SC:is descended or has descended ?

[NMencia09]

Australian embryologists have found evidence that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and its trunk originally evolved as a kind of snorkel.
A. that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and its trunk originally evolved
B. that has suggested the elephant descended from an aquatic animal, its trunk originally evolving
C. suggesting that the elephant had descended from an aquatic animal with its trunk originally evolving
D. to suggest that the elephant has descended from an aquatic animal and its trunk originally evolved
E. to suggest that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal and that its trunk originally evolved

Source:GMATprep OA E.

I chose ans. D which was incorrect.
Ron, could please explain which one is correct-'has descended' or 'is descended'

Can you also say that you need a second "that" to preserve parallelism? "have found evidence to suggest that X, and that Y". ?

Further to this, are (B) and (C) correct gramatically in this respect: " ..., its trunk originally evolving..." , and "... with its truck originally evolving..." ?

[RonPurewal]

Can you also say that you need a second "that" to preserve parallelism? "have found evidence to suggest that X, and that Y". ?

no, not really. both of the following structures (in which parentheses are used to enclose the actual parallelism) are legitimate:
suggest that (x and y)
suggest (that x and that y)
on the other hand, if the elements abbreviated as "x" and "y" are long or convoluted enough, you're going to start needing the second of these structures, as the first will become essentially unreadable when those elements get long enough.

Further to this, are (B) and (C) correct gramatically in this respect: " ..., its trunk originally evolving..." , and "... with its truck originally evolving..." ?

i'm going to ignore the word "grammatically" in your question, as that word suggests that you don't want to hear about any errors that are not purely grammatical; very few errors indeed are purely grammatical.

the "with" modifier is attached directly to the old animal (the one from which the elephant is descended). that's not the intended message of the sentence: the sentence is meant to describe the evolution of the elephant's trunk, not some earlier animal's trunk.

the -ING modifier is also troublesome, because -ING modifiers adopt the timeframe of the clause to which they are attached. the problem here is that we need to change the timeframe: "the elephant is descended..." is stated in the present, because it's a timeless fact about evolution, but "its trunk originally evolved..." needs to be in the past because it's an isolated historical event. the -ING modifier mistakenly suggests that both of these belong to the same timeframe.

note that neither of these errors is purely "grammatical", as is almost always the case on gmat sc.

[st_t_sv]

Hi all,

I have a query on the question discussed earlier on usage of 'to suggest' and 'that suggest' in this scentence.

'To suggest' is an infinitive here and has to be used in case of any intention in the other action of the scentence. i believe there is no intention in finding something solely for suggesting something...which we do not know before finding...

I understand that 'that' usage is quite wordy as it is wordy to use "that ___ that" in a span of 3 words in a sc.

Can you please clarify?

thanks

[RonPurewal]

Hi all,

I have a query on the question discussed earlier on usage of 'to suggest' and 'that suggest' in this scentence.

'To suggest' is an infinitive here and has to be used in case of any intention in the other action of the scentence. i believe there is no intention in finding something solely for suggesting something...which we do not know before finding...

I understand that 'that' usage is quite wordy as it is wordy to use "that ___ that" in a span of 3 words in a sc.

Can you please clarify?

thanks

first --
OFFICIALLY CORRECT ANSWERS ARE CORRECT!
do not question officially correct answers!
far too many students on this forum make the mistake of questioning the correct answers; please note that doing so is a complete waste of your time and effort. i.e., exactly 0% of the time that you spend posting "isn't this official answer wrong?" is productive, and exactly 100% of that time is wasted.

"is this correct?" is NEVER a productive question to ask about one of GMAC's correct answers -- the answer is always yes.
"is this wrong?" / "is this X type of error?" is NEVER a productive question to ask about one of GMAC's correct answers -- the answer is always no.

instead, the questions you should be asking about correct official answers, if you don't understand them, are:
"why is this correct?"
"how does this work?"
"what understanding am i lacking that i need to understand this choice?"

this is a small, but hugely significant, change to your way of thinking -- you will suddenly find it much easier to understand the format, style, and conventions of the official problems if you dispose of the idea that they might be wrong.

--

in this sentence, the officially correct answer contains "evidence to suggest...".
so, you just have to accept that "evidence to suggest..." is an acceptable idiom, even if you don't necessarily like it.

besides, there's more than one way to use an infinitive, anyway -- you have to (a) be more flexible in your thinking, and (b) use the meaning of the sentence.
for instance:
i need to buy brushes to paint.
i have a blank canvas to paint.
these are both correct, but the "to paint" modifier works differently in each case. in the first case, it's an intention (the meaning you're citing above); in the second, it describes an action whose object is the canvas (i.e., you're actually going to paint the canvas).

[eggpain24]

Instead of using "to suggest" or "that suggests" - which are both correct in this sentence - would it be permissible to use "suggesting that ..."?

Instead of saying:
(1) Australian embryologists have found evidence to suggest that the elephant...

Would it be ok to use the following construction:
(2) Australian embryologists have found evidence suggesting that the elephant...

Putting a present participle right after the noun it is supposed to modify is simply the reduced version of a relative clause I believe... I just want to clarify that option (c) starts off correctly.

Thanks!
Steve

yeah, "suggesting" should be fine in this case.

RON,sorry for bumping such an old thread

I not quite sure about the replacement here between suggesting and that suggests

according to the usage of VING stated in the manhattan SC 4th edition

the "ving" adopts it tense from the main verb of the sentence，in this case--- have found

it seems that suggesting should be replace by have suggested rather than suggests


also，I notice that the adoption of tense is merely explained by sentence using simple tense（there are no examples given regarding the scenario that ving is used in sentence with perfect tense）


so，what"˜s wrong with my thinking ？ please further clarify， thx！

[vijay19839]

Hello GMAT Instructors,
Can u please point out what is wrong with Option A if i don't care about punctuation? I think Tim earlier eliminated the option based on Punctuation.

Thanks
Vijay

[tim]

this may come as a disappointment, but you have to pay attention to everything that happens in a sentence, even if you "don't care" about some aspect..

[eggpain24]

Instead of using "to suggest" or "that suggests" - which are both correct in this sentence - would it be permissible to use "suggesting that ..."?

Instead of saying:
(1) Australian embryologists have found evidence to suggest that the elephant...

Would it be ok to use the following construction:
(2) Australian embryologists have found evidence suggesting that the elephant...

Putting a present participle right after the noun it is supposed to modify is simply the reduced version of a relative clause I believe... I just want to clarify that option (c) starts off correctly.

Thanks!
Steve

yeah, "suggesting" should be fine in this case.

RON,sorry for bumping such an old thread

I not quite sure about the replacement here between suggesting and that suggests

according to the usage of VING stated in the manhattan SC 4th edition

the "ving" adopts it tense from the main verb of the sentence，in this case--- have found

it seems that suggesting should be replace by have suggested rather than suggests


also，I notice that the adoption of tense is merely explained by sentence using simple tense（there are no examples given regarding the scenario that ving is used in sentence with perfect tense）


so，what"˜s wrong with my thinking ？ please further clarify， thx！

is there anyone can clarify my doubt??

[tim]

i'm not sure you have adequately explained what your point is. honestly, i don't know whether you have a question, and if so whether it's about something you disagree with or don't understand, and whether it has to do with Ron's post or our SC guide. slow down, take a step back, and try to explain clearly and comprehensively what your question or concern is..

[eggpain24]

there is something wrong with my quote. sorry about this

Steve:Instead of using "to suggest" or "that suggests" - which are both correct in this sentence - would it be permissible to use "suggesting that ..."?

Instead of saying:
(1) Australian embryologists have found evidence to suggest that the elephant...

Would it be ok to use the following construction:
(2) Australian embryologists have found evidence suggesting that the elephant...

Putting a present participle right after the noun it is supposed to modify is simply the reduced version of a relative clause I believe... I just want to clarify that option (c) starts off correctly.

Thanks!
Steve

Ron:yeah, "suggesting" should be fine in this case.


above is the quote, below is my point






I' m sorry for not making my point clear above

in the previous discussion, Ron said that suggesting and that suggests both seem fine

as per manhattan 4th edition SC guide

ving adopt its tense from the main verb in the sentence, which in this case

suggesting should adopt its tense from have found and have a meaning similar to have suggested

so,here is my point:

have suggested is clearly wrong in this sentence as opposed to the correct use of simple present suggests
two tenses convey different meaning

!!!!!! but: (suggesting should be in present perfect tense because of its adoption of tense from the main verb have suggested)

how can suggesting be fine in this context , as previously said by Ron?

what mistake did I make for adopting the tense of suggesting from the main verb have found

[tim]

i honestly still don't see what the concern is. are you suggesting that Ron was wrong in something he said? that the book was wrong? that you were wrong? if so, you are going to have to be clear about it rather than quoting your old post yet again. to be perfectly frank, it really just looks like you're trying to find a mistake where there is none..

[p111]

Hi Ron/Stacey,
Sorry, to bring this post up, just wanted be clear on my approach. !!

I understand the issues cited above to eliminate the wrong answer choices.
I tried to only rely on mostly parallelism(level 3) to get it done:

||:
(A) that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and its trunk originally evolved - NOT PARALLEL
(B) that has suggested the elephant descended from an aquatic animal, its trunk originally evolving - NO WAY PARALLEL
(C) suggesting that the elephant had descended from an aquatic animal with its trunk originally evolving - "with" modifies "aquatic animal", "had" implies the process of descended is done, however as referred here its is an ongoing thing like evolution process.
(D) to suggest that the elephant has descended from an aquatic animal and its trunk originally evolved - PARALLEL
(E) to suggest that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal and that its trunk originally evolved - PARALLEL WITH REPEATED STRUCTURE (HENCE CORRECT)

Please suggest if I am right here.

Thanks :) !!

[tim]

D and E are the only answer choices that exhibit parallelism. In other words, you cannot eliminate A/B/C for parallelism reasons because they are not even trying to make things parallel. Remember, for parallelism to be an issue, you need a parallel marker or a comparison marker, and a comma-and is not a parallel marker if it joins two independent clauses..

[p111]

D and E are the only answer choices that exhibit parallelism. In other words, you cannot eliminate A/B/C for parallelism reasons because they are not even trying to make things parallel. Remember, for parallelism to be an issue, you need a parallel marker or a comparison marker, and a comma-and is not a parallel marker if it joins two independent clauses..

Thanks :)
Now, I understand that if there is a comma-and we shouldnt be trying to make both sides of it parallel. Should we be looking into any type of error related to parallelism in the structures of 2 ICs involved(I MEAN ANYTHING ??)
or The max we can do is to see if they both are in the same voices. ?

One more thing, I see comma-and sometimes separates 2 ICs & sometimes other structures(phrase, clause, nouns). How to identify when which of the two usages is there(any indicators?) ?

[tim]

don't automatically eliminate the possibility that a comma-and indicates parallelism. if it joins two independent clauses, then we are not dealing with parallelism. however, comma-and is also used in cases where there are three or more things parallel. so if the part to the right of the comma-and is not an independent clause you'll want to look to see if the sentence is setting up three or more things to be parallel..