Confusion in - SC Question BANK-Q 7

[RonPurewal]

I used the following reasoning

D) Though now eaten in large quantities around the world and known to be harmless, the tomato was once considered poisonous because it is a member of the generally toxic nightshade family, which includes belladonna.

The bold part is redundant but rest all is best among others

I took D !!

I would not say that there is redundancy at all in option D.
If you see the original sentence, it says/means that tomato is harmless now. Tomato was harmless always!! Now, its known as harmless. Another thing - adding "known" in option "D" creates parallelism.

Have a look at the original sentence's initial part :

"Though now eaten in large quantities around the world and harmless,..."

"though now" is modifying "harmless".

It would be better to say that its now known as harmless. Initially it was not known as harmless or whatever.

I think I am thinking right.

thanks.

yes.

[RonPurewal]

There are few cases where I have seen "to be" kind of construction to be called redundant or passive !!

if you're considering idiomatic uses of "to be", that's on a case-by-case basis. there's no way we could list all of those here.

well, sure, a lot of passive-voice constructions use "to be". (every passive-voice construction MUST contain some tense of "to be".)
i hope you don't think that "passive = wrong". that's not even close to being true.

[ntaksatorn]

Ron, 2 questions.

1. Regarding the "Though now eaten in large quantities around the world and harmless", I understand that adding "known to be harmless" make the meaning concise.

I have a question on parallelism. "Harmless" is an adjective and " eaten in large quantities around the world " is a past participle working as an adjective right? That should mean they are already parallel with each other.

2. I do not understand why the phrase "including belladonna" is dangling in A, C, and E. What does the change to "which include belladonna" do to clarify that?

Thanks in advance

[hnewbriant]

What is the difference between "including belladonna" and "which includes belladonna" in this question? Thanks.

[StaceyKoprince]

Regarding the "Though now eaten in large quantities around the world and harmless", I understand that adding "known to be harmless" make the meaning concise.

No, actually. It makes the meaning logical; that's very different than concise. The original meaning was nonsensical.

Here's the original sentence, stripping out the other stuff:

"Though now harmless, the tomato was once thought to be poisonous."

The tomato either once actually was poisonous, or people mistakenly thought it was poisonous.

The "though now harmless" part indicates that the tomato once actually was poisonous.

The "was once thought to be poisonous" part indicates that people once mistakenly thought it was poisonous.

You can't have both of those in the same sentence; the meanings are contradictory. That needs to be fixed somehow. How? I don't know until I look at the answers, because both parts are underlined. But, however it's fixed, those two parts need to be consistent: either that the tomato was actually poisonous once but isn't now, or that people once mistakenly thought the tomato was poisonous but now they know it isn't.

[StaceyKoprince]

The "including belladonna" thing is a bit problematic, in my opinion - I don't think this is tested in an entirely GMAT-like way on this problem. I'm going to submit this issue for review.

There is actually a problem here; I just don't think the GMAT would test this in this way.

"a member of the generally toxic nightshade family, including belladonna"

Here's the problem: you've got a phrase, followed by the modifier "including b." The main noun in the phrase is "member," followed by a prepositional phrase describing that main noun.

Does "a member" include belladonna? Or does "the generally toxic nightshade family" include belladonna? Logically, it's the latter, of course. Structurally, though, we expect "including X" to refer to the main noun. We can't describe "a member" as "including belladonna" so that's no good.

We can, however, use "which includes b," because, structurally, a "which" modifier can refer either to the immediately preceding noun (family) or to the preceding main noun (member).

[jahnavi_p]

Had a few questions on this one:

A: Is there a problem of parallelism in tenses here? "Though now eaten in large quantities around the world and harmless, the tomato is a member of the generally toxic nightshade family, including belladonna, and was once thought to be poisonous itself as a result."

Do we need to have a parallelism between 'now' in first part and 'is'/'was' in second part? Confused here.

B: Is it wrong to have 'family, which includes Belladona"? Doesn't 'which' modify 'family ' here?
I agree with 'it' having no referrent and improper placing of 'and'.

C: is there any other flaw other than the additional 'and'?

D: came confusion in tenses. Experts, can you please throw some light on this?

E: What is wrong here?

Experts explanation would be highly appreciated.

Thanks.

[StaceyKoprince]

A) Possibly, yes, though the parallelism would exist between "is" and "was" - the "now" isn't required to be parallel to anything.

It's okay to have different tenses if the meaning of the sentence justifies different tenses, but it's preferable to keep things in the same tense, when possible, when you have a parallelism marker. Amy is a brunette and was born in Michigan. You can say that, although a subject before "was" would be preferable: Amy is a brunette and she was born in Michigan.

B) In "a member of the nightshade family, which includes belladonna," yes, the modifier "which includes" would modify family. That's an appropriate meaning in this case - the nightshade family does include belladonna.

C) At the moment, I find the wording of this choice problematic. Don't study this choice; I'm going to submit it for a fix.

D) see (A) above.

E) see (C) above.

[aps_asks]

Hi Instructors ,

Can it in Choice d ) refer to both tomato and belladona ?

[tim]

no. not only does belladonna show up AFTER the pronoun and inside a modifying phrase, it would be totally redundant to claim that belladonna was in the family that contained belladonna.. :)

[aps_asks]

Thanks !

[tim]

:)

[ivy]

so:
since choice (d) has a technically unambiguous pronoun, while choice (b) has a technically ambiguous pronoun (although the intended reference is clear), (d) is superior.
fortunately, the pronoun issue is not the only reason (d) is superior; that would be unreasonable, as official questions rarely hang by that thin of a thread.

step one before step two!

Hi Ron,

How come option D has technically unambiguous pronoun? Ain't 'the world' also a contender for the pronoun 'it'? Am I thinking too much? I am confused! :P

Option D:
Though now eaten in large quantities around the world and known to be harmless, the tomato was once considered poisonous because it is a member of the generally toxic nightshade family, which includes belladonna.

Thanks! :)

[ivy]

1 * sure, but it's the good kind of change in meaning: the meaning used to be absurd, but now it makes sense.
in particular, the original version said "now blah blah blah and harmless". this would indicate (illogically) that the tomato "is now harmless" - i.e., that, at some point in the past, it wasn't harmless.
"now known to be harmless", on the other hand, makes perfect sense - we once didn't know that it was harmless, but now we do know that it's harmless.

Hello Ron,

Option A:
Though now eaten in large quantities around the world and harmless,...

1. Though X and Y
or
2. Though now X and Y

Which one of the above structures should i consider? And why? If i go for structure 1, then the phrase 'Though now eaten in large quantities around the world and harmless' seems perfectly fine. It says 'Tomato is harmless'. That's it! It does not say 'Tomato is now harmless' (and once upon a time, it was not.) The option will not be considered wrong because of this phrase now. What say?

Thank you! :)

[tim]

"the world" cannot be the antecedent because it is inside a prepositional phrase. it is almost certain that a pronoun outside a prepositional phrase will not reach into a prepositional phrase for an antecedent. exceptions to this are so rare (and obvious in context) that i would consider it safe to adopt this as a general operating principle for SC problems..

Either of the structures you propose in your second post are acceptable if they make sense and are in an appropriate context..