meteors , sands and peebles

[abhasjha]

Meteor showers and individual streaks of light that flash across the sky every night are generated when tiny flecks of celestial detritus, often no larger than grains of sand or of pebbles, burn up speeding through the atmosphere.

A. grains of sand or of pebbles, burn up speeding

B. grains of sand or pebbles, burn up while speeding

C. grains of sand or pebbles, which burn up while speeding

D. a grain of sand or pebble, which burns up as it speeds

E. a grain of sand or a pebble, burns up when it speeds

[subbiah.an]

I think answer is D. Since the shower happends every night, it should be simple present. So either choice D or E. Compared with D and E, D is better as which in E modifies pebbles. Hence D.
Please correct me, if I am wrong.

Thanks!

Meteor showers and individual streaks of light that flash across the sky every night are generated when tiny flecks of celestial detritus, often no larger than grains of sand or of pebbles, burn up speeding through the atmosphere.

A. grains of sand or of pebbles, burn up speeding

B. grains of sand or pebbles, burn up while speeding

C. grains of sand or pebbles, which burn up while speeding

D. a grain of sand or pebble, which burns up as it speeds

E. a grain of sand or a pebble, burns up when it speeds

[sunny.jain]

IMO : B

.....when tiny flecks of celestial detritus, often no larger than grains of sand or of pebbles, burn up speeding through the atmosphere.

Modifier : "often no larger than grains of sand or of pebbles"

there is a parallelism here,

grains or pebbles

so option A and D are out.

NEXT :

tiny flecks of celestial detritus,....., burn up speeding through the atmosphere

Its flecks, which burn up while speeding through the atmosphere.

so E is out, it using burns : Subject is not agree with verb.

Out of B and C, the difference is only 'Which',
which can be ambiguously refer to pebble, detritus or flecks.

so better go without 'which', hence i choose B.

[abhasjha]

IMO : B

.....when tiny flecks of celestial detritus, often no larger than grains of sand or of pebbles, burn up speeding through the atmosphere.

Modifier : "often no larger than grains of sand or of pebbles"

there is a parallelism here,

grains or pebbles

so option A and D are out.

NEXT :

tiny flecks of celestial detritus,....., burn up speeding through the atmosphere

Its flecks, which burn up while speeding through the atmosphere.

so E is out, it using burns : Subject is not agree with verb.

Out of B and C, the difference is only 'Which',
which can be ambiguously refer to pebble, detritus or flecks.

so better go without 'which', hence i choose B.

Sunny why not A -
grains of sand or of pebbles, burn up speeding


-of sand ..... or of peebles .... are these structure not parallel ....

B states - grains of sand .... or peebles ..... here prepostion of is missing ..... how come it then B maintains parallelism .....

[sunny.jain]

Hmm...

Can we say : grain of pebbles ??

we can not..!

grains are actually tiny sand particles and pebbles is somewhat a smaller version of stones.

so comparison here is by size..

often larger than grains or pebbles...

now whose grains : sand's grains.
What is the OA ?
Sometime all the simple logic goes wrong with SC?

[abhasjha]

OA - B

Thanks a lot for clearing my doubt .

[RonPurewal]

Meteor showers and individual streaks of light that flash across the sky every night are generated when tiny flecks of celestial detritus, often no larger than grains of sand or of pebbles, burn up speeding through the atmosphere.

A. grains of sand or of pebbles, burn up speeding

B. grains of sand or pebbles, burn up while speeding

C. grains of sand or pebbles, which burn up while speeding

D. a grain of sand or pebble, which burns up as it speeds

E. a grain of sand or a pebble, burns up when it speeds

"flecks of ... detritus" is plural, so the COMPARISON, in order to be properly parallel, should involve another plural noun. (this should be especially clear here, since there's a singular/plural split in the other half of the comparison.)

you should compare "flecks of ... detritus" with the plural "grains of...", not with the singular "a grain of..."

this eliminates (d) and (e).

--

the part following "are generated WHEN" should be a CLAUSE, with a principal subject and verb.

in (c) and (d), there is no such verb. (the intended verb is swallowed up within a "which" modifier, leaving no main verb for the clause.)

so (c) is gone.

--

in (a), "of pebbles" doesn't make sense (by parallelism, this would imply "grains of pebbles", which is nonsensical).
also, "burn up speeding" is unclear and awkward.

--

last man standing is (b)

[vivs.gupta]

Thanks Ron.

Regarding your comment: "burn up speeding" is unclear and awkward

If there is a comma after burn up... i.e.
burn up, speeding through the atmosphere.

Will it be correct?

[jlucero]

Thanks Ron.

Regarding your comment: "burn up speeding" is unclear and awkward

If there is a comma after burn up... i.e.
burn up, speeding through the atmosphere.

Will it be correct?

No.

Tiny flecks of celestial detritus burn up, speeding through the atmosphere.

"speeding through the atmosphere" would then modify the preceding clause meaning that once they burn up, then they are speeding through the atmosphere. The correct meaning is they burn up WHILE they are speeding through the atmosphere.

I saw my friend fall, running through town. (I was running)
I saw my friend fall while running through town. (my friend was running)

[vivs.gupta]

Thanks Ron.

Regarding your comment: "burn up speeding" is unclear and awkward

If there is a comma after burn up... i.e.
burn up, speeding through the atmosphere.

Will it be correct?

No.

Tiny flecks of celestial detritus burn up, speeding through the atmosphere.

"speeding through the atmosphere" would then modify the preceding clause meaning that once they burn up, then they are speeding through the atmosphere. The correct meaning is they burn up WHILE they are speeding through the atmosphere.

I saw my friend fall, running through town. (I was running)
I saw my friend fall while running through town. (my friend was running)

Joe,

I see a contradiction in your post.

If I use the same reasoning as you gave for the original problem, I would read the following sentence
I saw my friend fall, running through town.

as

I saw my friend and then I started running.

Don't think it is correct.

[ashvin.gaur]

Consider the following sentence -

He saw a monkey, coming out of the kitchen.

In the above sentence Subject (HE) saw a monkey.
The question now is who was coming out of the kitchen - The monkey or the subject (HE)?
In this case where the separation happens by a comma - usually the phrase following the comma refers to the Subject (HE in the present case) of the previous clause

Now, consider the following sentence -

He saw a monkey coming out of the kitchen.
In this case - where there is no separation by comma - the "coming out of the kitchen" refers back to the immediately preceding noun, which here is 'monkey'. Hence here the monkey was coming out of kitchen.

I hope this answers the query.

[vivs.gupta]

Consider the following sentence -

He saw a monkey, coming out of the kitchen.

In the above sentence Subject (HE) saw a monkey.
The question now is who was coming out of the kitchen - The monkey or the subject (HE)?
In this case where the separation happens by a comma - usually the phrase following the comma refers to the Subject (HE in the present case) of the previous clause

Now, consider the following sentence -

He saw a monkey coming out of the kitchen.
In this case - where there is no separation by comma - the "coming out of the kitchen" refers back to the immediately preceding noun, which here is 'monkey'. Hence here the monkey was coming out of kitchen.

I hope this answers the query.

Ashvin,

He saw a monkey, coming out of the kitchen

In this example, 'coming out of the kitchen' is adverial modifier and modifies the action of the preeceding clause.

However, if we write it as
coming out of the kitchen, he saw a money.

In this case, 'coming out of the kitchen' acts as a adjective modifier and modifies the noun 'He'

[RonPurewal]

so, as you may have surmised, the whole notion of -ing modifiers (separated by commas) is not a particularly simple issue.
as in the case of anything else that is not particularly simple, the best practice is to look at more examples.

when the comma + ING follows the clause that it modifies, you are generally looking at one of the following three interpretations:

1/
an immediate, and basically inevitable, consequence of whatever is described in that clause (this is what joe is talking about)
e.g.
i dropped the laptop onto the sidewalk, breaking the screen.

2/
a lower-priority action (hard to really describe what i mean here in words, but it's like a "sub-action"... imagine the kind of thing you would indent in an outline) that happens WHILE the accident in the clause happens
e.g.
i ran down the street, screaming and yelling
the thing about this one is that there's a certain implication about "priority levels" here. this is not the kind of thing that is formulaic (and probably not the kind of thing that will ever be tested), but the deal is that the MORE IMPORTANT action should be the main clause while the less important action should be the modifier. again, very subjective, and practically certain not to be tested on the actual gmat exam.

3/
a specific description of how, or why, the statement in the preceding clause is true
e.g.
michael plays a key role on our design team, making sure that our designs reflect current market trends

--

so now let's look at the meteorite example.

it clearly doesn't fit situations 1 or 3 above. also, situation 2 is problematic, because burning up is very clearly the more important action in this context (and so doesn't really make sense as a modifier).

one easy way around this problem is to move the modifier to the front of the sentence:
speeding through the atmosphere, the meteorite burns up...
this makes sense.

again, this post is basically for purposes of enrichment only (and to put an end to the endless back-and-forth about this whole concept). some of this is getting very "writerly" and well beyond the scope of what the exam will actually test.

[vivs.gupta]

Thanks Ron.

[jlucero]

Glad that was cleared up.