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Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest
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Updated on: 04 Aug 2018, 13:27
8
84
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A
B
C
D
E
Difficulty:
45% (medium)
Question Stats:
64% (01:08) correct 36% (01:10) wrong based on 3557 sessions
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Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest ecosystem, aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds; pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly help produce tequila by pollinating agave plants.
(a) pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly help produce (b) pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly helping to produce (c) pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and they indirectly help to produce (d) they pollinate banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly help producing (e) they pollinate banana, breadfruit, and mango trees: indirectly helping the producing of
I chose (d). I thought when semicolon is used, an independent clause should be followed after. Thus, (a), (b), (c) were excluded from the list per my thought.
I guess a semicolon can be used to list certain items to make a sentence parallel. Am I right?
Re: Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest
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01 May 2012, 10:53
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Hi All,
Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest ecosystem, aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds; pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly help produce tequila by pollinating agave plants.
(a) as it is from the above (b) pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly helping to produce (c) pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and they indirectly help to produce (d) they pollinate banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly help producing (e) they pollinate banana, breadfruit, and mango trees: indirectly helping the producing of
The confusion regarding the use of semicolon in this sentence is very valid. So far, we have seen construction in which semicolons are always followed by independent clauses. However, here we have phrases that are connected through semicolon. In fact, in this sentence semicolons have been used as comma to separate various entities in a parallel. This does not mean that semicolon will not perform the earlier function anymore.
In this sentence, we have too many commas because every entity in the parallel list has three examples. If there were commas all across the sentence, it would be little cumbersome to identify the entities in the parallel list. then Hence, use of semicolon becomes imperative here to distinguish between the examples of a particular entity and the next entity in the parallel list.
Needless to say that option B is the correct answer because this is the only choice with all parallel entities in the list – aiding…; pollinating…; and helping….
Now use of colon in choice E is not correct because after the first entity there is a semicolon and this must be maintained throughout.
Re: Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest
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28 Apr 2012, 05:28
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Hi Let me take a dig on it.
Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest ecosystem, aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds; pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly help produce tequila by pollinating agave plants.
(a) as it is from the above (b) pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly helping to produce (c) pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and they indirectly help to produce (d) they pollinate banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly help producing (e) they pollinate banana, breadfruit, and mango trees: indirectly helping the producing of
First of all gauge the meaning of the sentence. Let the meaning guide you the errors.
The sentence talks about the roles that Tropical bat plays. i.e it is a list of roles. Remember List must be parallel. Also, check the word "And" before the phrase" indirectly help produc[/u]e tequila by pollinating agave plants." This should also give you an indicator about some parallelism issue. Check for it
As per sentence,What are the roles that bat plays - aiding in the....[ing form} pollinating banana..{ing form} AND and indirectly help produce {verb} Hence the list is not parallel. Check for the options now Clearly B is the answer
Now, you said D - You thought that D is answer since semi colon introduces Independent clause. However, check for the last part of sentence, it also have semicolon(below sentence) before the bold part. But, No independent clause follows it. Hence, option D is also Incorrect. they pollinate banana, breadfruit, and mango trees;and indirectly help producing
First of all look for major errors in sentence and then go for sentence structure.
Re: Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest
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30 Apr 2012, 00:56
i was tricked by the rule semicolon separates ICs.......but this is one of those MGMAT SC rule where ";" also used to separate complex list within lists.
Re: Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest
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20 Jul 2013, 03:08
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There are two uses of semi-colon: 1) If two independent clauses are closely related, then in such a case we use semi-colon to separate the two clauses and not period. 2) If there is a list and if in that list again there are entities separated by comma, then it would be quite difficult to separate the items of list and entities. For such cases, usage of semi-colon becomes a necessity.
Apart from these two cases, there is no other usage of semi-colon. Regards,
_________________
Re: Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest
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08 Jan 2014, 11:51
uledssul wrote:
Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest ecosystem, aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds; pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly help produce tequila by pollinating agave plants.
(a) as it is from the above (b) pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly helping to produce (c) pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and they indirectly help to produce (d) they pollinate banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly help producing (e) they pollinate banana, breadfruit, and mango trees: indirectly helping the producing of
I chose (d). I thought when semicolon is used, an independent clause should be followed after. Thus, (a), (b), (c) were excluded from the list per my thought.
I guess a semicolon can be used to list certain items to make a sentence parallel. Am I right?
First of all, "colon or semi-colon" should not be the first question to ask. The first thing you should react on is parallelism: you have to use present participle. That's why the correct answer is one of A or B. So we are FORCED to use semi-colon. A is wrong because "and indirectly help" breaks the parallel structure, B upholds it by correctly using the present participle "helping". So B is correct
Re: Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest
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29 Feb 2016, 17:43
Also, I hear that GMAT does not test punctuation. Is that true? Punctuation does give good hints on the structure of a sentence. But just like wordiness, punctuation is an elimination of last resort on the GMAT.
WE: Corporate Finance (Pharmaceuticals and Biotech)
Re: Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest
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02 Mar 2016, 12:21
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vingmat001 wrote:
Also, I hear that GMAT does not test punctuation. Is that true? Punctuation does give good hints on the structure of a sentence. But just like wordiness, punctuation is an elimination of last resort on the GMAT.
Yes, I have not seen any question on GMAT that is wrong solely because of wrong punctuation. Generally there are other mistakes in a wrong choice.
Re: Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest
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02 Jul 2017, 03:20
daagh wrote:
This is pertaining to the use of semi-colon to separate lists, and the maintenance of symmetrical present participle parallelism – aiding, pollinating and helping. These two functions are neatly done in B
But doesn't the use of 'indirectly' break parallelism?
Re: Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest
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03 Jul 2017, 00:32
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ameyaprabhu wrote:
Thanks, my understanding was that if there is an adjective in one element, then all others also need adjectives
This is not mandatory in determining the parallel structures. It should not happen that you are comparing nouns with verbs or gerunds with verbs. But having adjectives in some and not in others is fine.
Can you please tell me, what is wrong with the original sentence:
Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest ecosystem, aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds; pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly help produce tequila by pollinating agave plants.
aiding --> verb pollinating --> verb help --> verb
Is it that in || ism the tense also has to be maintained?
Re: Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest
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12 Jul 2017, 23:54
ameyaprabhu wrote:
aiding --> verb pollinating --> verb help --> verb
Hi ameyaprabhu, aiding and pollinating are not verbs; they are participles (specifically present participles).
Quote:
Is it that in || ism the tense also has to be maintained?
Not at all. Different parts of the sentence can be in different tenses.
p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana has a special note on Tenses and Parallelism, along with a simple example. Have attached the corresponding section of the book, for your reference.
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64% (01:08) correct 
