Too old to bear arms himself, Frederick Douglass served as a recruitin

Question

Too old to bear arms himself, Frederick Douglass served as a recruiting agent,  traveled through the North to exhort  Black men to join the Union army.

(A) traveled through the North to exhort

(B) and he traveled through the North and exhorted

(C) and traveling through the North exhorted

(D) traveling through the North and exhorted

(E) traveling through the North and exhorting

After answering the question could someone respond to my query please:

Although the OA is pretty obvious, how would you syntactically show for the aforementioned construct that "served" and "exhorted" are parallel verbs with "traveling" used as a participle for recruiting agent?

IC, participle and IC with the verb elements from both the IC's being at the "same level" of recursiveness?

dimitri92 · Accepted Answer

parallelism question ... don't let gmat confuse you with  superficial parallelism , as manhattan gmat calls it

doug served as recruiter, traveled the east and hired employees 
here each verb has equal emphasis

doug served as recruiter, traveling the east and hiring employees 
here  serve as recruiter  is the main verb ....  traveling  and  hiring  are subordinate verbs ..  doug traveled and hired while he served as recruiter

in the problem,  travel  and  exhort  are subordinate verbs

D: not parallel;  travelling .. and exhorted 
E: parallel and correct use of subordinate verb;  traveling .. and exhorting

so E it is

TommyWallach · Answer

Hey All,

For what it's worth, just wanted to lend my bit of street cred to Dimitri's explanation, which is exactly right. Working out where the list starts here is paramount, and the reason we know that it begins with "traveling" instead of "served" is because logic tells us the portion after the comma here is subordinate to the first, rather than separate actions. Well done, Dimitri!

-tommy

Detran · Answer

The way I picked between D and E was through modifiers . The present participle can modify the noun Frederick Douglass from far away while the past participle has to touch. i.e The  broken  door

TommyWallach · Answer

Hey Detran,

Sorry to butt in, but the explanation you gave isn't actually right. Participles (present or past) always have to touch what they're modifying if it's a noun, though they can be far away if it's a verb.

In this case, we have a LIST of modifiers, which is why one of them doesn't really get to touch (there are two of them), though it does touch in a more figurative, grammatical way. In other words, I could say:

The man born of a serpent and forged in the fires of hardship was my best friend.

Notice how "forged" is a past participle, but it doesn't touch "man". This is because it's part of a list of two participles ("born" and "forged"), and both of them can't touch (it would be physically impossible). This is NOT because past participles have any different rules surrounding them then present participles.

Hope that makes sense!

-tommy

daagh · Answer

The first thing is to define the primary purpose of the passage and then the secondary purpose or secondary purposes, if more than one. We can not logically assign all of them equal status. While the main purpose will take a working verb, the secondary purposes will take the participles, either present or past. At this juncture we must be alert to the fact that part participles very often take the form of simple past (as in this context, traveled is used as a verb here and should not be mistaken for a past participle.)

As such, Choice A will be a run-on without using a conjunction between the two verbs there - wrong

B equates traveled and exhorted with served. In addition the pronoun ‘he’ is redundant; ---wrong; if you mean to equate all the three functions, then you have to say “served, traveled and exhorted”

C equates exhorted with served --wrong

D Exhorted equated with served--- wrong

E, served remains primacy purpose and other incidentals are expressed with present participles—perfect combination and right answer.

joshnsit · Answer

Hi daagh THanks for responding.. I understood and agree your point upto a

point as far as primary and secondary purposes are concerned. But what I noticed was that "past participles very often take the form of simple past" does not hold good because "past participles will always take the form of simple past ", because they modify nouns in PAST. That is why they are PAST participles. Upon some research, I found from a Grammar book that it is "PAST PASSIVE VOICE" which introduces a PAST Participial phrase in a sentence. Below is an exact excerpt from the book: Do we only have –ing participles in participial phrases? In addition to the –ing present participle, the –ed past participle also occurs in participial phrases. –ed participial phrases that function as adjectives are closely related to verbs in passive voice: --> Annoyed by the students’ behavior, the teacher gave them extra work. I hope that it is the key to this problem. Please let me know if anyone of you reading this post has observed deviation from this rule. I will be interested in that.

daagh · Answer

joshnsit wrote

-- Do they always take the form of simple Past? Look at the following past participial forms. 
Eat - ate - eaten 
Eg: Eaten in the Mediterranean, tomatoes were once considered dangerous plants by Europeans

Here are some more examples of past participles in non past-tense forms. Please note that these past participles can not function as past tense verbs. There are so many more.
Arise Arose Arisen 
Shrink shrank shrunk –
Bear - bore - borne 
Begin began begun
Withdraw withdrew withdrawn 
Drink drank drunk

Point 2. —could you Pl clarify what exactly you mean by calling nouns in the past. Does a noun have a present, past or future?

Well! According to me nope; First thing is that the grammar book you have quoted does not connect past participle with past tense; it connects participle only with passive voice. Passive voice can be expressed both in present and past tense.

Should a past participle be connected only with past tense or can it be connected with present tense also? Let’s see.

Annoyed by the student behavior, the principal was angry
Annoyed by the student behavior, the principal is angry
Both the above are perfectly legal sentences. Few more examples

Targeted by aspirants of management studies in the US mainly, the GMAT is a bench mark test.
Targeted mainly for its affluence in the medieval era, India was battered by a series of raids by the Mediterranean empires.

Similarly, can a present participle using a verb+ing form be used both in present tens and past tense?’

Eg: Rising early in the morning, I go for a brisk walk every day;
 Rising early in the morning, I used to go for a brisk walk in my young days

Dropping out from the business school, the shrewd man entered software business to become one of the legends in the history of world.

Dropping out from their primary schools because of abject poverty, many wasted children in the third world countries are becoming a burden to the society

It must now clear that present participle or past participles do not refer to the tense of the sentence; they are just lexical jargons IMO. In essence, they are in fact, timeless and tenseless expressions.

daagh · Answer

The selection of a past or present participle in a given case will depend upon the context and the word involved, IMO. Certain verbs can not be used as past participle. For examples, ‘differed’ is a past participle form, but can u use it as a past participle? ‘Differed from’ or ‘differed by’ are not correct forms, in such cases, we are forced to use differing from and differing by.

Similarly, traveled does not fit in effectively as past participle. ‘Douglas served, traveled to North” is inelegant in the least. Secondly what will the infinitive ‘to exert’ modify now, traveled or served?

There are a few more verbs that I can remember as being suitable for present participle than for past participle. For example

Dive/ Dived / Dived
Dare/ dared/ dared
Have. Had /had 
Shine/ shone/ shone 
Stink/ stunk/ stunk

bhargavakumartu · Answer

Can this also be read as-
 "traveling through the North and exhorting..., FD served...."
?
Thanks
-Tulika

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09173140521 · Answer

could someone put useful link about participle "-ed" which is not using as a modifier ,such as "differed from / differing from" which we can use only second form for modifying ! 
in this question I go for "A" because of "-ed" modifier that modifying "agent" :
....."Frederick Douglass served as  a recruiting agent, traveled  through the North to exhort Black...
but do not know why "traveled"  not modify  "agent" !

I saw a similar question about "differing vs differed " 
 how we can find out a verb does or does not have past participle although it use as past verb with "-ed" form such as travel ?????

AmE verb (past tense and past participle travelled, present participle travelling British English, traveled

09173140521 · Answer

how can we find out in this question equal emphasis or not ..????? i suppose it is separate not for equal emphasis

Kritisood · Answer

Hi Tommy

is "Too old to bear arms himself," an absolute modifier? and hence only option D and E remain, making E a winner in terms of parallelism?

snehavadde · Answer

Too old to bear arms himself, Frederick Douglass served as a recruiting agent, traveled through the North to exhort Black men to join the Union army.

(A) traveled through the North to exhort --> served as a recruiting agent,  and  traveled through --> will be correct

(B) and he traveled through the North and exhorted --> he

(C) and traveling through the North exhorted --> served, travelling

(D) traveling through the North and exhorted --> same as above , also meaning is not correct

(E) traveling through the North and exhorting --> correct

CRACKGMATNUT · Answer

In option D "exhorted" is acting as a verb. A verb cannot be parallel to a modifier "travelling". In this sentence "Exhorted" will illogically become parallel to "Served" and hence distort the meaning of the sentence.

There is a clear Causal relation expressed in option "E".

There is a clear Causal relation expressed in option "E".

CRACKGMATNUT · Answer

Hi,

There are 2 categories of Verb:Regular Verb and Irregular Verb. Regular verbs have same construct in past participle and Verb form.

For eg: Love Loved(V) Loved(PP)

Whereas, Irregular verb have different construct.

For eg: Break Broke(V) Broken(PP)

We tend to get confused in regular verbs quite often. You can use this handy technique of converting the word into relative clause. If the sentence requires a linking verb to make sense, then it will be a Past participle, and if not, it will be a verb. For eg:

Roben loved playing football in summer ----->>> Roben (who) loved playing football in summer. Here no linking verb (is,was,be,am..) would make sense with "who" and hence "Loved" here will be a verb.

Contrary eg:

Roben has a football loved by everyone ----->>> Roben has a football (which is) loved by everyone. Here linking Verb (is) is required with "which" and hence "Loved" here will be a past participle.

Hope it makes sense.

nisthagupta28 · Answer

In option B,

Comma+ and - indicates an IC. Isn't it correct.
He refers to the subject of the first IC and the two verb-ed are not modifiers but verbs. 
Because we have doers.

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jim441 · Answer

In option B, the presence of comma + and indicates the starting of new independent clause and the subject of of an independent clause can refer back to the subject of previous independent clause so usage of he is justified here. So I dont think there is any error in B. Pls share your insght.

Thanks

Thanks

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

There's no major error in (B), but the connection between the actions mentioned is not made as clear as the correct version makes it. So, the correct answer is better.

Too old to bear arms himself, Frederick Douglass served as a recruitin

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Too old to bear arms himself, Frederick Douglass served as a recruitin

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