The typical military coup fails relatively bloodlessly, amassing littl

Question

The typical military coup fails relatively bloodlessly, amassing little  support, collapsing within hours of its first public claim to power, but, having usually gotten the full attention of a country's leaders,  eventually, once an initial retaliation period ends, the ideology behind the coup makes subtle inroads in the nation's government.

(A) support, collapsing within hours of its first public claim to power, but, having usually gotten the full attention of a country's leaders,

(B) support, collapses within hours of its first public claim to power, but with the usual full attention of a country's leaders gotten,

(C) support and collapsing within hours of its first public claim to power, but it usually gets the full attention of a country's leaders, and

(D) support and collapsing within hours of its first public claim to power, but with the usual full attention of a country's leaders, and

(E) support, collapses within hours of its first making a public claim to power, but with the usual full attention of a country's leaders, and

Bunuel · Accepted Answer

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

C

This is a long, complicated sentence. The first order of business is to make sense of all the commas and short phrases. One place to start might be the modifying phrase "amassing little support, collapsing within hours. . ." Both of those things refer to the coup's failure. That means the modifier is in the right place, but since there are no other items in the list, it would be preferable to condense both into one modifier, as in choice (C): "amassing little support and collapsing within hours. . ." This makes (C) a strong possibility.

(B) and (E) use "collapses" instead of "collapsing", making it seem like "fails" and "collapses" are parallel items in the same list. If the typical military coup "fails", does it also "collapse?" Yes, but that doesn't mean "collapses" should begin a parallel list item. "Collapses" would be redundant as an item of such a list; instead, it modifies the failure by further specifying what is meant. Again, this makes (C) look better, as it includes "collapsing" in a modifier.

(A) is clumsy due to the phrase "having usually gotten". With no subject (compare to "it" in choice (C)), this sentence implies that it is "the ideology" that has gotten the attention. That isn't what the sentence means. (D)'s problem is that the comma, followed by "but", implies that what follows is a complete sentence. For comparison, (C) is a complete sentence after the" , but". (C), then, is the only correct choice.

engel · Answer

IMO C, for parallelism

amassing and collapsing - should be parallel, they occur almost at the same time

( fails ... ) ...but it usually  gets  the full attention of a country's leaders, and ... ends ...  makes ... - parallel , shows the sequence of actions aptly

seekmba · Answer

phew....it took so much time to decide on one option

I think it is C....what is the OA?

The military coup  fails  bloodlessly,  amassing  little support and  collpasing  within hours of its first public claim to power, but it  gets .....and ....... makes  inroads to government.

The typical military coup fails relatively bloodlessly, amassing little  support, collapsing within hours of its first public claim to power, but, having usually gotten the full attention of a country's leaders , eventually, once an initial retaliation period ends, the ideology behind the coup makes subtle inroads in the nation's government.

(C) support and collapsing within hours of its first public claim to power, but it usually gets the full attention of a country's leaders, and

(D) support and collapsing within hours of its first public claim to power, but with the usual full attention of a country's leaders, and - not parallel

(E) support, collapses within hours  of its first making  a public claim to power, but with the usual full attention of a country's leaders, and

izaidi · Answer

nice question ! I chose C too; however I was a bit hesitant because this sentence has two main clauses and one subordinate clause.

How many main and subordinate clauses can you join in one sentence (provided that you are using proper punctuation and conjunctions)?.

Actually I just made a new post for this question: how-many-main-and-subordinate-clauses-can-you-join-95465.html

SaraiYaseenGMAT · Answer

Let's look at clause structure here:
The original contains 2 independent clauses (each could be its own sentence):
1)The coup fails
2)once an initial retaliation period ends [dependent clause], the ideology makes subtle inroads [independent clause]

But there is no word joining the two independent clauses; there is only a comma!! On the GMAT SC you cannot join 2 independent clauses with just a comma:

Ex. Incorrect: I am hungry, I will eat.
Correct: I am hungry; I will eat. OR... I am hungry, and I will eat.
So A and B are out.

Notice that in D and E, "but with the usual full attention of a country's leaders" is a prepositional phrase-- a modifier-- that is not attached to anything it can logically describe.

Finally, C give the correct intended contrast: The coup fails... but it gets attention...

izaidi · Answer

SaraiGMAXonline could you answer this, Is there any limit to the number of clauses in a sentence?

SaraiYaseenGMAT · Answer

Hi izaidi, Technically no-- but you wouldn't string too many clauses together with "and". Ex. Correct: I eat steak, and my brother eats fish, but our parents are vegetarians. (3 independent clauses) Incorrect: I eat steak, and my brother eats fish, and my parents are vegetarians. Let me know if this is still confusing. Best, Sarai If this helped, kindly give Kudos! :wink:

ykaiim · Answer

I think you are mixing independent clauses with main clause. You can connect independent clauses with conjunctions.

izaidi · Answer

Hi ykaiim,

As from what I know, a main clause and an independent clause are synonymous terms!

Thanks

SaraiYaseenGMAT · Answer

Hi Guys,

These are important terms to clarify, so it's good that you're having this discussion!

A clause is simply a subject and verb, but there are 4 kinds:

1) Independent
2) Dependent
3) Main
4) Relative (a.k.a. Subordinate)

Ex. I eat when I am hungry.
Independent: I eat (This clause can be a sentence on its own.)
Dependent: when I am hungry (Because of the "when", this clause cannot be a sentence on its own.)

Ex. Frogs that live in trees eat flies.
Main: Frogs eat flies (The main clause is the clause on the outside.)
Relative: that (referring to frogs) live in trees (This clause starts with a relative pronoun and is the clause on the inside.)

So while a main clause (outside) is always independent, an independent clause is not necessarily a main clause. When we talk about main clauses we are referring to outside (versus inside) clauses.

Let me know if this is at all confusing...

Best,
Sarai

izaidi · Answer

Thanks for the help Sarai. But MGMAT SC Guide says that main/independent are the same. and subordinate/dependent are the same.

But otherwise i'm good. I was really looking for clarifications on how many you can string together, and you helped me with that. Thanks

SaraiYaseenGMAT · Answer

Hi izaidi, I'm glad the post helped. Regarding the terminology, while I haven't seen MGMAT's wording, it is important for students to diffentiate between relative clauses and dependent clauses because they have such different functions. Since relative clauses begin with relative pronouns, they refer to a specific word in the sentence, making the position of this clause in the sentence matter. Where they are placed in the sentence in many cases determines whether a sentence is correct. Relative clauses are also important to parallelism, as two relative clauses must start with the same relative pronoun to be parallel. Dependent clauses, on the other hand, are not relative to any word; they simply come before or after an independent clause. Anyways, this really doesn't affect you in any way, so you can ignore this digression

Best of luck!

Best, Sarai

EducationAisle · Answer

Entering pretty late on this one, but one thing to clarify, for anyone who references this in future.

The first part of the sentence, an Independent clause, is:

The typical military coup fails relatively bloodlessly , amassing little support, collapsing within hours of its first public claim to power .

Remember that  Independent clauses  can  stand  on their own, in the sense that they are complete sentences in themselves. But, is the following a complete sentence?

The typical military coup fails relatively bloodlessly, amassing little support, collapsing within hours of its first public claim to power .

Draw parallels with the following sentence:

The teacher arrived early in the classroom, surprising students, alerting the monitor .

Clearly the above is not a complete sentence. The correct construction would have been:

The teacher arrived early in the classroom, surprising students  and  alerting the monitor .

Similarly, in the question under consideration, the correct first Independent clause would be:

The typical military coup fails relatively bloodlessly, amassing little support AND collapsing within hours of its first public claim to power .

Since  and  is missing in the original sentence, it is wrong. B has the same issue.

VerbalBot · Answer

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The typical military coup fails relatively bloodlessly, amassing littl

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The typical military coup fails relatively bloodlessly, amassing littl

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