sonalchhajed2019 wrote:
GMATNinja,
GMATNinjaTwo,
I understand that option B is correct but I have a very hard time eliminating Option E. The reason is that I think, +and is used to connect two independent clauses in E.
So the sentence that I read is this.
E.Yellow jackets number among the 900 or so species of the world's social wasps, living in a society that is highly cooperative, organized, and it consists of almost all females—the queen and her sterile female workers.
Below is how I understood the above sentence
Yellow jackets number among the 900 or so species of the world's social wasps, -
Main Clause that informs about the Yellow Jackets living in a society that is highly cooperative, organized, -
Modifies the Yellow Jackets it consists of almost all females—the queen and her sterile female workers. -
the 2nd independent clause.
In the above sentence, I do understand that it has no clear referent. Also, I want to understand whether it can refer to society from the modifier. Is this allowed? And would that make sense?
And so the reason I think this sentence is incorrect is that if we are connecting two independent clauses the pronoun "it" is going to refer to the subject of the first clause which in this case is Yellow Jackets. Yellow Jackets is Plural and it is singular. Also, Yellow Jackets consists of almost all the females does not work meaning wise
The Official Guide explains that sentence E has a parallelism error. But I almost missed that this sentence is testing parallelism. I approached this sentence entirely from the modifier issue. Also,
the official guide explanation that cooperative, organized, and consisting almost entirely of females modifies social wasps seems to be a bit confusing. I think these three are modifying the word society.
Also, there is a difference between Option B and Option E.
B. wasps that live in a highly cooperative and organized society consisting almost entirely of -
highly cooperative and organized are parallel to each other and consisting modifies society
E. living in a society that is highly cooperative, organized, and it consists of almost all ( Incorrect Version )
living in a society that is highly cooperative, organized, and consisting almost entirely of females
The three elements in the above sentence are parallel to each other and modify society.
Are both the above constructions correct? I feel option E is incorrect because of the pronoun issue but I am not entirely sure. Please help me with this.
egmat First, you should always take
the Official Guide's explanations with a grain (or several grains) of salt. Some are fine, but they're not written by the same folks who write the questions, and so the quality there can be a little uneven.
Here's why I'd kill (E). First, that "living" modifier is illogical. When we see "full clause + comma + -ing," the "-ing" modifier is describing the entire previous clause, or giving us info regarding the action of that clause. Take another look at how the modifier is operating in (E):
Quote:
Yellow jackets number among the 900 or so species of the world's social wasps, living in a society
How on earth is "living in a society" supposed to modify the verb "number?" The wasps don't live in a society as a result of being among the 900 species of social wasps. Instead, "living" should describe the wasps
themselves, as they're the ones in the society! So first, we've got an illogical modifier.
Also, while the use of two independent clauses here is grammatically correct, it creates an odd meaning. Consider an example:
Tim likes to go the gym, and he likes to lift 12-ounce weights.
Here, because I'm offering two independent clauses, it sounds as though the actions don't necessarily have a logical relationship to each other. Put another way, this sentence creates the impression that Tim might do one activity at the gym, and then he lifts weights someplace else.
That isn't wrong, necessarily. But if I wanted to convey that Tim lifts weights
at the gym, I'd use a modifier instead of two independent clauses:
Tim likes to go to the gym, where he likes to lift weights.
Because (E) uses two independent clauses, it sounds as though the second clause, "it consists of all females," is unrelated to the first. But that doesn't really make sense, as the composition of the society is part of how it's organized. In other words, the clauses seem like they should have been logically related, rather than independent. Again: not wrong, but not ideal either.
Contrast this with (B), in which we get the modifier "consisting almost entirely of females" to describe the society, giving us that logical causal connection we lack in (E).
Taken together, (B) is clearly better.
I hope that helps!
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