In addition to her work on the miocene homicide fossil

[poonamchiK]

Dear all,
sorry to bring up an old old thread!

What i wanted to ask was -
A - 'contributed to archeology WITH her discovery of' ?

Is contributed ... With the correct form of idiom or we rather use
'contributed ... by' form.

thx a ton.
P

[RonPurewal]

Dear all,
sorry to bring up an old old thread!

What i wanted to ask was -
A - 'contributed to archeology WITH her discovery of' ?

Is contributed ... With the correct form of idiom or we rather use
'contributed ... by' form.

thx a ton.
P

"contributed ... by" would only be appropriate in this context if it were followed by verb-ING.
e.g., "she contributed to archaeology by discovering..."

i think the use of "with" is a bit awkward in that choice, but i would reserve any formal judgment until we see a more definitive official answer on that issue.

[llzzyy234]

"In addition to her work on the Miocene hominid fossil record, ..."
"In addition to" is followed by "her work". Should the subject of the main clause be "her work" or can also be "Mary Leakey"?

Please see these two sentence:
1. In addition to her work on the Miocene hominid fossil record, Mary Leakey contributed to archaeology through her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and through her painstaking documentation of East African cave paintings.

2. In addition to her work on the Miocene hominid fossil record, Mary Leakey's contributions to archaeology include her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstaking documentation of East African cave paintings.

Do these two sentence both right?

I think that if "In addition to her work on the Miocene hominid fossil record" is replaced by, "Having done the work on the Miocene hominid fossil record", the subject of the main clause must be "Mary Leakey". Is it right?

[tim]

I must be missing the point of your first question. It seems to me the main subject cannot be "her work", but "Mary Leakey" is just fine..

Both of your example sentences look correct to me. Your final example looks okay too..

[davetzulin]

Dear all,
sorry to bring up an old old thread!

What i wanted to ask was -
A - 'contributed to archeology WITH her discovery of' ?

Is contributed ... With the correct form of idiom or we rather use
'contributed ... by' form.

thx a ton.
P

"contributed ... by" would only be appropriate in this context if it were followed by verb-ING.
e.g., "she contributed to archaeology by discovering..."

i think the use of "with" is a bit awkward in that choice, but i would reserve any formal judgment until we see a more definitive official answer on that issue.

Ron,

Does Stacey's explanation still stand?

C is parallel but does not use the right idiom. We can say she was a contributor to archaelogy via or due to her discovery of (etc) but not that she was a contributer with (etc). A, B, and E both break parallelism.

on another note, the fact that C and D hinge on this one idiomatic worries me. i'm already having a lot of problems committing all the idioms in the guide to memory, and now i notice there some (like this one) that aren't even in it.

any suggestions for this? i know the new gmat is not supposed to test idioms specifically, but i keep dreading i'll miss a question because i don't know an idiom!

[RonPurewal]

any suggestions for this? i know the new gmat is not supposed to test idioms specifically, but i keep dreading i'll miss a question because i don't know an idiom!

if idioms are tested on the new exam, they will almost certainly be tested in a larger context. that larger context will usually be either (a) parallelism or (b) the general meaning of the sentence.

much more importantly, this is primarily a test of prioritizing. as long as you are 100% cool with the major topics on the exam -- parallelism, agreement, modifiers, and general meaning -- the effect of minor topics such as random idioms will be negligible.

[supratim7]

in the correct answer, you have three absolutely parallel items:
her work ...
her discovery ...
her painstaking documentation ...

all three of these are nouns. all three are preceded by the possessive "her". there is absolutely no question that they exhibit better parallelism than the version you've suggested (although yours does improve somewhat on the given answer choice).

your version has another problem, which you hadn't probably considered: the two items should ALSO be parallel to the item at the BEGINNING of the sentence (i.e., "her work...", following "in addition to"). the context dictates that all three of these items are parallel - they have equal priority and are mentioned in exactly the same context - so you have to make ALL of them parallel.
this means that you have trouble if the latter two (the ones in the underline) start with "by", since the first one (outside the underline) doesn't.

C is parallel but does not use the right idiom. We can say she was a contributor to archaelogy via or due to her discovery of (etc) but not that she was a contributer with (etc). A, B, and E both break parallelism.

Here's a version, keeping in mind the points mentioned by Ron and Stacey. Is it fine??

"In addition to her work on the Miocene homicide fossil record, Mary Leakey contributed to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and her painstaking documentation of East African paintings."

in any case, you're making this a lot harder for yourself than it needs to be. remember, your job is not to CREATE the most parallel structure, from scratch; rather, your job is simply to CHOOSE which OPTION is the most parallel.

it should be clear that her work + her discovery + her documentation is more parallel than her work + by her discovery + by her painstakingly documenting.
very clear.
as long as you can make that judgment, your work here is done. DO NOT TRY TO CREATE YOUR OWN "IDEAL" VERSIONS OF SENTENCES; JUST STICK TO EVALUATING WHAT IS IN FRONT OF YOU.
i'm a writer and editor myself, so i am tempted to do this all the time. but it's only the choices laid out in front of you that matter.

this is good news, though: it's much easier to select which of 2-5 choices is better/best than to design an optimal choice from scratch.

Totally agree with you Ron. Don't mean any disrespect/disregard. Just trying to get a better grip on the topic.

Many thanks | Supratim

[tim]

The example you've given is also parallel, but there are only two things parallel in this case. Let us know if I've overlooked any other questions in your post..

[supratim7]

Here's a version, keeping in mind the points mentioned by Ron and Stacey. Is it fine??

"In addition to her work on the Miocene homicide fossil record, Mary Leakey contributed to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and her painstaking documentation of East African paintings."

Do you mean "her work on the Miocene ..., her discovery of the earliest ..., her painstaking documentation ..." all 3 aren't parallel?

If yes, could you pls explain why so..

[vibhav.varshney]

Guys, I read in the previous posts that 'Her' in this case does not need an antecedent. Request you to please elaborate on this point. Is there any general rule for such usage?

Thanks!

[krishnan.anju1987]

In addition to her work
Here her is a possessive pronoun for work and thus not need an antecedent. E.g. I like her hair.

On the other hand. Sonia is standing there. Go ahead and talk to her. has her as the subject and hence should have an antecedent.

I think this is how it works.

[vibhav.varshney]

krishnan.anju1987 thanks for your reply. So is this a rule one can take down or does this have any exceptions.

If i get the rule right: Possessive pronouns as the object does not need an antecedent ?

[krishnan.anju1987]

Yes, IMO that looks about right. Possessive nouns can have antecedent but need not necessarily have one.

[jlucero]

In the real world, you can get away with this:

I like her hair. (as you point to someone)
Mary looks great. Her hair is beautiful. (her refers to someone in a previous sentence)

But even these possessive pronouns clearly refer to someone. The difference on the GMAT is that you only have one sentence to correct per problem and there's no one pointing at anyone. So on the GMAT every possessive pronoun needs to clearly refer to a noun in that sentence.

[krishnan.anju1987]

Hi,

Sorry if I made it a bit confusing. I meant it need not have a noun before in the sentence. It can also have a noun that it refers to somewhere later in the sentence.