The bones of Majungatholus atopus, a meat-eating dinosaur that is a distant relative of
Tyrannosaurus rex and closely resembles South American predatory dinosaurs, have been
discovered in Madagascar.
(A) The bones of Majungatholus atopus, a meat-eating dinosaur that is a distant relative of
Tyrannosaurus rex and closely resembles South American predatory dinosaurs, have been
discovered in Madagascar.
(B) The bones of a meat-eating dinosaur, Majungatholus atopus, a distant relative of
Tyrannosaurus rex and with a close resemblance to South American predatory dinosaurs, has been discovered in Madagascar.
(C) In Madagascar, the bones of a meat-eating dinosaur, Majungatholus atopus, distantly related to Tyrannosaurus rex and closely resembled South American predatory dinosaurs, have been discovered.
(D) A distant relative of Tyrannosaurus rex, bearing a close resemblance to South American predatory dinosaurs is Majungatholus atopus, a meat-eating dinosaur, the bones of which have been discovered in Madagascar.
(E) A distant relative of Tyrannosaurus rex and closely resembling South American predatory dinosaurs, the bones of a meat-eating dinosaur, Majungatholus atopus, have been discovered in Madagascar.

THE OA is A, why not C?

in choice (c), "distantly related to Tyrannosaurus rex" is not parallel to "closely resembled South American predatory dinosaurs". you can't put a participle in parallel to a past-tense verb.

you could rectify the parallelism in this case by replacing the past-tense verb with a present participle, i.e., "resembling". in so doing, you'd be creating a sentence whose construction would be essentially identical to this one (the correct answer on that page is (a)).

i dont know what is it exactly,but i find something odd about closely resembles South American predatory dinosaurs,
doesn't 'resembles closely south american predatory dinosaurs' OR ' and bearing close resemblance to south american predatory dinosaurs 'sound better? what do u say guys?

i just wrote this on an earlier post today:



it applies here as well.
don't bother to question word choice / diction on official problems. it is what it is; it's their playground, and they make the rules. if you oppose their decisions, the only thing that will happen is that you'll get problems wrong.

my personal opinion is that your first alternative is awkward, and that your second alternative is too wordy.
but again, my opinion doesn't matter; the correct answer is correct.

Hi Ron,

You mentioned "distantly related to Tyrannosaurus rex" is not parallel to "closely resembled South American predatory dinosaurs". you can't put a participle in parallel to a past-tense verb.

But isn't:-
distantly = closely
related = resembled

It looks parallel to me tho.

For me, i'll choose A as the subject (The bones of Majungatholus atopus..) comes first.

no.

"related" can be either a past-tense verb or a participle. in this case, though, it's a participle.
when "related" is a verb, it takes an object and an "of" phrase: the paper related concept X to concept Y.

"resembled" is always a past-tense verb.

worse yet, the use of "resembled" makes (c) a run-on, even if nothing is parallel to it. if this past-tense verb is in there (without the relative pronoun "that" as in the correct answer), then you're trying to write a sentence with two main verbs (resembled, have been discovered).
can't do that.

A very basic question ..how will I identify that a word is used as a 'participle' or past
tense verb.....Do I just have to consider the function it performs..or are there any other rules???
Thx in advance...

let's say you have "X VERBed", and you're wondering whether "VERBed" is a participle or a past-tense verb.

* if you can answer "did X VERB?" with a yes, then it's a past tense verb.

* if you can answer "did someone/something VERB X?" with a yes, then it's a past tense verb.

examples:

the speaker dedicated her speech to her late father
"did the speaker dedicate something?" --> yes
"did someone dedicate the speaker?" --> no
hence, past tense verb

the speech dedicated to Mr. Smith was very long
"did the speech dedicate something?" --> no
"did someone dedicate the speech?" --> yes
hence, participle

hope that helps

Can anyone confirm whether a linking verb "is" can be made paralleled to a working verb "resembles", such as the case in choice A)?

Thanks a lot!

you already know that the answer to this question is "yes", since this is exactly what happens in the correct answer.

DON'T QUESTION OFFICIALLY CORRECT ANSWERS. if something appears in an officially correct answer, then it's correct!
ironically, i already addressed this point in this same thread (see here: post21655.html#p21655)

Ron

In addition to what is explained above.I am more comfortable with the below.Would that also be ok.

I put a linking verb after the comma (Modifier) to check whether it would be a participle or past tense

(C) In Madagascar, the bones of a meat-eating dinosaur,

Majungatholus atopus is distantly related to Tyrannosaurus rex
and
Majungatholus atopus is closely resembled South American

the second one sounds awkward...

thanks

yep. that's a good analysis.
you've basically illustrated what i wrote here, earlier on this thread: post20945.html#p20945

your illustration is good, and should help other readers understand more thoroughly. thanks.

Hi Ron,

Can you explain to me

"a meat-eating dinosaur that is a distant relative of
Tyrannosaurus rex and closely resembles..."

why after AND we don't need another THAT, I thought we need AND THAT to keep it parallel with THAT IS.

I had a student ask the very same question today in office hours, so I happened to see this post even though I'm not doing forum work today.

Let's try a visual aid. I'm going to represent everything before the first parallel element and everything after the final (in this case the second) parallel element as a single track, and represent the elements themselves as parallel tracks. Here's the correct answer:

is (a relative)...
...a...dinosaur that AND
(closely) resembles...

Oh, there's nothing after the second parallel element in this particular clause.

Here's your suggestion:

that is (a relative)...
...a...dinosaur AND
that (closely) resembles...

They're both perfectly fine. In the first you find two parallel predicates, and in the second you find two parallel relative clauses.

There are plenty such examples on the GMAT. The 'to' that introduces an infinitive can be distributed (as is the 'that' in the first example above) or repeated (as in the second example above). Same thing works with prepositions, etc.

There are good reasons that you expected a second 'that' in this example (the GMAT uses such repetition to emphasize parallel structure more than Standard Written English really requires, and the GMAT almost always uses such repetition when the parallel elements are more than five or six words apart) but the second 'that' is not strictly necessary.

Hmm, the formatting on that visual aid didn't work. Let me try again. I don't know how to do a hard tab here, so ignore the underlining:

Here's the OS:

____________________is (a relative)...
...a...dinosaur that _____AND
____________________(closely) resembles...

Here's your suggestion:

___________________that is (a relative)...
...a...dinosaur _______AND
___________________that (closely) resembles...