SC in CAT 6 - physical cosmology

[deepakdewani]

Hi Stacey / Ron / MGMAT instructors,

I got the following SC question in my final CAT today:

During the twentieth century, the study of the large-scale structure of the universe evolved from the theoretical to the practical; the field of physical cosmology was made possible because of both Einstein's theory of relativity and the better ability to observe extremely distant astronomical objects.

because of both Einstein's theory of relativity and
by both Einstein's theory of relativity and
by Einstein's theory of relativity and also
because of Einstein's theory of relativity and also
as a result of both Einstein's theory of relativity and

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The OA is B and the OE states that there are two idioms to be recognized - "made possible by" and "both X and Y"

While I recognized the second idiom correctly during my attempt, the way I approached the "made possible by / because of" choice was as follows: in any passive voice construction, the portion after "by" should refer to the actual doer of the action and not to any circumstances or conditions that led to the action. Going by this logic, I thought that the portion "and the better ability to observe extremely distant astronomical objects" was actually referring to a condition / circumstance and not any doer of the action. Hence, I chose an option starting with "because of".

Should this rule not have been evaluated simply because "made possible by" is a "non-negotiable" idiom and therefore overpowers everything else?

As always, greatly appreciate your inputs.

[chitrangada.maitra]

Doesn't option B flout parallelism rules?

I understand that when we use the 'both' structure, the objects that are being talked about should have the same preposition or article before it.

for e.g.
This animal lives both in grass and in trees - parallel
This animal lives in both grass and trees - parallel
This animal lives in both grass and in trees - not parallel


Isnt the structure followed in option B the same as the last example here?
....by both Einstein's theory of relativity and the better ability to observe...

Correct me if I am wrong here.

[mschwrtz]

The is not a preposition. The shared preposition is by.

[mschwrtz]

Oops, missed the earlier question.

in any passive voice construction, the portion after "by" should refer to the actual doer of the action and not to any circumstances or conditions that led to the action

That would cause trouble here, if it were a reliable rule. Who says that it is?

[rte.sushil]

made possible because of - i was thinking as correct but found it unidiomatic.
ques1: can you share some link where i can get the list of idioms. I would be happy to see "made possible by" in that list.

by X and also by Y."
Ques2: and also is unidiomatic? because "and" itself means another
a& B ..a& also B- irrelevant?


because of X and also because (of) Y."
ques3: how to decide that because of or other similar idiom has to be repeated after and? what is the rule behind it?
if no rule then "because of Einstein's theory of relativity and the better ability ...." should be right. if it is wrong then how to decide whether i should repeat.because some examples i have seen where the main word is not repeated. example: he went there because of A went and B came. (hypothetical example).
am i missing something critical:(?

Thanks!!

[tim]

1 - our sentence correction strategy guide has a fairly large list of idioms that should be sufficient for your study..

2 - what makes you think this is unidiomatic? have you seen this marked as incorrect on a GMAT problem?

3 - this is a parallelism issue, and has been covered repeatedly in this forum. you may wish to do a search using my name and the word "parallelism" to find some relevant posts..

[rte.sushil]

3 - this is a parallelism issue, and has been covered repeatedly in this forum. you may wish to do a search using my name and the word "parallelism" to find some relevant posts..

I went through some posts where it was mentioned that we repeat sub-ordinators (e.g. because etc)to remove the unambiguity but when i read the sentence :

because of Einstein's theory of relativity and the better ability ...." should be right?
because there is only one meaning can be concluded that
"Einstein's theory of relativity" and "the better ability ...." are referring to "because of" as "the better ability" is not Einstein theory?

In summary, what i am missing here?
According to me , "because of Einstein's theory of relativity and the better ability ...." seems right because i don't see any ambiguity if i don't repeat "because of"? Please help.

Thanks!!

[tim]

if you read posts about repeating subordinators, you must not have read my posts, which unilaterally indicate that if you are questioning whether to repeat something you are not following the most effective procedures for dealing with parallelism..

as for the sentence in question here, i did not see any reason to eliminate any of the choices based on parallelism. please understand this is not uncommon, and in fact one of the biggest dangers you have to watch out for is that of incorrectly eliminating the right answer in your haste to find something wrong..

[rte.sushil]

[bunch of spam]

What is this? Such stuffs shouldn't be allowed in forum and should be removed.

[tim]

we're working on getting this spammer banned and all its posts deleted. please understand that when you quote the entire spam message it just makes extra work for us because now we have to delete spam from your post as well.. :)

[deshmukhshivani]

I too got the same question in my CAT - 4.

I remember reading somewhere that GMAT has stopped testing on idioms exclusively.
What I understood from the above is that there will be some criteria other than only idioms to help me eliminate the answer choices.
In this question, I do not see any such criteria and I was not aware about the idiom "made possible by". I found nothing wrong in the original problem statement using "made possible because of" and marked it as correct.

Questions:
1. Is my understanding about idioms correct?
2. Is there anything wrong (other than the idiom) with the problem statement that I have missed?

[deshmukhshivani]

Would appreciate if one of the experts could reply to my query.
Thanks in advance.

[JbhB682]

Its obviously between B and A ..

Experts -- reviewing the idiom list in the SC book edition 6, i dont see the idiom "made possible by" listed [if so, could any one please confirm the page number]

In fact to my ear, "made possible because of" ...sounds perfectly reasonably ..

Why is B preferred over A ?

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

No, that idiom isn't covered in the SC strategy guide. Unfortunately we don't have space to include every idiom, just the most common ones.

However, to take issue with our explanation for this problem, I'd describe the construction as not really an idiom: it's about the way we use verbs. The verb 'was made' is a passive verb and, if we want to denote the noun that "did" the passive verb we use the word 'by'. Take a look at these (correct) examples:

My bicycle was stolen by a tall woman.
My bicycle was stolen because I left it unlocked.

As you can see, we can use 'because' after passive verbs in some circumstances, but it depends on the meaning.

[ChloeHe]

Hi,

I still have a concern on this question.

The original part says:

the field of physical cosmology was made possible because of both Einstein's theory of relativity and the better ability to observe extremely distant astronomical objects.

The correct answer replaces "because of" with "by".
The field of physical cosmology was made possible by both theory and the ability. How can theory and ability made the field of physical cosmology possible? From my understanding, theory and ability can only make exploration possible.

This sentence looks awkward using either "because of" or "by".

Can some one please shed some light on my concern? Thanks in advance.