oderebek wrote:
Dear Mike,
after reading your reply in the thread, I would like to know, whether in the choice C "which have increased five percent during the first three months of this year after had been falling" would be grammatically more correct, as the increase is occurring in a period after the period in which the profits were falling.
Thanks in advance
Dear
oderebek,
I'm happy to respond. :-)
My friend, your question indicates some confusions on a few issues. The distinction of tenses, say past vs. present perfect vs. past perfect, is a distinction among
full verbs. Full verbs and only full verb have the complete range of tenses.
In order for
the "-ing" form of a verb to function as a full verb, it would have to be accompanied by some auxiliary verb
is falling = present progressive
was falling = past progressive
has been falling = present perfect progressive
had been falling = past perfect progressive
Those are all full verbs: any of them could be the main verb of an independent clause.
When "
falling" appears by itself, without an auxiliary verb, it is NOT a full verb. It is
participle or a
gerund. There are present and past participles: present participles are alway active (e.g.
buying, selling, hearing, seeing, etc.) and past participles are passive (e.g.
bought, sold, heard, seen, etc.) The issue with tenses and participles is subtle, because the "present" participle actually can take on the tense of the main verb.
He entered town, driving well above the speed limit. (The "driving" is a past action.)
He is entering town right now, driving well above the speed limit. (The "driving" is a present action.)
I predict that he will enter town, driving well above the speed limit. (The "driving" is a future action.)
For GMAT purposes, gerunds don't have tense at all.
In this sentence, in the phrase "
after falling," the word "
after" is a preposition, and the object of a preposition has to be a noun or something acting in a noun-role. The form of a verb that acts in a noun-roll is a gerund, so "
falling" here is a gerund, an grammatical form that inherently has no tense at all.
In your question, you asked if we start with a gerund, something that has absolutely no tense, can we add auxiliary verbs to it to give it a tense. With all due respect, my friend, do you see how what you were asking is grounded in multiple misunderstandings? Among other things, you were misunderstanding one part of speech, a gerund, for an entirely different part of speech, a full verb.
Does all this make sense?
Mike :-)