rajgurinder
Salt deposits and moisture threaten to destroy the Mohenjo-Daro excavation in Pakistan, the site of an ancient civilization that flourished at the same time as the civilizations in the Nile delta and the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates.
(A) that flourished at the same time as the civilizations
(B) that had flourished at the same time as had the civilizations
(C) that flourished at the same time those had
(D) flourishing at the same time as those did
(E) flourishing at the same time as those were
Hi
I am confused at the application of ellipsis over here.
Though I am not able to justify with any grammatical rule, I constantly feel the correct answer should have been:-
that flourished at the same time as DID the civilizations
I perceive this sentence as if the "time" is being compared to "civilization"
Dear
rajgurinder,
I'm happy to respond.
This, of course, is SC #89 in the OG13. You may find this blog helpful:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/dropping-c ... -the-gmat/One of the hardest things about parallelism is what one can legitimately omit in the second branch, and figuring this out from sentence in which the omission has already happened.
Choice
(A) gives perfectly correct parallelism. Part of what's confusing about this sentence is that the words "the site" is an appositive phrase, and the whole rest of the sentence modifies this phrase. For clarity, let's talk about the comparison directly, in its own sentence. The long way to say it would be:
The ancient Mohenjo-Daro civilization flourished at the same time that the civilizations in the Nile delta and the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates flourished.
That version is perfectly grammatically correct, but because it's long and wordy, it never would be correct on the GMAT. A shorter and perfectly correct way to say this is:
The ancient Mohenjo-Daro civilization flourished at the same time as the the civilizations in the Nile delta and the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates flourishedThat is, in essence, the same structure as the OA above. Including the word "did" as you suggest would also be correct, only a little longer --- that's perfectly acceptable, but not necessary to make the sentence correct.
Think about it this way. Think about where the word "
same" appears. It appears inside a prepositional phrase, "
at the same time" ---- this prepositional phrase is an adverbial phrase, that is, a verb-modifier. See:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-gramm ... d-clauses/This suggests that the comparison is not between "time" and something else, but rather, that the comparison is between two verbs, both modified in the same way by the modifying phrase. For example:
A did X at the same time that B did Y.
If the two do the same action, it's redundant to say:
A did X at the same time that B did Xand much better to say
A did X at the same time as B.
The predicate, "
did X", is the same, so it is dropped, and the comparison, the "
same time", refers to the time of those two identical predicates.
Does all this make sense?
Mike
_________________
Mike McGarry
Magoosh Test PrepEducation is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. — William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)
25%
(medium)
28%
(01:37)
wrong 
One of the mysteries_5.pdf [20.92 KiB]
