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Dear Experts,

VeritasKarishma GMATNinja egmat mikemcgarry TommyWallach

Kindly help me with a doubt:

In this case the present participle (tapering.....) modifier and past participle (flaked.....) modifier are joined by "and".

My doubt: can two past participle modiers also be in parallel - if the sentence would have been -"Though........... finer implements, tapered from the butt to the point and flaked on two sides, to form.........man " Is this version correct ?
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Crazy hard question!

What does this even mean? I had to translate three words: flaked (not in the meaning as in snow flake), fashioned (not in the meaning Im used to, as in "go out of fashion"), and implements (not in the meaning "new thing").

Translating the clause to easy english, it would read something like:

"Neanderthals made finer tools..." - Is this correct?

Then A) doesnt make sense. They made finer tools to form the familiar teardrop?

I'd rather go with B) "They made finer tools and formed the familiar teardrop.


Happy for explanation.
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Would Choice A be still correct if we said" Neanderthals fashioned finer implements, tapered from the butt to the point and flaking on two sides, to form the familiar teardrop now paradigmatic of early man."

if we change the type of participles would the meaning be altered?
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gloomybison

In this context, "tapering" and "tapered" are quite similar. Someone tapered the implements, but the implements themselves also taper from one end to the other. They are tapering. Some words work this way, but most do not. If someone flaked the implement, that means they chipped off flakes of stone to form the current object. But "flaking" implies that flakes are currently coming off, like on a flaky croissant. That is a very different meaning. The tools have been flaked, but they are not flaking. I sanded a table, but it is not sanding. I alphabetized a list, but it is not alphabetizing.
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gloomybison
Would Choice A be still correct if we said" Neanderthals fashioned finer implements, tapered from the butt to the point and flaking on two sides, to form the familiar teardrop now paradigmatic of early man."

if we change the type of participles would the meaning be altered?

Hello gloomybison,

We hope this finds you well.

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

Replacing "tapering" with "tapered" would produce a grammatically correct and logical sentence, but it would slightly change the meaning. The use of the present participle "tapering" conveys that the implements are tapering from the butt to the point in a continuous action; the use of the past participle "tapered" would convey that the implements were tapered by someone in the past - meaning someone made them such that they narrow from the butt to the point. However, the use of the present participle "flaking" would not produce a logical sentence, as it would imply that the implements are currently and continuously "flaking", meaning bits of them are coming off in flakes.

We hope this finds you well.
All the best!
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Though Homo habilis made blunt cutting tools, Neanderthals fashioned finer implements, tapering from the butt to the point and flaked on two sides, to form the familiar teardrop now paradigmatic of early man.

(A) point and flaked on two sides, to form

(B) point, flaked on two sides, and formed

(C) point, flaking on two sides, that form

(D) point, flaking on two sides, forming

(E) point and flaked on two sides, form

I know "tapering..." and "flaked...” are modifiers, but I'm confused whether "fashioned" and "formed" are parallel? Can anyone help? Thx in advance
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Though Homo habilis made blunt cutting tools, Neanderthals fashioned finer implements, tapering from the butt to the point and flaked on two sides, to form the familiar teardrop now paradigmatic of early man.

(A) point and flaked on two sides, to form

(B) point, flaked on two sides, and formed

(C) point, flaking on two sides, that form

(D) point, flaking on two sides, forming

(E) point and flaked on two sides, form

I know "tapering..." and "flaked...” are modifiers, but I'm confused whether "fashioned" and "formed" are parallel? Can anyone help? Thx in advance

Hello Mavisdu1017,

We hope this finds you well.

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

The correct answer choice uses the phrase "to form", as the "fashion" and "form" verbs are not meant to be parallel, since they play different roles. "fashioned" is an active verb referring to the action taken by "Neanderthals". "to form" is an infinitive verb form ("to + base form of the verb") that modifies "flaked" to refer to the purpose of the action of flaking the implements on two sides.

Please remember, elements of a sentence are only supposed to be parallel if they play the same role in the sentence.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
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Mavisdu1017
Though Homo habilis made blunt cutting tools, Neanderthals fashioned finer implements, tapering from the butt to the point and flaked on two sides, to form the familiar teardrop now paradigmatic of early man.

(A) point and flaked on two sides, to form

(B) point, flaked on two sides, and formed

(C) point, flaking on two sides, that form

(D) point, flaking on two sides, forming

(E) point and flaked on two sides, form

I know "tapering..." and "flaked...” are modifiers, but I'm confused whether "fashioned" and "formed" are parallel? Can anyone help? Thx in advance

Hello Mavisdu1017,

We hope this finds you well.

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

The correct answer choice uses the phrase "to form", as the "fashion" and "form" verbs are not meant to be parallel, since they play different roles. "fashioned" is an active verb referring to the action taken by "Neanderthals". "to form" is an infinitive verb form ("to + base form of the verb") that modifies "flaked" to refer to the purpose of the action of flaking the implements on two sides.

Please remember, elements of a sentence are only supposed to be parallel if they play the same role in the sentence.

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

I thought "form" is also an action taken by Neanderthals, so I thought "form" can be parallel with "fashion", but I found I misunderstood the intended meaning after going through your explanation. Now understand, much thx expert!
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Though Homo habilis made blunt cutting tools, Neanderthals fashioned finer implements, tapering from the butt to the point and flaked on two sides, to form the familiar teardrop now paradigmatic of early man.

(A) point and flaked on two sides, to form

(B) point, flaked on two sides, and formed

(C) point, flaking on two sides, that form

(D) point, flaking on two sides, forming

(E) point and flaked on two sides, form

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/arts/design/nasher-sculpture-center-dallas-first-sculpture-review.html

It convinces most in the section devoted to hand axes. Stone Age humans, principally the species Homo erectus, would use rocks, bones or antlers to fracture larger boulders, hewing sharp tools in a laborious process known as knapping. Though Australopithecus (four million to three million years ago) made blunt cutting tools, Homo erectus (1.9 million to 100,000 years ago) fashioned finer implements, tapering from the butt to the point and flaked on two sides, to form the familiar teardrop now paradigmatic of early man. There are dozens here, and at a display by the entrance of “First Sculpture,” visitors can handle three specimens, each 7 or 8 inches long and weighing about five pounds, crafted by our fellow hominins between 200,000 and 700,000 years ago. Their satisfying heft and ergonomic shape offer an unnerving haptic trace of human life before contemporary humankind.

There’s a quick way to answer this question, probably in 20-30 seconds.
Hint is, a point cannot have any edges or sides because it’s just a point, a dot. So a point itself cannot be ‘flaking on two sides’. There must be something else that is flaking on two sides as determined by the ‘and’ in A and E.
So we can eliminate B, C and D.
E is grammatically incorrect so A it is.

Hope it helps :)
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