I am totally confused because of this question.

Why is Choice A) Superior to all the other Choices ?

Moreover , The descendants migrated after the release of the honeybees but still they are in Past Perfect ?

This Sentence structure itself is very confusing.

have you read the thread?

the thread contains 31 posts, which together will certainly contain much of what you're looking for.



i addressed this in considerable detail in post #3 on the first page.

in the future, please read the discussion before commenting on it. thanks in advance.

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Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

Ron,Stacey, pls, help. pls, come back to had done.

Less than 35 years after the release of African honeybees outside Sao Paulo, Brazil, their descendants, popularly known as killer bees, had migrated as far north as southern Texas.

A) Less than 35 years after the release of African honeybees outside Sao Paulo, Brazil,

B) In less than 35 years since releasing African honeybees outside Sao Paulo, Brazil,

I think "less than ...." shows a specific POINT of time at which descendents HAD DONE. we need a specifit POINT of time to show that an action HAD FINISHED at that point of time

in B, "in less than ...." shows a DURATION of time. Past perfect needs a specific POINT , not DURATION of time to show that an action had finished at that point. This is why B is wrong.

Past perfect can NOT go with DURATION OF TIME showned.There are 2 cases.

1. Past perfect needs a point of time which show the starting of the action and dose not need a point of time which show the ending of the action. The ending of the action is the point of time of speaking-in the past.

2. Past perfect needs a point of time (in past) which shows the ending of the action and dose not need a point of time which show the starting of the action. In this case, past perfect said that at that poit of time in the past, the action had finished. This is the case, choice A in above problem shows.

in short, past perfect need only one of specific point of time in the part, the poit of time at which the action begins or the point of time at which the action ends

Ron,Stacey, Manhantan expert. pls, confirm my idea. Am I correct?

A little convoluted and overly wordy, but yes, the past perfect needs some point of time to refer to so it can reference an earlier action..

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

choice c: 'the 35 years since' implies that the present is 35 years after the release date. not only does this conflict with the meaning of the original, but it also renders the past perfect (from the underlined part) inappropriate: you'd need present perfect in this case. also, since the release is a point event, it would belong in the simple past. [quote][/quote]

Referring to above explanation from Ron -

Hi Ron,

Can you please explain choice(c)? I don't understand your above reasoning.

which part is giving you trouble?

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

Hi Ron et All - Can you please help me understand why B is wrong!?

I did go through the 3 pages and the explanation given in the 1st page for Option B. But not able to understand them.

* choice b implies that the honeybees' descendants somehow released them (perhaps a very bizarre case of karmic cycles, but absurd no matter what).

Below are my understanding of the other answer choices. Pls correct me If I have misunderstood any.

In C and E - the article "the" makes them wrong.
D - Can be knocked out because of COMMA + WHEN. The things that precede the COMMA should be of time/yrs etc.


Cheers

B makes it sounds like the descendents that were alive 35 years later released the honeybees initially..

you have indicated valid reasons to reject C/D/E..

_________________
Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

since period of 10,000 years ended in 1950, can't we use past perfect "had grown" instead of "did". will it have same meaning or different meaning

Also, i did not understand what is meant by END RESULT in http://www.beatthegmat.com/comma-that-n ... tml#210220 and how "jesse had flown almost a million miles during those two years" exemplifies this concept

you should not use past perfect unless there is already a past tense or a time marker in the sentence. in your example there is none, but if we changed it to "from 1990 to 2010 the global economy grew" (notice it is now fully in the past, rather than present perfect), then the past perfect would be optional. i say optional because if there are clear indicators in the sentence differentiating two different times in the past that things happened, you don't necessarily NEED the past perfect to tell them apart..

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

tim,
how does sentence i mentioned differs from correct option A at post69163.html . option A has "earlier in the year" that marks completion of a time event in past and here "to 1950" does the same

somehow below query in my last post was not addressed
Also, i did not understand what is meant by END RESULT in http://www.beatthegmat.com/comma-that-n ... tml#210220 and how "jesse had flown almost a million miles during those two years" exemplifies this concept

vikram --

just fyi:
ordinarily, we try to answer all posts on the forum in chronological order. however, when a non-paying client posts an exceptionally high volume of posts on the forum, we will sometimes limit or delay our responses to that poster, so that others (especially clients of the company) are not made to wait unfairly.

tim will answer your post in due course, but that's where we stand on this sort of thing.



if you have a question about a post on another forum, please post on that thread (in that forum), not here. thanks.

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

in the post you refer to, we have the unusual situation where there was a hypothetical recession that, had it occurred, would have occurred in the past, and the people's fears preceded that, so we use the past perfect..

_________________
Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

digging this from grave and replying just to thank for the awesome explanations and discussions.

you're welcome!

_________________
Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor