Written in ink or engraved by stylus, more than 2,000 letters and docu

Question

Written in ink or engraved by stylus, more than 2,000 letters and documents on wooden tablets excavated at the site of the old roman fort at Vindolanda in northern England are yielding a historical account of the military garrison in the first and second centuries that  are so vivid in their details about personal life as they are  from Pompeii

(A) are so vivid in their details about personal life as they are

(B) are as vivid in their details of personal life as those gathered

(C) is as vivid in their detail about personal life as that gathered

(D) is as vivid in its details of personal life as that gathered

(E) is so vivid in its details of personal life as is that

generis · Answer

MAnkur  , responding to your tag.

I assume: (1) that you eliminated A and B because the singular  historical account  does not match the plural verb  are , and (2) that you eliminated C because "their" does not match the singular  historical account.

Ignore the posts about  so . . . as  that mention negative constructions.
The posters may be saying something that is occasionaly true, though I cannot understand their assertions. And we have no examples that might clarify the matter.
Those posts are neither clear nor accurate.

You wrote:  "As X so Y" is the correct idiom 
No, not quite. When we compare things that are roughly equivalent (each place has a vivid historical account), we use AS ... AS.
  AS X AS Y  
Correct:  The library is as quiet as the church. 
Correct:  The historical account about England is as vivid as the historical account about Pompeii.

I don't know exactly what you mean by AS X so Y. Maybe you are thinking of  Just as X, so too Y.   Just as a car needs gas, so too does a body need fuel.  We must see the phrase "just as." 
  CORRECT: AS . . . AS 
 Wrong: AS . . . SO

So X as to Y  is correct in a different context and is used to emphasize that some intense or strong quality  has a consequence.  
 
A new question in OG 2020 tests this idiom. See OG 2020, SC # 791, which you can find  HERE

These "so" idioms are not easy to keep track of.  This post, here,  discusses idioms that use SO. 
A free Magoosh idiom book can be downloaded  HERE.  In the table of contents, look for SO (Idioms); that section includes  So X as to Y .

Finally, yet another "so" idiom, SO AS, is a clause of purpose. You will find that idiom in the linked post.

• (E) is wrong because its comparison words are not AS...AS. And what are the words "as is" doing?
(So X...as  is,  then, is also unidiomatic. In a different context we could use So X as  TO  Y -- but not   so X as is  .)

I hope that helps.

Doer01 · Answer

Hi Folks,
 *Striking through does help.

Written in ink or engraved by stylus, more than 2,000 letters and documents on  wooden tablets  excavated at the site of the old roman fort at Vindolanda in northern England  are yielding a historical account  of the military garrison in the first and second centuries  that  are so vivid in their details about personal life as they are  from Pompeii

"that" is clearly modifying historical account which is singular. So we can get rid of A & B.

(A)  are  so vivid in their details about personal life as they are

(B)  are  as vivid in their details of personal life as those gathered

(C) is as vivid in  their  detail about personal life as that gathered : their cannot be used since we are referring to a singular entity.

(D) is as vivid in its details of personal life as that gathered: Correct usage of singular verb and correct comparison as well.

(E) is  so  vivid in its details of personal life as is that : Incorrect. idiom error. as X as when comparing two entities.

Businessconquerer · Answer

Go by the veritas way
Find the subject because it is clearly a SVA question
are refers to the military garrisons
is refers to the historical account

The subject is the noun before preposition

krishsaisree · Answer

Hi,

I picked the right answer, by eliminating all the other not so great ones. But I've a question, the  that  in the end seems to refer to " historical account ". But shouldnt it refer to documents and letters gathered from Pompei? Hence, shouldnt it be those instead? A hstorical account wasnt gathered from Pompei, artefacts were, correct?

GMATNinja , could you please shed some light?

GMATNinja · Answer

Great question! I think it's fair to say that you can gather an account from a place. (And, more importantly, GMAC is okay with this line of reasoning, and they get to make the rules.)

But say you were tripped up by this logic. Once you'd decided that it must be letters and documents that were gathered from Pompei, you'd have to evaluate (A) and (B) as those are the only answer choices that contain a plural pronoun towards the end of the sentence.

But (A) and (B) both have the following construction:

"...yielding  a historical account  of the military garrison in the first and second centuries  that are ..."

There's a glaring subject/verb problem here. It should be "a historical account that  is ." That kills (A) and (B). Uh oh. Now we're forced to double back and accept that the pronoun "that" has to be referring to a singular entity, as all the remaining answer choices contain this construction! "A historical account" is the most logical candidate for the pronoun's antecedent, even if it doesn't feel ideal.

Takeaway: If you make a logical deduction when evaluating an SC question, and that deduction forces you to choose among remaining answer choices that have horrendous grammatical errors, then you know your deduction was wrong. At that point, you'll have to go back and reevaluate your thought process.

I hope that helps!

krishsaisree · Answer

Agree with you a 100%. Thank you so much. I like how you break down your answers into reasonable logical deductions. Also, let's not forget the tidbits of humour you sneak in! Thank you for your response!

Basshead · Answer

Written in ink or engraved by stylus, more than 2,000 letters and documents on wooden tablets excavated at the site of the old roman fort at Vindolanda in northern England are yielding   a historical account   of the military garrison in the first and second centuries that  are so vivid in their details about personal life as they are  from Pompeii

'a historical account' is a singular subject that requires a singular verb. Eliminate A and B.

C incorrectly uses 'their' to refer back to a singular subject.

In E, what does 'as is that from Pompeii' mean? Not clear what 'that' is referring to here.

Answer is D.

TarunKumar1234 · Answer

Written in ink or engraved by stylus, more than 2,000 letters and documents on wooden tablets excavated at the site of the old roman fort at Vindolanda in northern England are yielding a historical account of the military garrison in the first and second centuries that are so vivid in their details about personal life as they are from Pompeii

Note that the subject here is HISTORICAL ACCOUNT

(A) are so vivid in their details about personal life as they are

Subject-Verb agreement. Subject is singular, while are is plural

(B) are as vivid in their details of personal life as those gathered

Same as A

(C) is as vivid in their detail about personal life as that gathered

Again the same mistake

(D) is as vivid in its details of personal life as that gathered

(E) is so vivid in its details of personal life as is that

Please note that, although as...as construction is better, but we can't eliminate option E just based on that.

so...as construction is also grammatically correct

But... "so" is used to express extent, while "as" is used to create comparison

brianmontanaweb · Answer

The sentence can be shortened to clear up a lot of the prepositional phrases "a historical account that...  "

A and B contain "are" which is incorrect

C and E don't finish or start the idiom correctly "is as... as that"

D is the most correct

D

himanshu0123 · Answer

in choice D] 'as X as Y' how to make sure that 'X' and 'Y' are parallel in this case

Also, is 'that' used as connector or pronoun or demonstrative ?

RonTargetTestPrep · Answer

That's not how the construction works. This construction is "as   as ______", in which the blank is the  second  of the two parallel items in a comparison. The first parallel item is going to appear earlier, usually as the subject of a clause that comes before this comparison construction.
E.g.,
 The skyline of Los Angeles is not nearly as famous as that of San Francisco. 
Here the parallel items are "the skyline of Los Angeles" and "that of San Francisco". The ADJ here is "famous".

The problem in this thread is about "a historical account ... that is as vivid in its details about personal life as _____".
So, the blank has to contain   another account/story/anecdote that can be compared to THIS historical account  . The MODIFIER on which the comparison is built is "vivid in its details about personal life".

egmat · Answer

Hello himanshu0123 , Hope you are doing good.

Here are my two cents on your query. Let's begin with a very simple example to understand how parallelism works in the expression "as X as". He is as cool as a cucumber . We so often use such sentences to present comparisons, right? Let's now delve a little deeper into the structure of this sentence to understand how parallelism is working here. The simple sentence above is kind of abbreviated form of He is as cool as is a cucumber . So, in this sentence, we see a clause after and before the expression "as cool as". The two clauses are perfectly parallel. To keep things precise, we generally omit the verb "is" in the second part of the comparison. This is what is happening in the correct answer Choice D of the official sentence. The choice says: Written in ink or engraved by stylus, more than 2,000 letters and documents on wooden tablets excavated at the site of the old roman fort at Vindolanda in northern England are yielding a historical account of the military garrison in the first and second centuries that is as vivid in their detail about personal life as that gathered from Pompeii. If we focus just on the comparison part, we understand that the structure stands as follows: that (a historical account) is as vivid in their detail about personal life as (is) that (a historical account) gathered from Pompeii . So, once again, the expression "as vivid... as" is preceded and followed by a clause. The structure is perfectly parallel here. Looking at this structure, we can also say for sure that the second instance of "that" in the second part of the comparison is a pronoun that stands for the noun "a historical account". In this sentence, ellipsis is at play, a structure that is very commonly used in comparison sentences. Please read this article written by e-GMAT on how ellipsis work and how far we can go with this structure in comparison sentences. https://success.e-gmat.com/Ellipsis Hope this helps.

Please feel free to ask any follow-up queries that you may have. Happy Learning!! Shraddha

M838TE · Answer

GMATNinja   RonTargetTestPrep

In E, could the clause comparison be used correctly in the following format:
I applied to college “as did” John.
The account from Vindonxxx is vivid in its details as is the account from Pompeii.
I thought “that” is a pronoun for account in ac-E. 
Thanks!

Posted from my mobile device

egmat · Answer

Hello M838TE , Hope you are doing well. Although your query is not for me, here are my two cents.

Your example sentence is correct. We can certainly write the verb before the subject in the second part of the comparison. The version of Choice E that you presented in your post is grammatically correct. However, it does not present the comparison intended by the official sentence. Your version of the sentence says that there is a similarity between the account from Vindonxxx and the account from Pompeii. What is the similarity? They both are vivid. This is not the meaning conveyed by the official sentence. The official sentence says that the accounts from both places are EQUALLY vivid. That's why the sentence uses the expression "A is as vivid as B". This meaning is not conveyed by the version of Choice E you have presented. Hope this helps.

Let me know if you need further clarification. Thanks. Shraddha

ExpertsGlobal5 · Answer

Hello  M838TE ,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, your suggested clause would be grammatically acceptable but would still be incorrect, as it alters the meaning of the sentence, incorrectly conveying that the historical account of the military garrison is vivid in its details of personal life, and as a separate action, the historical account gathered from Pompei is also vivid in its details of personal life; the intended meaning is that the two accounts are equally vivid.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

gloomybison · Answer

Hi  GMATNinja

I got something stuck in my mind in D & E
d) historical account is as vivid as that gathered from Pompeii
e) historical account is so vivid as is that from Pompeii

Although ı am not sure whether gmat subtly favor as .. as.. over so.. as they are both legit, as far as ı know

So with that in mind, isn't it better to say "hist. acc. is so vivid as is hist. acc. from Pompeii" than to say "hist. acc. is so vivid as is hist. acc. gathered from Pompeii" because "is" is not omitted leaving no room for any confusion regardless of however much that confusion might be illogical.

also, does "hist. acc. from Pompeii" literally translates to "hist. acc. gathered from Pompeii" ?

Thank you!

egmat · Answer

Hello gloomybison , Hope you are doing well. Although your query is not for me, I would like to chime in here.

There is no question of preference between the expressions used in Choices D and E. The expression used in Choice E is not correct. The correct expression is "so X THAT Y". We understand from the context of the sentence that "so X that Y" cannot be used in this sentence. Choice D uses the correct expression, "X is as vivid as Y". Yes, "historical account from Pompeii" means "historical account gathered from Pompeii". However, this expression is not an issue in Choice E. Hope this helps.

Thanks. Shraddha

ExpertsGlobal5 · Answer

Hello  gloomybison ,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, the intended meaning here is that the historical account from Vindolanda and the historical account gathered from Pompei are equally vivid in their details of personal life; even if we consider the construction "is so vivid...as is that" idiomatic, it conveys a different meaning - that the historical account from Vindolanda is vivid in its details of personal life,  to a great but unspecified degree , and the historical account gathered from Pompei is as well; in other words, this construction conveys that both accounts were vivid in their details of personal life, but it does not convey that they were  equally  vivid.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

arbazfatmi1994 · Answer

Written in ink or engraved by stylus, more than 2,000 letters and documents on wooden tablets excavated at the site of the old roman fort at Vindolanda in northern England are yielding a historical account of the military garrison in the first and second centuries that are so vivid in their details about personal life as they are from Pompeii

Note that the subject here is  HISTORICAL ACCOUNT

(A)  are  so vivid in their details about personal life as they are

Subject-Verb agreement. Subject is singular, while are is plural
 
(B)  are  as vivid in their details of personal life as those gathered

Same as A
 
(C) is as vivid in  their  detail about personal life as that gathered

Again the same mistake 
 
 (D) is as vivid in its details of personal life as that gathered
 
(E) is  so  vivid in its details of personal life as is that

Please note that, although as...as construction is better, but we can't eliminate option E just based on that.

so...as construction is also grammatically correct

But... "so" is used to express extent, while "as" is used to create comparison

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