After moving to Switzerland in the 1890’s, Albert Einstein

[Guest]

After moving to Switzerland in the 1890’s, Albert Einstein attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis and developing a foundation for his future work in mathematical physics.

attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis and developing
attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis and developed
attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, received in-depth training in quantitative analysis, and he developed
attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, received in-depth training in quantitative analysis, developing
attending the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis, and developing

I have always had problem with SC questions that have one verb in past tense and one or more using gerund. What is the underpinning logic for these type of questions.

I picked D. Correct Answer is A.

[RonPurewal]

After moving to Switzerland in the 1890’s, Albert Einstein attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis and developing a foundation for his future work in mathematical physics.

attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis and developing
attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis and developed
attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, received in-depth training in quantitative analysis, and he developed
attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, received in-depth training in quantitative analysis, developing
attending the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis, and developing

I have always had problem with SC questions that have one verb in past tense and one or more using gerund. What is the underpinning logic for these type of questions.

I picked D. Correct Answer is A.

the issue here is that you DO NOT want parallel forms of the verbs 'attend', 'receive', and 'develop' - because these aren't logically parallel ideas. rather, the latter two are things that einstein did while he was doing the first one, and should therefore be presented as a modifier rather than in parallel with the first one.
(strictly speaking, parallelism vs. modifier isn't really an issue in this problem; the only answer choice that comes anywhere close to parallelism is choice (c), whose parallelism is specious because of the extra 'he'.)

choice (a) accomplishes this end: 'receiving' and 'developing' are present participles* following a comma, which marks them as an adverbial modifier. even though there are two verbs, this type of modifier is similar to the (one-verb) modifier in the following sentence:
jimmy hit two more home runs in his little league game today, bringing his total for the year to 17.

*you called these 'gerunds'. although you shouldn't be overly concerned with linguistic terminology - you can call them 'pink elephants' if you want, as long as you know how to use them in sentences - these are actually present participles, not gerunds. (a gerund is an -ing form used as a noun, as in this sentence: receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis is valuable preparation for many careers.

--

take a look at problem #127 in the o.g. 11th edition if you have it; the pattern is largely the same. (please don't post any details from that question here)

[Guest]

Thanks a lot Ron for the detailed explanation.

I did think similarly, how ever I concluded that he attended SP and received in depth training in QA which helped him in developing ....

In hind sight it makes sense that I misunderstood. If I understood how to understand similar problems, I will be looking for "and" to decide the meaning. For example if the sentence wanted to convey the meaning I understood, it should have attended and received with out a comma in between them. Correct?

Its clear that both sides of and should be parallel.

Can we also infer the following from this question?

And followed or preceded by comma is wrong For example C & E. I know that thats not being tested in this Q (Is it?) but it helps in POE.

[Aragorn]

*you called these 'gerunds'. although you shouldn't be overly concerned with linguistic terminology - you can call them 'pink elephants' if you want, as long as you know how to use them in sentences - these are actually present participles, not gerunds. (a gerund is an -ing form used as a noun, as in this sentence: receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis is valuable preparation for many careers.

:D lol!

[RonPurewal]

And followed or preceded by comma is wrong For example C & E. I know that thats not being tested in this Q (Is it?) but it helps in POE.

not true.
in a series of more than two items, american english standardization dictates that ALL elements of the list, except the last, be preceded by commas. this means
X, Y, and Z is correct, and
X, Y and Z is incorrect.

note that british commonwealth usage usually recognizes the opposite: i.e., the latter of the above examples. if you were raised with british commonwealth english, in india, singapore, etc., then take note.

if it makes you feel better, i have never seen this particular punctuation issue even tested on an official question, let alone as the decisive issue.

--

and yes, all four possible combinations of commas before and after 'and' are possible:
through the door walked jim, stephanie, and, surprisingly, stephanie's socially anxious younger sister (before AND after)
through the door walked stephanie and, surprisingly, stephanie's socially anxious younger sister (just after - note this is comparatively rare, used only with the sort of interjective phrases illustrated here)
you shouldn't have any trouble thinking of examples for 'just before' and 'neither', as those are the two most common versions.

[Sputnik]

Why is choice B wrong

attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis and developed


Cant we say this is an example of participle ||ism ... one in present and one in past...

also...

if we used a comma before "AND" ..would it be correct ?

attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis, and developed


Please help

[RonPurewal]

Why is choice B wrong

attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis and developed


Cant we say this is an example of participle ||ism ... one in present and one in past...

no.
'developed' here is a past-tense verb. it cannot be construed as a participle; einstein was not developed by anyone.

if we used a comma before "AND" ..would it be correct ?

attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis, and developed

yes, but it would alter the sentence's meaning significantly.
according to the original, both of the actions described (receiving training and developing a foundation) were undertaken by einstein WHILE he was at school in zurich.
your version would alter the meaning so that only the training took place at school in zurich; his developing a foundation would then be described as a separate action, not necessarily connected to zurich in any way.

[kramacha1979]

In B why can't we think as..Albert Einstein attended .. and developed... as 2 parallel actions
How do we know that the 'developing' is also subjunctive to attended...?

I know it changes the meaning when we use developed but how do we know as what the author meant to say at the first place ?
thanks

[JonathanSchneider]

2 reasons:

1) We never get a complete parallel list of past tense verbs. Choice C gives us "attended ... received ... and he developed." The "he" breaks up the parallelism - this is grammatically unacceptable. D begins a list, but the list never ends properly. We get "attended ... received," but then we get a modifier. If we are only listing two things, we dispense with the comma and simply use the word "and." Thus, D is also grammatically incorrect.

2) "Receiving" and "developing" both modify "attended" because these adverbs describe what Einstein was doing while he attended this school. If there were a major grammatical flaw in A, you'd be justified in picking something with a very similar meaning (even if slightly different) if that were the only way to preserve grammatical correctness. In this case, however, choice A preserves the intended meaning AND is correct grammatically.

[aravind.deva]

After moving to Switzerland in the 1890’s, Albert Einstein attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis and developing a foundation for his future work in mathematical physics.
<I swear!.I never thought that developing was done while at school. Einstein attended school and developed ...<later> this looks perfectly right to me.. Adding to my problems , am non-native speaker .So most of these questions i don't understand which actions are sequential / part of a bigger action>
attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis and developing
<i agree that this is correct because others are wrong as follows >
attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis and developed
< this needs a comma after analysis to complete the modifier: Einstein attended ...,modifier, and developed>
attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, received in-depth training in quantitative analysis, and he developed
< this needs an and before received. =>Einstein attended X and received X , and he developed X --> this is co ordinate clause which requires the subject he>
attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, received in-depth training in quantitative analysis, developing
< Same as before .this needs an and before received. =>Einstein attended X and received X , developing X --> this is modifier modifying receiving>
attending the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, receiving in-depth training in quantitative analysis, and developing
<sentence fragment .. Einstein attending receiving and developing >

Any of the staff, please explain if my explanations for the other answers are true..

[tim]

There is no problem with him developing a foundation for future work while he attended school. Isn't that what school is for?

Your fix for B looks good, but i wouldn't expect to see the GMAT using it because it looks too much like the three actions are supposed to be parallel and as such would probably be too confusing..

For C, don't just add an "and" but replace the comma with it. This will fix the problem but will add an unanswered question of why the first two actions are parallel but the third one is excluded. It also brings up the question of where he developed the foundation for future work..

Same deal with D, and as with C that fix would drastically change the meaning of the sentence but would be technically viable..

Yes, E is definitely a fragment..