A peculiar feature of the embryonic mammalian circulatory sy

[AJOSHI]

A peculiar feature of the embryonic mammalian circulatory system is that in the area of the heart the cells adhere to one another, beating in unison and adopting specialized orientations exclusive of one another.


(A) beating in unison and adopting

(B) they beat in unison while adopting

(C) beat in unison, and adopt

(D) beating in unison yet adopting

(E) even though they beat in unison and adopt


I arrived at the correct answer as indicated below:

A. Correct since parallelism and subject verb agreement is satisfied.

B. THEY violated parallelism.Eliminate

C. Since the subject of the sentence is talking about a peculiar feature, we cannot have 2 more feature as in beat and unison to be in parallel with ADHERE TO ONE ANOTHER.Eliminate

D. I felt there is no need to bring in contrast here so ignored it.

E.Violates parallelism

Please comment on my answer.

Thanks,
Avanish Joshi

[RonPurewal]

a couple of comments:

* you said 'the correct answer'. is (a) actually the official answer? i think (d) is the better choice, for the reasons outlined below. actually i like choice (f), my own version (see the end of this post), but (d) is the best of the choices given here.
is this a real gmatprep problem? if so, i'm surprised the writers didn't compose a correct answer closer to the one i've labeled (f) below.

--

(a)
parallelism & mechanics are ok, making this the second-best of the choices here, but this one misses the point: the cells beat in unison, but they adopt orientations exclusive of one another. these facts are diametrically opposed to one another: the first talks about cooperative action, the second about completely independent action. that's a striking contrast, one that certainly deserves a CONTRAST TRANSITION such as 'but', 'yet', 'although', etc.
not 'and'.

(b)
two ways to view the grammar here; either way it's wrong:
- poor parallelism (your interpretation)
- comma splice: you have an independent clause (i.e., something that could be a standalone sentence by itself), then a comma, then another independent clause. that's not allowed.
note that this choice would produce a perfectly good sentence if the comma were replaced with a semicolon.
also note that 'while' is an acceptable CONTRAST TRANSITION, although good transitions don't rescue a choice with bad grammar.

(c)
i see your point about the singular 'feature' referring to 3 different parallel components, but i don't think that's the issue here (one could conceive of the 3 different actions described as a single feature, if they're related closely enough). but that argument is moot, as this choice suffers from the same problem as (a): no CONTRAST TRANSITION to convey the intended meaning effectively.

(d)
all the grammatical advantages of choice (a), but with a proper CONTRAST TRANSITION. this one gets the thumbs up from me.

(e)
this isn't nonparallel, but the CONTRAST TRANSITION is in the wrong place: it's placed between 'adhere to one another' and 'beat in unison'. that's not the right contrast; the correct contrast is between the beating in unison (cooperative action) and adopting specialized orientations (individual action).

--

here's my perfect-world-pollyanna-just-right version:
(f) '...the heart cells adhere to one another, beating in unison, yet adopt specialized orientations...'

here's why i like this one better than (d):
in (d), the MODIFIER contains both 'beating in unison' and 'adopting specialized orientations'. these are separated by a proper contrast transition, but it's still awkward that they are both placed in a phrase that modifies 'adhere to one another', because only the first has anything to do with the 'together' idea.
in my version, the MODIFIER - 'beating in unison' - is restricted to the idea that actually modifies 'adhere to one another', while the proper contrast is still set up. also note the parallelism between 'adhere' and 'adopt'.
yay for write-in candidates!

[deepakdewani]

Hi Ron, I am both happy and sad to read your comments above. Happy because I was searching for the exact option f) that you mentioned above (but unfortunately, I could not find that option!). So I was on the right track.

Sad becuase the modifier (the portion of the sentence after the comma) did not make sense to me in option D (for the same reason that you provided for your option f) and therefore, I chose option C "to play it safe"!!

[deepakdewani]

Hi Ron, I am both happy and sad to read your comments above. Happy because I was searching for the exact option f) that you mentioned above (but unfortunately, I could not find that option!). So I was on the right track.

Sad becuase the modifier (the portion of the sentence after the comma) did not make sense to me in option D (for the same reason that you provided for your option f) and therefore, I chose option C "to play it safe"!!

[RonPurewal]

Hi Ron, I am both happy and sad to read your comments above. Happy because I was searching for the exact option f) that you mentioned above (but unfortunately, I could not find that option!). So I was on the right track.

Sad becuase the modifier (the portion of the sentence after the comma) did not make sense to me in option D (for the same reason that you provided for your option f) and therefore, I chose option C "to play it safe"!!

heh. yeah -- very familiar story.
the two best pieces of advice i can give here are
(1) many of the correct answers are far from perfect, so don't expect the correct answer to be too pretty -- just try to find some objective criterion (i.e., not "i like the way it sounds") by which you can decide that one of the choices is better than the other one;
(2) try your best to learn lessons from the problems -- i.e., whenever you encounter a problem like this one, try to get a GENERAL TAKEAWAY that can be applied to FUTURE problems.

good luck!

[mourinhogmat2]

A peculiar feature of the embryonic mammalian circulatory system is that in the area of the heart the cells adhere to one another, beating in unison and adopting specialized orientations exclusive of one another.


(A) beating in unison and adopting
(B) they beat in unison while adopting
(C) beat in unison, and adopt
(D) beating in unison yet adopting
(E) even though they beat in unison and adopt

Hi Guys, I took a slightly different approach to this problem. I maybe wrong, so feel free to correct me.

Looking at this problem without our grammar rules, with logical predication only. It mentions a Peculiar feature. When someone says peculiar, does it not mean that there needs to be a contrast? If the peculiar mentions two events of equal importance then there is no emphasis on the main event, which in this case is PECULIAR FEATURE.

So, I ruled out A,C, and E.

While and But show contrast so they are still in the running.

B and D have different meanings.

B says they adhere together, beat in unision while adopting orientations.
If you noticed, B actually needs an AND between adhere and beat to be parallel and for the sentence to be complete.
something like they adhere together and beat in unision while adopting orientations.

D says adhere together beating in unision yet adopting orientations. This properly emphasises the intended meaning.

[RonPurewal]

A peculiar feature of the embryonic mammalian circulatory system is that in the area of the heart the cells adhere to one another, beating in unison and adopting specialized orientations exclusive of one another.


(A) beating in unison and adopting
(B) they beat in unison while adopting
(C) beat in unison, and adopt
(D) beating in unison yet adopting
(E) even though they beat in unison and adopt

Hi Guys, I took a slightly different approach to this problem. I maybe wrong, so feel free to correct me.

Looking at this problem without our grammar rules, with logical predication only. It mentions a Peculiar feature. When someone says peculiar, does it not mean that there needs to be a contrast? If the peculiar mentions two events of equal importance then there is no emphasis on the main event, which in this case is PECULIAR FEATURE.

So, I ruled out A,C, and E.

While and But show contrast so they are still in the running.

B and D have different meanings.

B says they adhere together, beat in unision while adopting orientations.
If you noticed, B actually needs an AND between adhere and beat to be parallel and for the sentence to be complete.
something like they adhere together and beat in unision while adopting orientations.

D says adhere together beating in unision yet adopting orientations. This properly emphasises the intended meaning.

not a bad analysis.

as for choice (b), what you're basically trying to say can be neatly summed up as "choice (b) is a run-on sentence." that is indeed the primary issue with choice (b).

[abemartin87]

Hey Ron!

In the correct version of the sentence:


(A peculiar feature of the embryonic mammalian circulatory system is that {in the area of the heart (Prepositions} [[the cells adhere to one another]]), beating in unison yet adopting specialized orientations.


Can the VERB-ing "beating" modify either the entire clause

A peculiar feature ....to one another

or just a subset modifier beginning with "that"

to one another

that {in the area of the heart (Prepositions} [[the cells adhere to one another]]

I have always been taught that if the VERB-ing is in the beginning of the sentence it can modify either the subject or the entire and that if VERB-ing is on the end of the sentence it has to modify the ENTIRE clause. But it seems that VERB-ing on the end can modify "subset" modifier within the entire clause.

Am I correct?

Thank you so much!

[RonPurewal]

Hey Ron!

In the correct version of the sentence:


(A peculiar feature of the embryonic mammalian circulatory system is that {in the area of the heart (Prepositions} [[the cells adhere to one another]]), beating in unison yet adopting specialized orientations.


Can the VERB-ing "beating" modify either the entire clause

A peculiar feature ....to one another

or just a subset modifier beginning with "that"

to one another

that {in the area of the heart (Prepositions} [[the cells adhere to one another]]

I have always been taught that if the VERB-ing is in the beginning of the sentence it can modify either the subject or the entire and that if VERB-ing is on the end of the sentence it has to modify the ENTIRE clause. But it seems that VERB-ing on the end can modify "subset" modifier within the entire clause.

Am I correct?

Thank you so much!

it could potentially modify either the whole thing or the smaller cause "the cells adhere to one another"; in this case, it does the latter.
in most sentences with this kind of construction, your modifier is going to modify the smaller sub-clause, because the sentence would be extremely difficult to understand if the modifier were to be used so ambitiously as to modify a whole sentence with two or more clauses.

i wrote a post about this (on another forum) here:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/modifier-iss ... tml#391917

(it couldn't just modify "to one another", since that is not a clause / doesn't have an action.)

[nihardeep]

C fundamentally is wrong.

Here is the basic difference.

(1) I passed the exam, working hard and sleeping properly. [ A ]
(2) I passed the exam, working hard yet sleeping properly. [ D : OA]
(3) I passed the exam, worked hard and slept properly. [ C ]

see the difference in meaning between 1 and 3.

[tim]

yes there is a difference in meaning between your (1) and (3), assuming you meant to place a comma before the "and" as is required for a series in the GMAT. that doesn't make C wrong in the original. i share Ron's skepticism about this one and would encourage the other instructors to join me in avoiding further discussion of this problem until we can verify its source and verify that the problem has been transcribed correctly..