Can one of the MGMAT staff please advise why the Preposition + Noun + Participle is always grammatically incorrect?

example:
With child-care included

Thanks!!

hi -

from what source did you gather that this construction is always wrong? and in what context(s)?

thanks

Ron,

I got this source from something called "Sahil's note" page one. (I wanted to attach this but looks like this forum does not allow to attach)

It states the following




Then there is 1 problem that explains this logic

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a late nineteenth-century feminist, called for urban apartment houses including child-care facilities and clustered suburban houses including communal eating and social facilities.
A) including child-care facilities and clustered suburban houses including communal eating and social facilities
B) that included child-care facilities, and for clustered suburban houses to include communal eating and social facilities
C) with child-care facilities included and for clustered suburban houses to include communal eating and social facilities
D) that included child-care facilities and for clustered suburban houses with communal eating and social facilities
E) to include child-care facilities and for clustered suburban houses with communal eating and social facilities included
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First, we can eliminate all the answer choices that use with communal eating and social facilities included or any other structure that follows this pattern:

preposition + noun + participle

This pattern is almost always wrong on the GMAT, and is certainly wrong in this question. This eliminates C) and E).

A) is ambiguous--is clustered suburban houses parallel with child-carfacilities or with urban apartment houses? We need to repeat for to be sure that clustered suburban houses is parallel with urban apartment houses.

Now we're left with B) and D).

Now, the only difference between B and D is the infinitive to include, which GMAT considers unidiomatic.

That leaves us with D).

Correction: In Sahil's note,

" 4) Any Sentence construction with ‘preposition + noun + participle’ "

was labled under NOT TO USE (Always wrong) section.

ron,

so can we follow this rule ?

i'd be hesitant to posit this as an actual rule. i think that the more precise rule is like this:
if the actual object of the preposition is the verb, not the noun, then you can't use this construction.

here's what i mean:
you can't say "my parents heard about me failing the test". the reason isn't simply because it's prep+pron+verb, though, but because of semantics: they didn't hear about me - they heard about the failing.
the proper way to phrase this sort of thing, which is still really awkward-looking, is "my parents heard about my failing the test".

--

in general, though, i wouldn't rule out this construction outright. for instance, i don't think the gmat would have a problem with a construction like
coats and ties are the dress code for guests eating dinner in the main hall.
i can't think of an alternative way to phrase this that isn't hopelessly awkward.

--

by the way, the "correct" answer to that problem, (d), has a verb tense problem: "that included" isn't appropriate. since that's the simple past tense, concurrent with "called for", the implication is that those amenities already existed. the correct tensed constructions would be "...that would include".