In addition to her work on the miocene homicide fossil

[RonPurewal]

the point that i could not understand is why "mary leakey's contributions" is wrong here.

it isn't wrong.

you seem to be assuming that, if version #1 of something is correct, then version #2 must be incorrect.
that's not true, of course. it's possible for things to work in multiple ways.

in this version, you have 4 choices with non-parallelism and 1 choice with parallelism -- and there's nothing particularly subtle about that parallelism, either -- so, there's no reason even to think about the differences at the start of the choices.

[thanghnvn]

combined with
is an idiom working as a prepsition. it is not a participle 2 of a verb.

this point is purely grammatical but if our grmmar is not good , we are confued.

am i correct?

[meetur373]

the point that i could not understand is why "mary leakey's contributions" is wrong here.

it isn't wrong.

you seem to be assuming that, if version #1 of something is correct, then version #2 must be incorrect.
that's not true, of course. it's possible for things to work in multiple ways.

in this version, you have 4 choices with non-parallelism and 1 choice with parallelism -- and there's nothing particularly subtle about that parallelism, either -- so, there's no reason even to think about the differences at the start of the choices.

HI Ron,
thanks for the reply but I am still confused . here are the 2 sentences (the 2 correct options from both the questions)-
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 painstakingly documentation of East African cave paintings.

sentence 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 her painstaking documentation of East African cave paintings.

when i found the explanation for sentence 2 , it says -
" The opening phrase is talking about her work and saying "in addition to" her work on the fossil record - so we need to say what it is that is referring to this work. Her work on the fossil record was one of her contributions, just as her discovery of hominid activity was one of her contributions. But that's pretty subtle - if you're reading too quickly, you'll think that the opening modifier is referring to Mary Leakey and so we need to have her follow the comma. (But that's not really what's going on - what's actually going on is that we have a list of 3 contributions, but one comes at the beginning of the sentence and the other two come towards the end.)

A simpler sentence with the same set-up:
In addition to food, the mother's contributions to her child include shelter and love. "

so based on the above logic I should go by "leakey's contributions". My question is what is the difference between these 2 sentences?
I searched for an answer to this question, and here I found an answer posted by you in 2007 -
" if these problems are really both official (which would be weird), then i would abstract the following lesson:
the strict application of the opening phrase to the immediately following subject is, apparently, limited to cases in which the opening phrase contains a PARTICIPLE (-ing, -ed), etc.
since this sentence starts with a prepositional phrase (in addition to), not a participle, it apparently doesn't follow the same rule.

note my copious use of the word "apparently"; i'm learning lessons from this problem, just as you are. "
I could not understand it, so re posting your reply here. could you please help me understanding the difference between the 2 sentences?
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Meetu

[RonPurewal]

can you post a link to that? i should go edit/erase that comment, since it's way too complicated. LOL

do not forget -- these are multiple-choice problems!
right now you're trying to do something you'll never actually have to do: namely, you're trying to judge these sentences BY THEMSELVES.
don't do that. these problems are multiple-choice for a reason -- so you can judge the choices against each other.

in both versions of the problem, you can just use parallelism to make the relevant decisions. there's no need to let things get any more complicated.

[SD501]

#4 In addition to her work on the Miocene hominid fossil record, Mary Leakey contributed to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting East African cave paintings.

(A) Leakey contributed to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting
(B) Leakey contributed to archaeology by her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and by painstakingly documenting
(C) Leakey was a contributor to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and with her painstaking documentation of
(D) Leakey's contributions to archaeology include her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and her painstaking documentation of
(E) Leakey's contributions to archaeology include discovering the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstaking documentation of

I understand that (D) is the most parallel option. But does the meaning of option (D) slightly differ from that of (A)? Option (A) says Mary Leakey contributed to archaeology with EXACTLY three things: 1) her work on the Miocene hominid fossil record, 2) her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity, and 3) her painstaking documentation of East African cave paintings. But Option (D) says Mary Leakey's contributions "include" (1), (2), and (3). Does "include" suggest that Mary Leakey has more than three contributions?

I am confused here. Since both (A) and (D) make sense but have different meanings, I crossed (D) because it changes the original meaning and I chose (A) even if the parallelism of (A) is not as good as that of (D). Am I wrong to insist on the "original" meaning?

[RonPurewal]

Am I wrong to insist on the "original" meaning?

^^ yes.

you shouldn't even think of A as the "original" choice. choice A is a COMPLETELY RANDOM ANSWER CHOICE!

basically, you should THINK of the problem as though the underline were just blank, with the 5 choices provided as given.
(the only reason why the problems AREN'T presented this way -- in other words, the only reason why one of the choices is inserted into the prompt sentence -- is to make it easier for YOU to understand the intended meaning!)

[RonPurewal]

...and your interpretation of the meaning in A is incorrect, too.
(if i say "I like to eat broccoli and tomatoes", then, clearly, these are not the ONLY foods that i like. this is exactly the same statement as "The foods I like to eat include broccoli and tomatoes.")