Preposition + NOUN + VERBing

[ParthJ26]

Dear Sage/Stacey,

Hi.

I was going through Ron's post on the forum regarding some question and drew the following conclusion about a common issue on the GMAT.

If you have "preposition + NOUN + VERBing", then "VERBing" is just a modifier, and can be dropped without changing the surrounding grammar.
therefore, the sentence should still make sense, in context, if you write it as just "preposition + NOUN", without the "VERBing" modifier.

For example:

1. I have a picture of my cousin playing hockey. CORRECT!

= essentially the same as

I have a picture of my cousin.

2. I have never heard of bees stinging. INCORRECT.

If we drop the -ing, we get:

I have never heard of bees = NOT THE INTENDED MEANING.

I tried to apply this concept to some question but was puzzled by the following OG. I have rephrased it so as to not cause any trouble.

Despite the increasing number of women graduating from medical schools, the proportion of doctors who are women has not risen comparably. CORRECT (OA)

If I drop the ING, I get:

Despite the increasing number of women, the proportion of doctors who are women has not risen comparably.

WHY IS THIS CORRECT?

Thanks in advance.

Parth Jain

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

This is one of the trickiest issues on GMAT sentence correction. I'm not sure I fully understood it when I got a good score on my GMAT.

The test you mention - of leaving out the '-ing modifier' - is a risky one. Modifiers always add meaning to a sentence, so we can't expect the sentence to have the same meaning when we leave a modifier out. Take the example: 'I saw a bird flying overhead.' Sure, the sentence 'I saw a bird.' works okay, but it doesn't have the same meaning. This gets even more problematic with something like 'The number of tigers has risen.' If I leave out the modifier to get 'The number has risen.' it might help me check the subject-verb relationship, but clearly the sentence is pretty meaningless. For that reason, I'm cautious of applying the 'leave out the modifier test' to this issue.

I would encourage you to think more about the overall meaning of the sentence. Let's take them one at a time.
I have a picture of my cousin playing hockey. (correct)
The meaning of the sentence is that you have a picture, and then we have some information about the picture. However, it's still important to the meaning of the sentence that your cousin is playing hockey in the picture. It's not just a random picture.
I have never heard of bees stinging dogs. (incorrect)
The meaning here is that you haven't heard of something that bees do, not the bees themselves. The emphasis of the intended meaning is on stinging, not bees, and this is why it doesn't work.
Despite the increasing number of women graduating from medical schools, the proportion of doctors who are women has not risen comparably. (correct)
This sentence contrasts the number of women graduating from med school with the proportion of doctors. Now, it's really important to the sentence that these are not just any women, but women who graduate from medical school. But the emphasis is still on the increasing number (note the parallel construction that balances 'number' and 'proportion').