This century began with war brewing in Europe, the industrial revoluti

Question

This century began with  war brewing in Europe, the industrial revolution well-established, and a nascent communication age.

(A) war brewing in Europe, the industrial revolution well-established, and a nascent communication age.

(B) war brewing in Europe, the industrial revolution surging, and a nascent communication age.

(C) war in Europe, the industrial revolution well-established, and a nascent communication age.

(D) war brewing in Europe, the industrial revolution well-established, and the communication age beginning.

(E) war brewing in Europe, the industrial revolution well-established, and saw the birth of the communication age.

Source:   Nova GMAT  
Difficulty Level:   750

tvrs09 · Accepted Answer

Hi,

This question is about the parallelism.

The parallel structure ""noun+adjective" has to be maintained across.

war brewing - noun+adjective
industrial revolution well-established - noun+adjective
communication age beginning - noun+adjective

Only option D does this.

Cheers!!

Marina · Answer

Here is OE:

The answer is (D).
Choice (A) is incorrect. Although the first two phrases, war brewing in Europe and the industrial revolution well-established, have different structures, the thoughts are parallel. However, the third phrase, and a nascent communication age, is not parallel to the first two.
Choice (B) does not make the third phrase parallel to the first two.
Choice (C) changes the meaning of the sentence: the new formulation states that war already existed in Europe while the original sentence states that war was only developing.
Choice (D) offers three phrases in parallel form.
Choice (E) is not parallel since the first two phrases in the series are noun phrases, but saw the birth of the communication age is a verb phrase. When a word introduces a series, each element
of the series must agree with the introductory word. You can test the correctness of a phrase in a series by dropping the other phrases and checking whether the remaining phrase agrees with the introductory word. In this series, each phrase must be the object of the preposition with:
This century began with war brewing in Europe
This century began with the industrial revolution well-established
This century began with saw the birth of the communication age
In this form, it is clear the verb saw cannot be the object of the preposition with.

Konstantin1983 · Answer

Tough question. D it is.

A) first two elements not parallel to the last one
B)The same as A)
C)Changes the meaning
D) Correct
E) Changes the meaning

TheNightKing · Answer

GMATNinja , can you help? I chose C. (Not based on sound, tried everything I could think of in Parallelism and -ing modifier). Thank you!

kushtayal · Answer

How does C change the meaning?
In E, i can totally understand the meaning is getting altered by the last phrase.

Purvidebuka · Answer

Hi Experts,

I have numerous doubts here in this questions. Can you please help?

1. 'War brewing' in option D appeared a verb to me. How do I identify a noun in such instances.

2. How do you differentiate noun from verb in such instances ?

3. Why is option C incorrect ? Aren't all the three elements Nouns ?

071999 · Answer

The question is about parallellism.

We can find out the sequence of parrallellism as Noun+adjective.
War brewing= Noun+Adjective.

Moreover, we can also find out the parallel structure by
War brewing in europe, Industrial revolution well-established in europe, and the communication age beginning in europe.

Hope this helps!

ExpertsGlobal5 · Answer

Hello  Purvidebuka ,

We hope this finds you well.

Having gone through the question and your query, we believe we can resolve your doubts.

1. The phrase "war brewing" is a noun phrase because, here, "brewing" is not an active verb; it is a present participle ("verb+ing") that serves as a noun modifier.

2. When the "verb+ing" form directly follows a noun without any helping words such as "is" or "have been", we know that it is a present participle acting as a noun modifier.

3. Option C is incorrect because the phrase "war in Europe" alters the meaning of the sentence through the omission of the word "brewing"; "war brewing in Europe" means that war was getting ready to start in Europe, but it had not done so yet; "war in Europe" implies that the war had already begun in Europe.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

VerbalBot · Answer

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This century began with war brewing in Europe, the industrial revoluti

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