mSKR wrote:
It is absolutely right to use 2 modifiers to the same noun
without using AND as I can learn from this question?
Do I not need to use
AND?
It is the fixed costs ..
...that stem from building nuclear plants
...that makes the electricity xx
It is fixed costs that stem from building nuclear plants
and that makes the electricity xx
or
It is fixed costs
, stem from building nuclear plants
, that makes the electricity xx
Is this concept similar to the concept explained here:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/sartre-an-in ... l#p2722237 GMATGuruNYhttps://gmatclub.com/forum/sartre-an-in ... l#p2722235 AndrewNPlease suggest
AjiteshArun AndrewN @
GMATGuruNYHello,
imSKR. I agree with
AjiteshArun in those two thorough posts to your queries above. I would like to point out that these
that clauses in question are both referring back to
fixed costs, but not in the same capacity. The first goes into the origin of the costs and relies on a prepositional phrase, never resolving the main clause in any meaningful way, while the second completes the original thought with a verb in the embedded clause,
to make, that introduces the object of the clause,
the electricity. It is a subtle issue, but the comma or
and marking the two clauses as parallel entities should
not be present. We could stack
that clauses one after another, without commas or using
and, as long as the information we were getting was subordinate to some series of nouns. Consider a rambling (non-GMAT™) sentence in which we encountered three such clauses before we popped back into the
main clause:
It is the fixed costs that stem from building nuclear power plants that are supposedly friendly to an environment that is burdened with pollution that comes mostly from human activity that make the electricity that such plants generate more expensive.Again, such a tangential sentence would not appear as an answer choice on the GMAT™, certainly not as a correct answer. The point, though, is that
that clauses can be added without
and or the use of commas in certain circumstances. In the original sentence, the first
that clause would not create a meaningful, non-dialogue-based sentence on its own, while the second would, so the two entities are not the same. To illustrate:
1)
It is the fixed costs that stem from building nuclear power plants. (Unfinished thought. Fixed costs stem from building nuclear plants? Do fixed costs not stem from building other types of power plants or anything else? Why is the emphasis on
fixed costs in particular? What are these costs
doing, or what effect do they have?)
2)
It is the fixed costs that make the electricity [more expensive]. (Complete thought with an effect.)
If we were to add a second effect in
that form, within such a clause, we would indeed use a comma or
and:
3)
It is the fixed costs that make the electricity more expensive, that eventually cause people to complain when they see their energy bills.Notice that either
that clause would complete the thought of the sentence on its own. I have already illustrated this notion with sentence 2 above, but consider the second half on its own:
4)
It is the fixed costs that eventually cause people to complain when they see their energy bills.The issue is one of meaning more than one of grammar. You can study the example of this question and its variant sentences, but I doubt you will find the same issue crop up too often, if at all, in other questions.
I hope that helps. Thank you for thinking to ask me.
- Andrew