Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest ecosystem, aidin

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,

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-

Meaning is crucial to solving this problem:
Understanding the intended meaning is key to solving this question; the intended core meaning of this sentence is that tropical bats aid in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds, pollinate banana, breadfruit, and mango trees, and indirectly help to produce tequila by pollinating agave plants.

Concepts tested here: Meaning + Parallelism + Verb Forms

• All elements in a list must be parallel.
• Semicolons and the “comma + conjunction” construction are used to link two independent clauses; commas are used to link an independent clause with a dependent one; comma cannot be used to join two independent clauses.
• The colon is used to introduce a list, a definition/explanation, or an answer/solution.
• For referring to the purpose/intent of an action, the infinitive verb form ("to + base form of verb" - "to + produce" in this sentence) is preferred over the present participle ("verb+ing" - "producing" in this sentence).

A: This answer choice fails to maintain parallelism among "aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds", "pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees", and "indirectly help to produce tequila by pollinating agave plants"; please remember, all elements in a list must be parallel.

B: Correct. This answer choice maintains parallelism among "aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds", "pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees", and "indirectly helping to produce tequila by pollinating agave plants". Further, Option B uses the construction "pollinating..indirectly helping to produce...plants", conveying the intended meaning - that tropical bats pollinate banana, breadfruit, and mango trees, and as a separate action, indirectly help to produce tequila by pollinating agave plants. Additionally, Option B avoids the grammatical construction error seen in Option C, as it does not join any independent clauses. Besides, Option B uses the infinitive verb form ("to + base form of verb" - "to + produce" in this sentence) to refer to the purpose/intent of the action "helping".

C: This answer choice fails to maintain parallelism among "aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds", "pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees", and "they indirectly help to produce tequila by pollinating agave plants"; please remember, all elements in a list must be parallel. Further, Option C incorrectly uses the "semicolon + conjunction ("and" in this case)" construction to join the independent clauses "Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest ecosystem..." and "they indirectly help to produce tequila by pollinating agave plants"; please remember, semicolons and the “comma + conjunction” construction are used to link two independent clauses.

D: This answer choice fails to maintain parallelism among "aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds", "they pollinate banana, breadfruit, and mango trees", and "indirectly help producing tequila by pollinating agave plants"; please remember, all elements in a list must be parallel. Further, Option D uses the present participle ("verb+ing" - "producing" in this sentence) to refer to the purpose of the action "help"; please remember, for referring to the purpose/intent of an action, the infinitive verb form ("to + base form of verb") is preferred over the present participle ("verb+ing" - "producing" in this sentence).

E: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase ":indirectly helping...plants"; the use of the semicolon incorrectly implies that tropical bats pollinate banana, breadfruit, and mango trees because they indirectly help to produce tequila by pollinating agave plants; the intended meaning is that tropical bats pollinate banana, breadfruit, and mango trees, and as a separate action, indirectly help to produce tequila by pollinating agave plants; please remember, the colon is used to introduce a list, a definition/explanation, or an answer/solution. Further, Option E uses the present participle ("verb+ing" - "producing" in this sentence) to refer to the purpose of the action "help"; please remember, for referring to the purpose/intent of an action, the infinitive verb form ("to + base form of verb") is preferred over the present participle ("verb+ing" - "producing" in this sentence).

Additional Note: In this sentence, semicolons, rather than commas, have been used to separate the elements of a list; for the sake of clarity, this usage of semicolons is considered acceptable if the elements of the list contain commas within them, as is the case in the phrases "aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds" and "pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees".

Hence, B is the best answer choice.

To understand the concept of "Infinitive vs Present Participles" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~2 minutes):



To understand the concept of "Punctuations" on GMAT SC, you may want to watch the following video (~9 minutes):



All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Hello Everyone!

This looks like an excellent example of a list question you would see on the GMAT exam! Let's start by taking a close look at the question, and highlight any major differences between each option in orange:

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

After a quick glance over the options, 3 major differences appear:

1. pollinating / they pollinate
2. help / helping
3 produce / producing

Instead of tacking one issue at a time, let's first take a look at the type of sentence we're dealing with - a LIST QUESTION. Whenever we see a question that deals with a list on the GMAT, it's a major hint that we're going to deal with PARALLELISM!

One of the list items is not underlined: aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds

The correct option MUST be written using parallel structure that matches the non-underlined part of the sentence. Let's see how each option holds up in terms of parallel structure:

(a) aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds; pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly help produce --> NOT PARALLEL

(b) aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds; pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly helping to produce --> PARALLEL

(c) aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds; pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and they indirectly help to produce --> NOT PARALLEL

(d) aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds; they pollinate banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly help producing --> NOT PARALLEL

(e) aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds; they pollinate banana, breadfruit, and mango trees: indirectly helping the producing of --> NOT PARALLEL

Option B is the only one that follows parallel structure by using -ing verbs to introduce each item on the list, so it is the correct choice!


Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.

Definitely a trick used by GMAC here, to test on not so known information about "semicolons"

As Manhattan says: a minor use of the semicolon is to separate items that themselves contain commas

So I think there are two things to keep in mind when it comes to semicolons:

1. Used to connect two independent clauses
2. Used to present a list that involves number of comma's to separate the items in the list

https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/Semicolons.html

Found it here

Hi sparshgs97, one application of semi-colon obviously is that it is used to connect two Independent clauses.

Consider this as another application of semi-colon: to connect various elements in a list, when each element has further sub-elements.

The correct option here is:

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 helping to produce tequila by pollinating agave plants.

Because of the use of semi-colons, there is a clear demarcation of various elements and sub-elements (within each element):

i) Element-1: aiding in the dispersal of cashew (sub-element-11), date (sub-element-12), and fig seeds (sub-element-13)
ii) Element-2: pollinating banana (sub-element-21), breadfruit (sub-element-22), and mango trees (sub-element-23)
iii) Element-3: indirectly helping to produce tequila by pollinating agave plants.

Now, in this correct option, let us see what happens if the sentence had used commas instead of semi-colons:

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 helping to produce tequila by pollinating agave plants.

Notice how confusing the above sentence is, because all we see is an almost infinite series of commas, making it extremely difficult for us to make sense of how each element and sub-element is demarcated. The use of semi-colons neatly solves this interpretation conundrum.

Another similar official question that comes to my mind:

First discovered more than 30 years ago, Lina's sunbird, a four-and-a-half-inch animal found in the Philippines and resembling a hummingbird, has shimmering metallic colors on its head; a brilliant orange patch, bordered with red tufts, in the center of its breast; and a red eye.

Again, notice a similar use of semi-colons in the above sentence.

how can we have a dependent clause after semicolon?

Semicolons can be used to give ideas the same rank

Just my 2 cents : I think semicolon is not used ONLY for separating independent clauses. The semicolon is also used to separate lists which contains many connectors. In this case, all of the lists have their own list. So basically the main function is to prevent the messiness because we have so many AND.

By the way, I really believe that we have previous discussion about this question. You can google it first to see complete discussion.

Hi aviejay, the sentence starts by stating that Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest ecosystem. Thereafter, three different ways are suggested in which Tropical bats play important roles, all three related by virtue of three parallel Participial phrases.

Hence, parallelism is crucial here.

To act as a verb, the -ing form of the verb must use an auxiliary too.
e.g. am going, is eating etc.

Here the present participle form (ing form) does not act as a verb. Only 'help' acts as a verb. The present participle forms present the list of roles: aiding, pollinating and helping. They tell you how they play the important roles.
Hence option (B) is correct.

Hi lakshya14, this post will help you.

There's an easy solution here, one that guarantees that a misconception about a certain idiom will never lead you astray. Ready? Don't use idioms as decision points unless you absolutely have to.

In this case, you could easily come up with multiple valid constructions in which "help" was paired with different prepositions.

1) Tim offered help to his wife.

2) Tim needs help in the kitchen.

3) Tim helped on Thursday.

4) Tim wants help with his kids.

5) We needed Tim's help for the Christmas party.

Every option above is valid. You probably already knew this -- not because you'd memorized every possible sentence that might involve the word "help," but because the constructions were clear and logical to you. Put another way, thinking about a sentence is a better guide than trying to recall whether there's some obscure rule forbidding a certain sequence of words.

Language is complicated. Because it would be essentially impossible to internalize every possible allowable idiom you might see, you want to either rely on other issues, or use logic to determine which construction works best in a given context.

I hope that helps!

It might be helpful to consider a simple example in which semicolons are used to separate elements in a list:

In a delicious effort to find the best jollof rice on the East Coast, Charlie visited Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New York, New York; and Baltimore, Maryland.

You can see why the semicolons are helpful here. Without them, it's difficult to tell when one city ends and the next begins, so it makes sense to be consistent and use one after both Philadelphia and New York, giving us a construction of "X; Y; and Z."

Same deal in your example. You'd want to use SEMICOLON + AND after "pollinating bananas" so that the reader can tell that this element is complete and we're moving on to the final component of the list. Otherwise, it's confusing -- you wouldn't want to use a comma to separate one element from another when all the other elements of the list all contain commas within them.

Takeaway: This is a pretty esoteric use of semicolons, and not something that appears very often on the GMAT. While you might encounter an SC problem that tests your understanding of semicolon usage, there's a very low probability that a question would come down to this kind of decision point alone. That said, there's value in seeing how the rule is shaped by logic and clarity.

Put another way, even if you don't know a given rule, you can often reason your way into it. I guess it's a good reminder that SC is less about what you know than about how to think logically under pressure.

For more on punctuation on the GMAT -- and why very little of it is worth worrying about -- check out this video.


Exactly right -- anytime you see FULL CLAUSE + COMMA + -ING, the -ING generally operates as an adverb, modifying the entire previous clause.

I hope that helps a bit!

Hey woohoo921

Thank you for your query.


The answer to your question is: No, we cannot use commas instead of semi-colons in this sentence.


Here's why:

Tropical bats play an important role in the rain forest ecosystem, aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds, pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees, and indirectly helping to produce tequila by pollinating agave plants.


In certain academic circles, this is called the use of the semi-colon as a "SUPER COMMA". According to this rule, a semi-colon is used to separate entities in a list if some or all of the entities already have one or more commas within them. In such situations, using a semi-colon to separate the entities of the super-list avoids confusion or mistaking a sub-list entity for a super-list entity.

For example:

The box contains a, b, and c; d and e; f, g, h, and i; and j and k.

The above sentence contains a list of four super entities: A, B, C, and D, where:

A = a, b, and c
B = d and e
C = f, g, h, and i
D = j and k

Notice how the use of the semi-colon also makes it easier to understand the roles of two different ranks of the word "and". The 'and' highlighted in the sentence joins the last entity of the super list "D". Whereas all the other 'ands' join members of the sub-list.


This is why, we must use a semi-colon in the given official question. There are three entities in the super list, and the first two contain commas. Hence, it's required to separate these super entities with semi-colons.

A = the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds
B = pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees
C = indirectly helping to produce tequila by pollinating agave plants

I hope this helps improve your understanding.


Happy Learning!

Abhishek

hi abhimahna,

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?

I understand how option B is correct is correct taking into consideration that semicolons can also be used when there are lists within lists or when too many commas have been used.

Now, w.r.t to this rule, can someone please explain why is option D wrong. As I see it, the second semicolon correctly joins 2 independent clauses and the 3 semicolon correctly joins two lists as there are lists within these lists inside the second clause.

Also, the meaning of the sentence doesnot change as the lists in option B describes how bats help. In option D, the first list does d same as do the lists after the 2nd semicolon.

Expecting an explanation by an expert.

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