"banked" is not a verb. it's a modifier, in parallel with "overlaid".
if you put a verb there, the result would not even be a sentence anymore.
RonPurewal Wrote:wow, that's a bear of a problem. geez louise.
you are misreading the parallelism. you are correct that 'banked with dirt...' has to be parallel to something. unfortunately, though, the 'something' in question happens to be 'overlaid with slabs...'.
in other words, 'banked with dirt' applies to the framework of poles, not to the house itself.
but you have identified the other problem: there is a meaning shift. if you say 'dirt as high as four feet', you're implying that most of the dirt is well below the four-foot level, but that four feet is the maximum height. the correct answer choice, on the other hand, states that the height of the dirt bank is consistently three to four feet. remember, if the meaning of the original sentence is intellligible, you are not allowed to change it - a principle that decides the meaning in this case. (the meaning in choice d isn't absurd, but it conflicts with what you're told in the original sentence.)
a final problem with choice d is that the phrase 'as high as' should be followed by one value, not a range.
some of our players weigh as much as 300-325 pounds --> bad phrasing
some of our players weigh as much as 325 pounds --> good phrasing
RonPurewal Wrote: "by convention, we don't say people are X number of feet/meters "high"; we say "tall". because we just do.
if you write Players in this league are as tall as 7'6", then nothing is wrong there at all."
RonPurewal Wrote: "REDUNDANCY
you don't say both "as big as..." and "long" in the same sentence. you can use only one of these words, both of which express the same idea (i.e., length or size)."
RonPurewal Wrote:Gaurav, the problem is that you're exerting way too much effort trying to produce a formal analysis of this modifier -- at the expense of understanding how it works.
The point is to recognize correct constructions, and to know what they look like and how they work.
It doesn't matter whether you can label them with the right terminology. (I don't even know what "absolute phrase" means.)
So, if you see this ...
Luisa came in from outside, her teeth chattering from the cold.
... and you know that it's correct,
then you can see this ...
The house was conical in shape, its framework of poles overlaid with xxxx
... and know that it's also correct.
In each case, the pronoun ("her" / "its") refers to the subject of the preceding part, and the modifier has an essential and easily discernible relationship to that preceding part.
That's about all I can tell you here. But it's the pattern recognition -- not the grammatical labels -- that is the point. The terminology is irrelevant. (You can call this modifier a "pink flamingo" if you want, as long as you know how it works and what it looks like.)
prepp Wrote:Can you please explain this sentence in your example:
Luisa came in from outside, her teeth chattering from the cold.
Luisa came in from outside, and her teeth were chattering from the cold.
Luisa came in from outside, and with her teeth chattering from the cold?
Luisa came in from outside, with her teeth chattering from the cold? - is this correct?
To sum it up,
How do I deal with this type of construction in the exam
Yes, which is not the intent. There's only the dirt around the framework of poles, and the point is just to say how high it is piled.JbhB682 Wrote:So you would be comparing two types of dirt in option B
Even worse, even if a comparison of two sets of dirt were intended, "that (dirt) of three to four feet" doesn't say what you have logically paraphrased in the 2nd part above. As written, (B) can be interpreted as if "three to four feet" possess the other dirt, since "of" can mean possession and there's nothing about the other dirt's height.JbhB682 Wrote:One type of dirt is
-- dirt that is banked
vs
-- another type of dirt (this dirt is three to four feet high and not banked to the framework of poles)
That understanding is correct.JbhB682 Wrote:Per my understanding - parallelism is NOT the issue with option D ... The issue with D is not to do with parallelism but to do with "as high as three to four feet"
Yes, you can say this, because as you suggest, "6 feet" is equivalent to a metric of height, as required by the "as tall as" comparison marker.JbhB682 Wrote:For example -- Can I say ?
Players in the XFL are as tall as 6 feet
I thought this may not be accurate because you are comparing a noun [Players] to another noun -6 feet [But the noun is a metric, i.e. 6 feet and not another player]