SC set 27 Question 17 So dogged were Frances Perkins’investi

[reotokate]

Looks like English has a "best-before" date as well! : )

That's not really the issue. (Yes, I understand that you're joking.)

This sentence is as legitimate today as it was 10, 50, or 100 years ago.
The problem is that it's an unusual sentence construction, one that violates the dominant patterns of usage. Essentially, it's one giant "idiom" with which you'd have to be familiar in advance -- it's not the kind of thing you can figure out as you go. As such, it unfairly favors native English speakers, who have had much more exposure to "weird but correct" English sentences than have non-native speakers. Basically, it's almost like taking English from Shakespeare, or Spanish from Cervantes, or Italian from Dante, and throwing them at modern-day second-language speakers of those languages. Not fair.

In recent years GMAC has been cracking down on just about all SC items that unfairly favor native speakers -- especially weird sentence constructions like this one. So, it's not any less correct than it previously was, but you don't have to worry about it on the test anymore.

Thumb up!~

[tim]

:)

[gbyhats]

Hi Dear Manhattan Instructors and GMAT fighters! ;)

Sorry for digging up this old thread, but really...I'm very interested in this question and want to have a discussions with you guys about this question ;)

To my, the correct answer of this question is actually nothing about idiom!

This structure is an absolute phrase. And, even now, absolute phrase is common in GMAT, isn't it?

So dogged were Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry, so persistent her lobbying for wage and hour reform, that Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt recruited Perkins to work within the government, rather than as a social worker.

--

There are two things can be used to prove whether a expression is a absolute phase:

(1) you can delete it without negatively impact the meaning and grammar of the entire sentence

"So dogged...that Alfred and Franklin recruited" is a legit sentence, isn't it?

(2) All the absolute phase we can see in GMAT so far -- except for one kind of absolute phrases that start with a noun -- can turn into a complete sentence by adding a verb

"so persistent [are] her lobbying for wage and hour reform"

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Explanation for Absolute phrase:

sorry I don't know how to explain it... Let me show you a example:

http://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/forums/yellow-jackets-number-among-the-900-or-so-species-of-the-t3105.html

In this question, "wasp that live..." is a absolute phrase.

--

Actually I find this question very very interesting.

It is written in such a way that makes you feel like it is wrong -- as someone you may say it is a rare idiom that GMAT now will no longer use -- but it is actually nothing beyond what GMAT will normally test.

--

I was not the one discovery this, I came across this thought in a website

[tim]

(2) All the absolute phase we can see in GMAT so far -- except for one kind of absolute phrases that start with a noun -- can turn into a complete sentence by adding a verb

"so persistent [are] her lobbying for wage and hour reform"

I'm not sure exactly what you're hoping we'll address here, but I can tell you for sure that the sentence you placed in quotes is not a complete sentence.

[RonPurewal]

It is written in such a way that makes you feel like it is wrong -- as someone you may say it is a rare idiom that GMAT now will no longer use -- but it is actually nothing beyond what GMAT will normally test.

if you see a "weird" construction in SC, it is absolutely guaranteed to be a distraction from much easier things.
e.g., in this case there's a clear winner if you just look at parallelism.

basically, follow these rules:
• if you KNOW that something is wrong, eliminate it.
• if you think that something is "weird" but don't actually know that it's wrong, IGNORE it and look for more basic/fundamental things. they'll be there.

[gbyhats]

Thank you guys for replying ;)

I'm not sure exactly what you're hoping we'll address here, but I can tell you for sure that the sentence you placed in quotes is not a complete sentence.

Oops I'm sorry to confuse you Tim! It appears that either I has some misunderstanding about absolute phrase or I had expressed my ideas in a wrong way.

But whatever, digging this deep into [absolute phrase] appears to go beyond the scope of GMAT SC

if you see a "weird" construction in SC, it is absolutely guaranteed to be a distraction from much easier things.
e.g., in this case there's a clear winner if you just look at parallelism.

basically, follow these rules:
• if you KNOW that something is wrong, eliminate it.
• if you think that something is "weird" but don't actually know that it's wrong, IGNORE it and look for more basic/fundamental things. they'll be there.

Thank you Ron! Sure thing! It appears that I dig too much into this [absolute phrase] issue.

[RonPurewal]

yep.

SC can be simple (note that "simple" ≠ "easy")... as long as you don't overcomplicate it.

[AsadA969]

N.B.: Sorry for bumping this old thread.

So dogged were Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry, and her lobbying for wage and hour reform was persistent, Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt recruited Perkins to work within the government, rather than as a social worker.

A. and her lobbying for wage and hour reform was persistent,
B. and lobbying for wage and hour reform was persistent, so that
C. her lobbying for wage and hour reform persistent, that
D. lobbying for wage and hour reform was so persistent,
E. so persistent her lobbying for wage and hour reform, that

So dogged were Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry, so persistent her lobbying for wage and hour reform, that Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt recruited Perkins to work within the government, rather than as a social worker.

After rearrange:
The sentence is very confusing because it is an “inverted sentence” in which the subject (Frances Perkins’ investigations) is used after verb (were). Here, I can write the first sentence as below (may be my sentence is wrong but I am writing that way so that I can make clear it).
Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry were so dogged, so persistent her lobbying for wage and hour reform, that Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt recruited Perkins to work within the government, rather than as a social worker.


I am trying to separate whole the sentence into several parts with sequentially to provide my explanation.
1/ so dogged were Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry >>part of main sentence
2/ ,so persistent her lobbying for wage and hour reform, >>modifier
3/ that Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt recruited Perkins to work within the government>> part of main sentence
4/ ,rather than as a social worker.>>modifier 2
Every part is ok in this regard but only part number 4. Part number 4 is used here as a modifier but it should be the main parts of the sentence; we should omit COMMA (,) before ‘rather’ to make the sentence meaningful, I think!

In this forum, two main things have been discussed:
a. Should be parallelism between “so dogged” and “so persistent”.
b. As we are making these things parallel, we need a verb “was” after “so persistent” in part 2 to make parallelism with part 1.

But, according to my thinking, we should not make parallel the parts (namely part 1 and part 2). In apparently (as so dogged and so consistent is the beauty contest!), it seems that part 1 and part 2 should be parallel, but it should not be parallel because part 2 is only a modifier, nothing else. We should not care much more about what is written in the modifier (most of the times).

Most importantly, so dogged was used in part 1 for Frances Perkins’ investigations (not Frances Perkins) but so persistent was used in part 2 for Frances Perkins (not investigation). So, we should not make comparison between apple to orange. A modifier can’t be the complete sentence. “so persistent her lobbying for wage and hour reform” is just a modifier not complete or part of a sentence. And, “So dogged were Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry” is a complete or part of a sentence. So dogged is an object of this sentence but so persistent is not an object. So, why do we make parallel these two separate things? we should not do it (may be).
Is my understanding right??
Thanks...

[RonPurewal]

there are 2 parallel ideas:
1/ FP's investigations were dogged.
2/ FP's lobbying was persistent.

in context, it should be absolutely clear that these ideas are parallel.
(e.g., if you were going to use this sentence in a powerpoint presentation about FP, then these ideas would be two 'bullet points'. or they would be '#1 and #2'. etc.)

the construction of the correct answer is a bit 'weird'—as acknowledged above—but no other choice is even close to achieving parallelism.