Guide 4th e. Chapter 4 Parallelism Problem set

[ellenzhang1111]

Q. 10: Can I rewrite the sentence in this way:
The experiences we have when we were children influence our behaviour when we are adults.

I know it sounds awkward. What interests me is the verb tense in such a sentence. Pls correct it if it is wrong and advise the reason.

Are these sentence correct? If not, why? If yes, why?
Q12: Tobacco companies, shaken by a string of legal setbacks in the US, but retaining strong growth prospects in the developing world, face an uncertain future.

Q14: The consultant is looking for a cafe that has comfortable chairs and provides free internet access.
What is the rule regarding the omission of the 2nd that in such a case?

Thanks for your help in advance!

[tim]

Q10: We can’t say that we HAVE experiences when we WERE children. There is a problem with verb tense agreement here..

Q12: It looks like you’re asking about the parallelism here. The issue with this one is that both "shaken" and "retaining" are adjectives properly describing the companies, so that part is correct. What is incorrect about the sentence is that there should not be a comma before the "but". When two things are parallel you should avoid putting a comma between them if at all possible. When three or more things are parallel, you will need commas to separate the items in the list..

Q14: Think of a typical sentence as a single track. When you encounter parallelism, you are effectively splitting the sentence into parallel tracks. It is important to identify where the sentence split into parallel tracks, but depending on where you choose to split the sentence there may be multiple correct ways to write the sentence. In this case, we could split the sentence before the word "that", which would require a "that" in both parallel tracks. Or we could split the sentence after "that", allowing the "that" to apply to both parallel tracks. The important thing to keep in mind here is that you must not eliminate an answer choice just because the answer chooses to split into parallel tracks at a different point than you would choose to. As long as the option presented can be parallel under some valid interpretation, it does not violate parallelism..

[nilohit]

And what about

"The experiences we had as children still influence our behaviour as adults"

The change in tense is logical and it is quite concise

The GMATPrep guide talks about parallelism between adulthood and childhood, i am a little awkward with that

Please Advise

[tim]

i think this would be incorrect. the "as children" modifies "we", but there is no subject or object pronoun that "as adults" can modify. the more important issue though is it's not worth speculating on this subtle point of grammar unless you've seen it in a GMAT question. you will be better off focusing on actual GMAT questions (or Manhattan GMAT questions) rather than making up examples of your own, because only then will you know that you are dealing with an issue that actually comes up on the GMAT..

[RP]

So Tim is saying " Tobacco companies, shaken by a string of legal setbacks in the U.S. but retaining strong growth....world, face an uncertain future." is correct.

What kind of phrase "shaken by a string ..." would be?

Part participle phrases come from past tense passive voice.

Looks like this is coming from present perfect passive voice. Would it still be part participle?

What would be the difference between a phrase that start with past tense verb and the one strats from past participle verb?

Began in 1990, the movement x is still going (or completed now)
vs
Begun in 1990, the moven x is still going (or completed now)

Is any of these incorrect?

If not would you mind providing couple examples with a phrase that starts with past tense verb and participle verb and meaning differences if any?

Thanks.

[tim]

"shaken..." is a modifier of the companies. trying to dig any deeper to put a more specific label on this one wastes time and detracts attention from the real issue..

as for the difference between a phrase that uses a past tense verb versus a past participle, can you find an example that uses a past tense verb? OG 107, 110, and 124 are good examples of the latter for your reference..

i would say your second example ("begun") is correct (aside from your typos), and that the first example ("began") is incorrect, largely because it doesn't appear the GMAT ever uses a simple past verb in this way as a modifier..

[JustinC279]

I have a different option for Q10 that I wanted to confirm is OK:

Original Sentence: The experiences we have when children influence our behavior in adulthood.
My Sentence: The experiences we have in childhood influence our behavior in adulthood.
Solutions Sentence: The experiences we have as children influence our behavior as adults.

Is there a problem with my sentence?

I have a doubt because it does warp the meaning a bit from the solution sentence, but for parallelism, my sentence is comparing two prepositional phrases that describe two different time periods of a person's life.

The solution set seems to reference it is OK, but I want to confirm.

Thanks!
Justin

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

This is a subtle one, and I like your example. I'm inclined to agree with you that 'as children' and 'as adults' are nicely parallel. However, the phrase 'as adults' doesn't seem to be modifying anything. I think it's better to say 'how we behave as adults', rather than 'behavior as adults'. For that reason, I'm suspicious of your example. However, I don't think this is clear enough to be something that GMAT will test you on.