With California expected to see severe electricity shortfalls and perh

Question

With California expected to see severe electricity shortfalls and perhaps blackouts on as many as 30 days this summer, the administration has grown increasingly concerned about  public health and safety there.

(A) With California expected to see severe electricity shortfalls and perhaps blackouts on as many as 30 days this summer, the administration has grown increasingly concerned about

(B) With California expecting to see severe electricity shortfalls this summer, and there will possibly be blackouts for as much as 30 days, the administration's concern has grown increasingly about

(C) As California is expected to be seeing severe electricity shortfalls and perhaps blackouts on as much as 30 days this summer, the administration's concern is increasing for

(D) Insofar as California is expected to see severe electricity shortfalls this summer, and there will possibly be blackouts as many as 30 days, the administration has increasing concern about

(E) Insofar as California expects to see severe electricity shortfalls and the possibility of blackouts for 30 days this summer, the administration has grown increasingly concerned about

Insofar as California expects to see severe electricity shortfalls and the possibility of blackouts for as much as 30 days this summer, the administration has grown increasingly concerned about

2/2/1 split..
I was thinking that the use of ''grown & increasingly'' is redundant....crossed A out ...and marked D.
Looks like the usage of idiom ''insofar as'' is not correct in D ?

johng2016 · Answer

Hi  paidlukkha , my mistake, I've edited the question.

Regarding B, the structure "the construction (preposition) + NOUN + VERBing" is WRONG, unless the preposition refers directly to the NOUN
you can refer explanation of Ron here : https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/forums/post26678.html#p26678 
Additional: in this case you can think "expecting...." is a V-ing modifier to "California", but I think the preposition refers to the action, not the NOUN

Another point, if "With California expecting..." is the short of "With California which expects....", this is impossible as California cannot expect anything itself, it's not human being to expect anything.

Besides, "the administration's concern has grown increasingly", I think this subject not make sense, a concern cannot increase about something, the subject must be "The administration", not the concern.

B. With California expecting to see severe electricity shortfalls this summer, and there will possibly be blackouts for as much as 30 days, the administration's concern has grown increasingly about

Abhishek009 · Answer

IMHO (A) for the hihglighted errors in the options ...

Poorvasha · Answer

Hi mikemcgarry , Though I understand why A is correct, I would require a bit of your help here. 1. I wanted to understand the difference between the usage of expected in A vs expecting and B. 2. Also, is "to be seeing" as mentioned in C idiomatic ? Thanks in advance

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear Poorvasha , I'm happy to respond.

First of all, the " to be seeing " in (C) is train wreck wrong. This is very specifically a trap for all the non-native speakers who do not understand the difference between the present and the present progressive. We use the progressive tenses when we want to emphasis that the action is in the process of taking place: we are emphasizing the action as an ongoing activity. The " seeing " will happen, but we are not concerned with the actual performance of this activity. The progressive tense is utterly useless in this context. The construction in (A) is a some rare and extremely sophisticated construction. The construction in (B) is a typical mistake pattern. See: with + + on GMAT Sentence Correction Does all this make sense? Mike

Avinash_R1 · Answer

can some one explain how is parallelism maintained in A?

With california expected to see severe electricity shortfalls  and   perhaps blackouts on as many as 30 days this summer.

perhaps is an adverb, is it used as adverbial modifier such as   ?

thanks.

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear Avinash_R1 , I'm happy to respond.

First of all, my friend, I am going to say that you need to gain more experience reading. Your question is precisely the sort of question asked by someone who has learned a lot of individual technical rules but who has less experience with reading in context. Context is everything in language! It is absolutely impossible to arrive at GMAT SC mastery by learning some chimerical "complete" collection of rules. To perform at a high level on GMAT SC, you have to develop the "feel" of the language and, for a non-native speaker, this comes only from cultivating a rigorous habit of reading. See: How to Improve Your GMAT Verbal Score The parallelism here is 100% correct. The infinitive verb " see " has two parallel direct objects, " severe electricity shortfalls " and " blackouts ," but it has a slightly different relationship to these two direct objects. The sentence conveys with certainty that, yes, the folks in California will " severe electricity shortfalls ;" by contrast, we don't know for sure whether California will see " blackouts ." The sentence very elegantly denotes this by putting this adverb, " perhaps ," in front of the second direct object blackouts ." This adverb, of course, reaches back and modifies the verb "to see"--unlike noun modifiers, adverbs and verb modifiers are not under the jurisdiction of the Modifier Touch Rule . The verb has a relationship with two direct objects in parallel, and the adverb modifies one of those two relationships. This is perfectly correct. Non-native students, especially those who excel in math, are likely to fall into certain misunderstandings about parallelism. The most common of these is that parallelism requires some kind of precise mathematical equivalence between the two element, and that any deviation from strict equality is a violation of parallelism. That is a completely disastrous misunderstanding of the nature of parallelism. Fundamentally, parallelism is NOT a grammatical structure. Instead, parallelism is a logical structure, and the purpose of matching grammar is to support and elucidate the logic. All kinds of quite different looking elements can be in parallel. Again, it's hard to spell out the limits of parallelism in explicit rules: some of it necessarily involves a "feel" for the language, which, again, one acquires through a rigorous habit of reading. Does all this make sense? Mike

Avinash_R1 · Answer

thanks mike. i have understood it now.

can 
WITH be followed by a clause as it is in this statement?

egmat · Answer

Hello Avinash_R1 , I will be glad to answer this one for you.

Please note that with is a preposition and is ALWAYS followed by a noun or a noun phrase. It is never followed by a clause. In this official sentence also, with is NOT followed by a clause. See, a Subject-Verb (SV) pair makes a clause. However, there is no SV pair immediately after the preposition with as we can see in the following structure: With California expected to see severe electricity shortfalls and perhaps blackouts on as many as 30 days this summer, the administration has grown increasingly concerned about public health and safety there. With is followed by the noun California that is followed by the verb-ed (noun) modifier expected to see severe electricity shortfalls and perhaps blackouts on as many as 30 days this summer . There is no SV pair in the structure immediately following with . Hence, with is NOT followed by a clause in the original sentence. Hope this helps.

Thanks. Shraddha

Avinash_R1 · Answer

Thanks very much. I have a confusion in understanding whether verb-ed is acting as verb or modifier in an sentence. 
If i want to check it, can i do this -> if i think its a verb, check who / what performs the action. if i am not finding answer to it, it is more likely to be a noun modifier
in this example if i assume expected to be a verb and ask who expected? it points to california, california can not expect anything.  
is my approach right?

egmat · Answer

Hello Avinash_R1 , Yes, your approach is correct. Well done.

You can also review our very popular article named ED FORMS - Verbs or Modifiers on the same topic for more details and examples by clicking on the following link: https://gmatclub.com/forum/ed-forms-verbs-or-modifiers-134691.html Hope this helps.

Thanks. Shraddha

ng.phg.mai · Answer

Hi  RonPurewal  , answer A has with + clause, is it OK? I thought that usage of with is unacceptable?

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear ng.phg.mai , Although I'm not the genius Mr. Ron Purewal, I'm happy to respond.

This is a blog articles that provides some context on this subtle rule: with + + on GMAT Sentence Correction If you understand the two cases discussed in that article, you see that this particular question is a little different, primarily because the participle used is not the present active participle (e.g. " expecting ") but the past passive participle (" expected "). When we have the structure "with" + + , there's the possibility that this could fall into Case I in that article, action by a different actor, and that always requires a full bonafide subordinate clause . Instead, when we have "with" + + , especially with a "mental verb" such as " to expect ," there's not really an action happening. It's more a background condition, and this is much closer to Case II described in that article. With Mike going to the store to buy tomatoes , Chris planned to make a salad. That has the present participle, which is always active. This describes a full action by an actor, different from the action & actor of the main clause. This is the forbidden case. If you want to talk about an action, don't try to cram that into a measly preposition phrase--a full action deserves a full verb, and therefore we need a full clause for this action. With California expected to see severe electricity shortfalls and perhaps blackouts on as many as 30 days this summer , the administration has grown . . . This has the past participle, which is always passive. There's not really an "action" being done in the first part of the sentence--it's more a background condition, a static state of affairs which provides context for the action of the main clause. There's no sense of a "competition" between two different actions, as there is in the previous example. My friend, if you think about grammar and grammar rules purely mechanically, the GMAT SC will punish you. You always have to think about meaning . The primary purpose of human language is to convey meaning, and all grammar exists purely to support the communication of meaning. Does all this make sense? Mike

RonPurewal · Answer

^^ Nope, not a whole clause.

The issue here is that you're mistakenly processing "expected" — which is a modifier here — as a verb.

As is so often the case,   you MUST establish the INTENDED MEANING of the sentence BEFORE trying to process its grammar!  
This sentence is NOT saying that "California expected to see" something. In other words, the sentence is not intended to say that California itself had "expectations"; that interpretation would be nonsense, since the state of California itself does not have a single sentient mind.
Rather, the intended meaning is that  California WAS expected to see something . "Expected" is therefore a modifier here.

RonPurewal · Answer

Analogy:

With California  driven  to the brink of bankruptcy by its overly generous government spending, ...

This ^^ could be the beginning of another sentence, with grammar analogous to that of the sentence here.
Note that " driven ..." is a  MODIFIER . If this were a past-tense verb, it would be "drove".

Do you see the problem?
You're processing   THIS   sentence under the (mistaken) assumption that "expected" is grammatically analogous to "drove" (a past-tense verb), when in fact it's analogous to "driven" (a modifier).
You just have to be more careful here, because the past-tense verb and the modifier forms of "expected" are written the same way; they don't have two distinct forms, like "drove" and "driven".

ashmit99 · Answer

MartyTargetTestPrep

Hi Marty, I got confused with option A. Isn't 'Time' uncountable? So how do we use 'many' for time? I always get confused with this. Can you please explain?

A person had less than 30 days. 
A person had fewer than 30 days.

How do we know which one's correct?

Thank you in advance!

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

You have to consider what's being said to determine whether days represent uncountable time or countable days.

In this case, the focus of the sentence is not on an amount of time. It's on the number of days on which there will be blackouts.

Think about it.

The point to be expressed is not that there will be blackouts for a certain amount of time.

The point is that they are worried about how many blackouts there will be.

For instance, maybe there will be a blackout on June 22, one on July15, and one on August 1. In that case, there will be a blackout on each of three, countable, days.

Crytiocanalyst · Answer

(A) With California expected to see severe electricity shortfalls and perhaps blackouts on as many as 30 days this summer, the administration has grown increasingly concerned about
The meaning is perfect and the usage therefore let us hang on to it

(B) With California expecting to see severe electricity shortfalls this summer, and there will possibly be blackouts for as much as 30 days, the administration's concern has grown increasingly about 
concernand as much as isn't the right usage therefore out

(C) As California is expected to be seeing severe electricity shortfalls and perhaps blackouts on as much as 30 days this summer, the administration's concern is increasing for 
Similar reasoning as B

(D) Insofar as California is expected to see severe electricity shortfalls this summer, and there will possibly be blackouts as many as 30 days, the administration has increasing concern about 
as many as isn't the right usage coupled with increasing concern

(E) Insofar as California expects to see severe electricity shortfalls and the possibility of blackouts for 30 days this summer, the administration has grown increasingly concerned about 
for 30 days isn't the right usage

Therefore IMO A

Anshul1223333 · Answer

Hi,

may I please ask you to clear a second confusion on below sentence, please!

1. With California expected to see severe electricity shortfalls and perhaps blackouts on as many as 30 days, the administration shows concerns

Q1 [does ed verbals also tell us about the tense. From ed verbal, should we expect an event which already started in past and hence ''administration has shown concern'' will be more correct her

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

An -ed modifier does not indicate that the event occurred in the past. In fact, an -ed modifier could be used in a sentence about any timeframe.

So, the answer to your question is that the use of the -ed modifier does not make the present perfect a better tense to use.

Raman109 · Answer

With California expected to see severe electricity shortfalls and perhaps blackouts on as many as 30 days this summer, the administration has grown increasingly concerned about  public health and safety there.

Option elimination - 
Basics first - ed and ING verbals are not verbs. We need the helping verb for them to qualify as verbs.

(A) With California expected to see severe electricity shortfalls and perhaps blackouts on as many as 30 days this summer, the administration has grown increasingly concerned about - "With California expected to see" two things - electricity shortfalls (noun) and blackouts (noun). A prepositional phrase introduced by "wish" (it is adverbial) correctly modifies the subject (the administration) and the verb (has grown)...ok

(B) With California expecting to see severe electricity shortfalls this summer, and there will possibly be blackouts for as much as 30 days, the administration's concern has grown increasingly about - On one side of "and" we have a prepositional phrase, and on the other side, we have a clause. Not parallel. Also, "mush" for countable is wrong. Moreover, it is not the concern that has grown; the intended meaning is that the administration has grown increasingly concerned...

(C) As California is expected to be seeing severe electricity shortfalls and perhaps blackouts on as much as 30 days this summer, the administration's concern is increasing for - same issue of "much" and "concern."

(D) Insofar as California is expected to see severe electricity shortfalls this summer, and there will possibly be blackouts as many as 30 days, the administration has increasing concern about - blackouts as many as? Better is blackouts on as many as. Will and possibly? Not the right mix. We have the helping verb "has," but where is the verb?

(E) Insofar as California expects to see severe electricity shortfalls and the possibility of blackouts for 30 days this summer, the administration has grown increasingly concerned about - are we saying California expects to see electricity shortfalls (noun) and the possibility (noun) - doesn't make sense. Moreover, for 30 days means consecutive 30 days - that is not the intended meaning. Also, insofar as means - the extent or degree to which something is true or applicable. E.g., I will support your decision insofar as it aligns with our company's principles. So, in a way, the sentence means that the administration has grown increasingly concerned....to an extent, California expects to see electricity shortfalls and the possibility of blackouts....- not the intended meaning, which is the cause and effect. As in A, "with" introduces the cause, and we have the effect after the comma.

With California expected to see severe electricity shortfalls and perh

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With California expected to see severe electricity shortfalls and perh

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