Thanks Tim and Samarpan!

Thanks!

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Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor

Ron/Stacey,

E. an event that caused the plant and animal extinctions that mark

Yes, E is correct.

Why do we have to use an appositive (an evnet) in option E.

Can't we simply say

"causing the plant and animal extinctions that mark"

- making sure that the result from the preceding independent clause (an asteroid slammed into North America) caused the plant and animal extinctions

isn't it a preferred (in GMAT lang.) one to the one (choice E) that uses an appositive (an event)

My apologies if i am slightly off the topic.

Regards,
Murali.

Regards,
Murali.

we don't have to; it's just one phrasing that works.

just because one version of a sentence is correct, you can't assume that other versions are incorrect!



that seems ok to me, too.



well, both are legitimate.
even if one of them is "preferred", that issue is irrelevant from the standpoint of a gmat student -- you will never be faced with two correct versions of a sentence and forced to select the "preferred" version. your only job here is to tell right from wrong.
sentence correction is already difficult enough; there's little sense in adding additional, unnecessary layers of distinction, such as "preferred"/"not preferred". that just takes something that's already hard and makes it harder!

--

if there is a distinction, i'd say the appositive allows for more indirect causation. i.e., if you use the comma -ING modifier, then there's a sense that the causation was immediate and direct; if you use the appositive, that *could* still be the meaning, but the appositive also allows for the possibility that "the event" set off a chain of events that caused the extinctions more indirectly after a number of steps.

I had the same question as Murali did.

Thanks Ron for the excellent explanation. :)

good stuff

Hi instructors,

I was debating between D and E. After reading Stacey's explanation, I'm still not so sure what "it" in D is referring to:

D. an event that caused plant and animal extinctions, and it marks

can "it" be referring to "an asteroid bigger than Mount Everest slammed into North America" baseed on how this parallelism is set up?

Thanks!

my best guess would be the event, but keep in mind D is not the correct answer anyway, so the pronoun confusion is not surprising.. :)

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

I see, thanks Tim!

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