) The overall slackening of growth in productivity is influenced... by the end of a period.

When we use "end of [something]", we are usually referring to a specific time or place. For example,

• We reached the end of the trail.
• Please submit your expense report by the end of the workday.
• The end of the Permian Period coincides with the end of the Paleozoic era.

On the other hand, the "coming to an end of [something]" refers, not to the end itself, but to the approach of the end.

Choice (E) refers to the actual end of the period. Choice (C) refers to the approach of the of the period. So which makes more sense?

• For one thing, the verb "is influenced" suggests that the "influencing" is an ongoing action that is happening right now. The end of a period is a specific point in time. It doesn't make as much sense to say that the end itself IS influencing the slackening.
  
• On the other hand, the "coming to an end of a period" is an ongoing action. It makes perfect sense to say that the approach of the end IS influencing the slackening.

(C) is a bit better meaning-wise as well. It's not the end itself but the approach of the end that influences the slackening.

Also, to say that growth is "rapid" is a fairly vague and subjective description. Who's to say when exactly the "rapid" growth ends? When do we go from "rapid" growth to "kinda fast" growth to "slow growth" to "no growth", etc.? If we go with choice (E), we are referring to the specific end of something that is, by nature, not so easily defined.

Choice (C) is more flexible. When exactly will that period end? Has it already ended?? It doesn't matter. The growth is slowing, and the period of rapid growth is coming to an end.

Because (C) is clearer and more logical, it's our winner.

I hope that helps!
_________________

Hello Everyone,

• The overall slackening of growth in productivity is influenced less by government regulation, although that is significant for specific industries like mining, than the coming to an end of a period of rapid growth in agricultural productivity.


This question is indeed quite confusing because three out of five answer choices are grammatically correct. But if we understand what the sentence intends to convey, then we can arrive at the correct answer. The logic of the sentence decides the grammar of the correct answer choice. So, let’s first understand the meaning conveyed by this official sentence:

Meaning Analysis:

• The overall slackening of growth in productivity is influenced

o less by government regulation,

 although that is significant for specific industries like mining,

o than the coming to an end of a period of rapid growth in agricultural productivity.

The sentence says that two factors are responsible for the decline in the growth in productivity:

a. government regulation.
b. The period of fast growth in agricultural productivity is coming to an end.

Presenting the comparison between these two factors, the sentence says that the impact of the latter is more on the decline in the growth in productivity that the former. The sentence also mentions that even if the impact of government regulation is less, it is important for certain industries such as mining.

Error Analysis:

i. The sentence uses the comparison expression less X than Y in which X and Y must be grammatically and logically parallel. From the Meaning Analysis, we know that X and Y (the two factors) are logically parallel. But they are not grammatically parallel because X = by government regulation = prepositional phrase, but Y = the coming to an end… = a noun phrase. Clearly, these two entities are not grammatically parallel.

If we add the preposition by before the coming to an end…, the error will be rectified. That is all we need to do to make this sentence correct.

Answer Choice Analysis:

(A) the coming to an end of: Incorrect: The error has been discussed above.


(B) the ending of: Incorrect: This choice repeats the error of Choice A.


(C) by the coming to an end of: Correct: This indeed is the correct answer choice. Presence of by after than makes the entities X and Y in the expression less X than Y perfectly parallel.


(D) by ending: Incorrect: This choice is grammatically correct. But it violates the intended meaning by conveying that the slackening in the growth in productivity is influenced more by ending a certain period.


(E) by the end of: Incorrect: This choice again is grammatically correct but present distorted meaning. This choice says that the slackening in the growth in productivity is influenced more by the end of a certain period. So, this choice presents the timing of the influence rather than mentioning the factor that is responsible for this influence.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
_________________

Take a simpler sentence with just the core, relevant meaning.

Growth in productivity is slackening because the period of rapid growth in agricultural productivity is ending.
or
Growth in productivity is slackening because the period of rapid growth in agricultural productivity is coming to an end.

Both are correct.

But look at option (E) plugged into our original sentence.

The overall slackening of growth in productivity is influenced by the end of a period of rapid growth.
(It implies that something happened at the end of the period. 'end of the period' implies time, not the action of ending.)

The overall slackening of growth in productivity is influenced by the ending of a period of rapid growth. (seems better but still, there is a slight confusion whether we are talking about the action of 'ending' e.g. We routinely say 'The ending of the movie was diabolical' - Here we mean the part of the movie at the end)

The overall slackening of growth in productivity is influenced by the coming to an end of a period of rapid growth.
Here, there is no confusion. The influencing factor was that the period was coming to an end.

Less X than Y.

X = by govt. regulations: by noun phrase
Y= by the end of: by noun phrase

E maintains the parallelism
E is correct.

Official Explanation

Parallelism; Diction

As worded, the sentence is not parallel: less by must be made parallel by using than by. Thus, the sentence needs to read is influenced less by . . . than by. For this reason, the first two answer choices can be ruled out.

To choose among the remaining three options, consider which of the coming to an end of, ending, and the end of best conveys the most likely intended meaning: that the overall slackening of growth in productivity is largely influenced by the fact that a period of rapid growth in agricultural productivity is coming to an end.

A. As noted above, this version is not parallel; it lacks the less by . . . than by construction.

B. This version is also not parallel; it lacks the appropriate less by . . . than by construction.

C. Correct. This version correctly uses the less by . . . than by construction. It clearly expresses the most likely intended meaning, discussed above.

D. This version sounds as if it is saying that the period of rapid growth of agricultural productivity is intentionally being ended. This deviates from the intended meaning of the sentence.

E. We can understand this choice to say that the slackening of growth in productivity is largely influenced by the final part of the period of rapid growth in agricultural productivity. This also deviates from the intended meaning.

The correct answer is C.

egmat, GMATNinja

Why is c superior over e?

Posted from my mobile device

if this if from official source, pls, show the source. if it is not, we do not discuss deeeply because, unofficial questions should be used as a practice and the deep analyse is not neccessary.

thangvietnam This is from the new Advanced Verbal OG. The questions in this set are even more likely than normal to feature awkward and wrong-seeming constructions that are needed for some hard-to-see reason or that happen to appear in the only answer that doesn't have some other grave error. This is how the GMAT likes to hide the right answers on tough questions!

In this case, as GMATNinja has covered, C actually makes more sense than E. If we are trying to identify what is influencing the slackening of growth over time, it makes more sense for this to be some ongoing process (the coming to an end of a period of growth) than by a specific moment (the end of that period).
_________________

Hi GMATNinja,
I think the line: "Choice (C) refers to the actual end of the period. Choice (E) refers to the approach of the of the period." should be the other way round. Please let me know if there is a gap in my understanding.

Thanks.

P.S. - Big fan of yours and an active participant in all the webinars that you do on YT

Dear AnthonyRitz IanStewart VeritasPrepHailey DmitryFarber GMATGuruNY AjiteshArun MartyTargetTestPrep GMATNinja,

Is "government regulation" an CONCRETE NOUN?
Is "the comING to an end of" in choice C. a COMPLEX GERUND?

IMO, "government regulation" is CONCRETE NOUN.
Since according to MGMAT, CONCRETE NOUN cannot be parallel to a COMPLEX GERUND (as picture attached below)

How can choice C. be correct?

No, "regulation" is definitely not a concrete noun. These typically refer to physical (hence, concrete) things. We lump certain abstractions in with concrete nouns, since they behave the same way grammatically. However, "regulation" is a fairly standard instance of what we're calling an "action noun," which is basically a noun that describes the process of performing a verb. Note that different verbs produce action nouns in different ways, and the GMAT will try to exploit this to make us think that perfectly parallel lists are flawed. For instance, imagine a budget that includes "production, manufacturing, recruitment, and sales." These are all action nouns, but NOT ONE is in the same form. Why? Because there's no such thing as manufaction, recruition, etc. There are of course such words as "producing, recruiting, and selling," but these aren't how we describe the general activity. In the question at hand, we can turn "regulate" into "regulation," but we can't turn come into "cometion." "Regulating" is a word, but "government regulating" isn't the form we want. (Generally, when there is a dedicated noun form using -tion, etc., we want to use that.) So we make "regulation" and "the coming together" parallel.

Here are two good official examples:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/building-on- ... l#p2037320
https://gmatclub.com/forum/new-theories ... l#p1130987
_________________

Dear DmitryFarber,


Q1. "regulation" is COUNTABLE NOUN. How can a COUNTABLE NOUN be an ACTION NOUN? (as attached below) (https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dic ... gulation_1)



Q2. Can you give me some examples regarding CONCRETE NOUNS that are ABSTRACT?

I'm not very clear of this concept

varotkorn I think what we were going for in our book is that these general kinds of nouns work the same way in the sentence. Concrete nouns really should not be abstract; they should be things that we can sense, but there can be a fine line. Since you can hear Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, or since you can experience Monday's weather, does that make them concrete? The main thing is that we don't want to mix ordinary nouns with the other listed kinds of nouns.
_________________

Dear DmitryFarber,

Last quick question sir.

Can I reject choice E. because the end of (which is CONCRETE NOUN) is not parallel to government regulation (which is ACTION NOUN)?

I'm not sure whether "end" is considered CONCRETE NOUN or ACTION NOUN because we can use "end" as a verb.

Varotkorn,

First of all, and I say this entirely with your best interests at heart, please stop making these ridiculous decisions based on nonsense like what is or isn't a concrete noun or a complex gerund. It's insane and counterproductive. The GMAT does not care about this kind of thing, and, frankly, I never make decisions on these bases (and have a 51 Verbal score to show for it). I feel like I have to look up half the stuff you ask about! (And, again, perfect verbal score...) You have been doing this for months and, in my view, are getting farther and farther away from anything like a genuine understanding of the English language, much less GMAT Sentence Correction. I urge you, for your sake, to stop going down these endless rabbit holes.

Second of all, if you must know, a concrete noun is something you can see, touch, smell, hear, and/or taste. It is physical, tangible, etc. The "end" of anything is purely an abstract concept and is not remotely a concrete noun. You cannot eliminate E for any parallelism-based reason.

You can eliminate E only because the "slackening of growth" is not caused by "the end of a period of rapid growth" -- which would still be, you know, part of a period of rapid growth. This is at best ambiguous. Instead, the "slackening of growth" is caused by the fact that the rapid growth is ending -- the "coming to an end" of that period. This unambiguously expresses that it is not the last part of the growth period that is causing this change. This is a subtle meaning distinction (95th percentile hard question, etc.), but it is a real one. Take all that neurotic attention to obscure, extraneous detail and turn it instead to what the sentence logically should mean, and you'll be better off.
_________________

To echo what Anthony says above, when I read your post, my first question was "what on earth is a 'complex gerund'?" You don't need to know about these things to do GMAT SC perfectly. And I'm fairly sure that it's easy to generate perfectly good English sentences that violate the parallelism 'rules' you quote from your book, but I don't want to expend the effort to decode the grammar jargon they're using.

The word "regulation", incidentally, can be countable or uncountable. In the sentence "Government regulation is required to protect the environment", the word is used uncountably. "There are regulations in our county that impose limits on fishing" uses the word countably (to refer to specific rules).

Great catch! Sorry for the confusing typo... it has been fixed.

And thank you for the kind words. Glad to hear that you've been enjoying the webinars!
_________________

Hi experts,

I don't believe option D has been discussed yet. Can we immediately rule out D for the parallelism violation? (i.e., an action noun ("government regulation") cannot be parallel with a simple gerund ("ending"))

The key question in (D) is what, exactly, is "ending" something.

Here's an example with a similar construction:

"Sarah solidified her status as a pogo-stick champion not through honest competition but by hiring hitmen to demolish the kneecaps of her rivals."

In this example, Sarah is the one "hiring" the hitmen.

Now look at (D) as a whole:


Here, the "slackening of growth" is the subject of the sentence. So, as (D) is written the "slackening of growth" is itself "ending a period of rapid growth." That doesn't make any sense.

Eliminate (D).

I hope that helps!
_________________