For the farmer who

[abhinavsingh.iitr]

Gprep #2

For the farmer who takes care to keep them cool, providing them with high energy feed and milking them regularly,Holstein cows are producing an average of 2275 gallons of milk each year.

A. providing them with high energy feed and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing
B. providing them with high energy feed ,and milked regularly, the Holstein cow produces
C. provided with high energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing
D. provided with high energy feed ,and milked regularly, the Holstein cow produces
E. provided with high energy feed ,and milked regularly, Holstein cows will produce

OA : E

Killed B,C and D for S-V agreement and parallelism issues..
In E how is to keep, provided and milked parallel ..

In A can we assume providing and milking is part of taking care to keep them cool ?

heh. it looks like choice (a) is an "indian trap"
seriously, not a joke.
if there is a single biggest issue in the grammar of second-language english speakers who happen to hail from india or pakistan, that issue is the drastic overuse of the "are ...ing" construction. (native speakers of english will recognize "are producing" at once as awkward.)

another problem with part (a) is the modifier. although "providing... and milking..." is a grammatically acceptable modifier, it doesn't make any sense in context, since these are not two things that farmers do WHILE or AS A CONSEQUENCE OF keeping the cows cool. (if you're going to use comma + -ing, then one of these two should hold.)
see #124 (og 12th edition) or #127 (og 11th edition), correct answer, for a sentence in which such a modifier actually does make sense.

in choice E, the parallel structures are
cool
provided with...
and
milked regularly

(i would have guessed "keep them cool, provide them with..., and milk them..."—but that isn't there, of course. and that's why we shouldn't try to "edit" the sentences.)

--

note that you also can't say "THE holstein cows", unless you're referencing a particular, specific, known group of holstein cows (something that you clearly aren't doing). since you're talking about holstein cows in general, you don't use the article "the".
this is another thing well known, totally subconsciously, to native speakers of english; it's hard-won wisdom for non-native speakers.

Ron there is a better explanation .. Sorry for the blasphemy

" provided with high energy feed ,and milked regularly, Holstein cows will produce " -- In this correct option, " provided with" and " milked regularly " are modifying cows. So, there is no awkwardness in this line. Am I correct ?

[RonPurewal]

-- In this correct option, " provided with" and " milked regularly " are modifying cows.

this ^^ is one reason why the correct answer is CORRECT. it has nothing to do with whether that answer is 'awkward' or 'ugly'.

in any case, it's essentially impossible for adult learners of a language to determine 'awkwardness' consistently. (this is true of adult learners of ALL languages, not just english.) so, there is no positive value (and plenty of danger!) in thinking about such things.

...and that's why GMAC will NEVER test writing style. to do so would bias the test heavily against anyone whose first language isn't english. in other words, it wouldn't be fair.

[MdAbuAsad]

Hi,Ron,can I understand choice A as:
For the farmers who takes care to keep them cool,,(farmers) providing them with high-energy feed----> , <-----and (farmers)milking them regularly.

The pink comma is not there, so this interpretation is impossible.
In US English, a list of three or more things MUST have a comma after the next-to-last item. I.e.,
"X, Y, and Z" is a list of three things.
"X, Y and Z" is NOT a list of three things. In most cases, it's just "X", with "Y and Z" serving as a modifier.

E.g.,
At tonight's party you'll meet Sarah, my wife and the mother of my children.
--> You're meeting 1 person. She is both of those things.
At tonight's party you'll meet Sarah, my wife, and the mother of my children.
--> You're meeting 3 people, and there will be a lot of drama at this party.

The GMAT doesn't test punctuation -- which means that punctuation won't be wrong. So you can make this distinction with 100% reliability.

I've a confusion in BOLD Sentence. 'Sarah' and 'my wife' may be different person (though I know that she is your wife but I accept in case of logic that they are two persons), but how "my wife" and " the mother of my children" can be different person? Isn't it redundency problem? I think there are two persons here.
Thanks

[RonPurewal]

but how "my wife" and " the mother of my children" can be different person?

surely you must know someone who has a stepmother.

[cyprus]

Hi Ron,

I eliminated E because the comma between the two VERBed modifiers (...provided with high-energy feed, and milked regularly...) didn't seem right to me.
All options seemed wrong but went with A despite knowing it didn't make sense.

Anyway, my question is how is the comma highlighted in red above used correctly? What sort of rule does this conform to? If there was option same as E but without this comma, I would have gone with it!

Thanks a lot

[RonPurewal]

Anyway, my question is how is the comma highlighted in red above used correctly?

nothing is highlighted in red.

[RonPurewal]

also, the correct answer has already been explained here, quite exhaustively.

have you read THE ENTIRE discussion thread?
if not, please read the thread in its entirety (or, at a minimum, all the moderators' posts) before posting. thank you.

[JacobW468]

I think you can remove the first modifier because it seems to be a prepositional phrase that modifies the rest of the whole sentence. We could write:

Provided with high energy feed, and milked regularly, Holstein cows will produce an average of 2275 gallons of milk each year (for the farmer who takes care to keep them cool).

[RonPurewal]

no. if you do that, you lose the meaning of "If xxxx is done..." or "For farmers who do xxxx....".

that's an essential part of the meaning. the sentence has to say that these things only happen IF the cows are raised in a certain way, or, equivalently, only FOR farmers who raise them a certain way.

[RonPurewal]

more generally—
DO NOT 'make your own versions' of GMAC's sentences.
really.
don't do it.

the GMAT only tests 1-2% of the things that can actually go wrong with english sentences (and even that may be an overestimate).
when random users try to 'edit' these sentences, the result is almost always inferior or incorrect—for reasons that the GMAT doesn't test.

making your own examples is good, but they should be...
...1/ your own examples,
...2/ SIMPLE examples, each illustrating only ONE concept (that is actually tested on this exam).

as far as the official problems are concerned, the given answer choices should be challenging enough already.
(:

[Crisc419]

In the correct answer future tense is used. Is it because 'will' is used for emphatic purpose?

The future tense is used to describe the future.
If you do X now, then, after some time has passed, Y will happen.

The present tense would also be reasonable here. The implication would be different: You'd be implying that the effects happen right away.

I have another quick question. How does the first modifier fit into the whole sentence (what it modifies, etc). It seems a little weird that the subject is delayed and there are three modifiers coming before it.

It's not three modifiers. It's one modifier.
Like this:
For drivers headed toward Cupertino, Saratoga, or Los Altos, today's traffic is going to be a nightmare.

The modifier is "For drivers headed toward [three places]". In your sentence, it's "For the farmer who keeps them [three ways of keeping them]".

I have read through the thread, but i cannot understand why "For the farmer who takes care to keep them cool,provided with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, " is one modifier.

"provided with high-energy feed" and "milked regularl" are parallel, and modify "Holstein cows", but they don't parallel with "takes care to keep them cool"( because"For the farmer who takes care to keep them cool"modify the sentence), so why these three parts are one modifier? could you clarify for me?

thanks very much.

Cris

[RonPurewal]

this has already been amply explained.

please read the entire discussion thread. thank you.

[NicoleT643]

Hi Ron, thank you so much for the excellent explanation in the thread, however I still have some questions

1, you mentioned parallelism of X, Y, and Z, in this question, all the answers are parallel, as you wrote
in choice E, the parallel structures are
cool
provided with...
and
milked regularly

2, because of the parallelism of XYZ, answer E, provided and milked can not be modifiers of the subject Holstein cows, am I correct?
Because if provided and milked are modifiers of the subject Holstein cows, it should be written as provided...and milked...

Thanks

[RonPurewal]

the farmers have to "keep them X, Y, and Z".

[RonPurewal]

"for the farmer who takes care to keep them X, Y, and Z" is a SINGLE modifier (which modifies the entire following sentence). the "X", "Y", and "Z" are not modifying anything that follows them.