SC: Fossils and Whales, SV Agreement and prep phrase mod

[mwilliams82]

Fossils of a whale that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and was subsequently butchered by hominids have been recovered by paleontologists.

A. that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and was subsequently butchered by hominids have

B. that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and then was subsequently butchered by hominids has

C. that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago, which was subsequently butchered by hominids, has

D. having been beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and subsequently butchered by hominids, have

E. having beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and then subsequently were butchered by hominids have

The OA is A. First the "whale" is the subject as shown by "was subsequently butchered" and the word "fossils" is the subject as shown by "have been"... This seems like a red flag to me but it's the correct answer. It reminds me of the grammer rule "one of the+plural noun+that/who + plural verb"..... does "that" in this sentence modify the prep phrase in this case too?

[nitin_prakash_khanna]

This is how i understood it....

First of all its one of those passive sentences that are correct on GMAT :>

it is testing three things S-V, Active / Passive voice and modifier.

for me the original sentence is
paleontologists have recovered Fossils of a whale. (which tells that action just finished in recent past and hence present perfect)

Now if you write above in passive

Fossils of a whale have been recovered by paleontologists . (which is what the sentence is saying becuase the emphasis is on the Fossils rather than Scientists)

Now all of the other text after whale is an essential modifier which defines the whale and off course you need to check parallelism and grammar in that. All options other than A have some issue.

thanks
nk.

[Ben Ku]

If we break down this sentence, the CORE of the sentence (after we've stripped away the modifiers/middlemen) is:
"Fossils ... have been recovered." The subject of the sentence is fossils, NOT whale.

The relative pronoun "that" serves to introduce a (very long) noun modifier.
" ... that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and was subsequently butchered by hominids"
This noun modifier correctly modifies whale.

Let me know if you have other questions. Thanks.

[christina.susie.wong]

Could you please help explain why in answer choice A "Fossils" does not have to agree in number with "was" in the part of the sentence that says "and was subsequently."

This is why i chose answer E because I thought the "were" in "and were subsequently" agreed in number with fossils.

[RonPurewal]

Could you please help explain why in answer choice A "Fossils" does not have to agree in number with "was" in the part of the sentence that says "and was subsequently."

you don't want "fossils" to agree in number with that verb, because the context makes it quite clear that "fossils" is NOT meant to be the subject of that verb. (it doesn't make any sense to say that fossils were butchered; its the whale that was butchered.)

you should process the sentence like this:
Fossils of
a whale that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and was subsequently butchered by hominids have been recovered by paleontologists

actually, this is the only parallelism that's possible in the sentence in the first place, since "beached" is the only verb that can possibly be parallel to "and was subsequently butchered".

[vinversa]

adding to the discussion

Please note the THAT effect here

Fossils of a whale that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and was subsequently butchered by hominids have been recovered by paleontologists.

Re-writing the same sentence withOUT "THAT"

Fossils of a whale beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and were subsequently butchered by hominids.

OTHER similar examples

One of every two new businesses fails within two years.
One of every two new businesses that (relative pronoun) fail within two years is replaced by another business.

[RonPurewal]

adding to the discussion

Please note the THAT effect here

Fossils of a whale that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and was subsequently butchered by hominids have been recovered by paleontologists.

Re-writing the same sentence withOUT "THAT"

Fossils of a whale beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and were subsequently butchered by hominids.

OTHER similar examples

One of every two new businesses fails within two years.
One of every two new businesses that (relative pronoun) fail within two years is replaced by another business.

thanks for the additional examples. however, you should probably provide some discussion along with these examples -- i.e., what, exactly, are you trying to illustrate with them?
thanks.

[viniet.eldho]

I agree with the answer, but when is it alright to omit 'that' the second time in a sentence.
The right answer could have been

that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and THAT was subsequently butchered by hominids have

[RonPurewal]

I agree with the answer, but when is it alright to omit 'that' the second time in a sentence.
The right answer could have been

that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and THAT was subsequently butchered by hominids have

two good resources for this sort of question about parallelism:

1) MAY 13 workshop here:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/thursdays-with-ron.cfm

2) these 2 posts:
post25465.html#p25465
post36051.html#p36051

[Mymisc]

Would you please explain why (D) is wrong?

I have two other questions on this SC:
1. The modifier inside the bracket {} is a parallel structure using "AND". There is "was" with butchered, but no "was" with beached. is this because the sentence tries to say that the whale came to the beach on its own, or the "was" is omitted and the beached itself as a past participle also indicated the passive voice? Otherwise these two are not considered structure paralleled, right?

2. Is then subsequently considered a redundancy? Can I certainly eliminate ACs using them together?

Fossils of a whale {that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and was subsequently butchered by hominids} have been recovered by paleontologists.


Thank you!

[RonPurewal]

Would you please explain why (D) is wrong?

"having been beached" is a passive voice construction, which in this case is inappropriate. (this does NOT mean that the passive voice is incorrect in general -- there are plenty of other situations in which the passive voice is preferred or even required -- but it just doesn't work here.)
in particular, if i say "an X ... having been stolen", the implication of the passive voice is that someone else stole X.
similarly, "having been beached" seems to indicate that someone else beached the whale. that's not true.

I have two other questions on this SC:
1. The modifier inside the bracket {} is a parallel structure using "AND". There is "was" with butchered, but no "was" with beached. is this because the sentence tries to say that the whale came to the beach on its own, or the "was" is omitted and the beached itself as a past participle also indicated the passive voice? Otherwise these two are not considered structure paralleled, right?

the first one (the whale came to the beach on its own).
whales are pretty darn big; someone else couldn't bring them to the beach even if they tried. especially more than a million years ago, when they didn't have barges, tugboats, and stuff like that.
(;

2. Is then subsequently considered a redundancy? Can I certainly eliminate ACs using them together?

i would say "yes" -- although, as with all other redundancies, i would look for an alternative answer choice that eliminates the redundancy before eliminating it.

i.e., in this case, since there are other choices that contain "subsequently" on its own, you can be pretty sure of this.

[RonPurewal]

oh, and, there's an easier way to detect that (d) is wrong: it tries to block off a modifier with a comma on one side, but not on the other side.

this isn't acceptable -- a modifier that occurs in the middle of the sentence (i.e., not right at the beginning, and not right at the end) should be blocked off by either 0 or 2 commas.**

in choices (c) and (d), this doesn't happen -- in each of those choices, the big modifier that ends with "hominids" has a comma afterward, but NOT a comma before.

--

** the only exception to this rule occurs when there is 1 comma that "belongs" to a construction other than the modifier.
for instance:
the only thing in dubuque, iowa, that i remember from our road trip is the old courthouse.
here, the modifier "that i remember from our road trip" has just the 1 comma beforehand, but that's not an error -- because that comma doesn't belong to the modifier. instead, that comma belongs to the preceding construction (the one with a city and state name), since convention dictates that city + state be followed by commas.

[Mymisc]

Thank you very very much Ron! Learned a lot from your explanation.

[RonPurewal]

Thank you very very much Ron! Learned a lot from your explanation.

sure

[manassingh]

Ron,
As per your previous quote

you should process the sentence like this:
Fossils of
a whale that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and was subsequently butchered by hominids have been recovered by paleontologists

The text in green and red are parallel ? Am i correct ? If yes, then why isn't that appearing in second part of sentence, after and. I was under the impression if that appears in the first part of parallel structure, then the second part(after and) should also start with that
i.e Fossils of whale that beached ...... and that butchered....

Basically would like to understad when will we use
that..... and that....
in a parallel structure ?

Many thanks in advance.
[editor: this was incorrectly transcribed; those are not the structures that i highlighted above. --ron]