The cottontail rabbit population in Orange County, California, has increased unchecked in recent years as a result of the removal of the native fox population and the clearing of surrounding woodlands.

(A) years as a result of the removal of
(B) years as a result of removing
(C) years, resulting from the removing of
(D) years, which is a result of removing
(E) years, which is a result of the removal of

While the OA is A, I think C is a better parallelizm with 'the removing of'. Can anyone help? Many thnks!

P.S. If I guess correctly - it is never a natural way to say 'the removing of something' - can native speakers recognize this mistake immidiately?

parallelism is also there in A " the removal (n) of and the clearing (n) of"

"as a result of" is better than "resulting from"

I want to clarify two points:
1. whether 'as a result of' is better than 'resulting from', at least in gmat?
2. whether it is incorrect or unnatrual to say 'the removing of sth'?

Besides, are there any tips for judging whether or not things like 'the clearing of sth', 'the removing of sth', etc, are correct or natural?

Thanks a lot!

Hi sanj, I just forgot to thank you ;) but I still have those 2 questions

(2) first
removal is better.
there are a bunch of words like these, with specific noun forms that, simply because they exist, are considered better than the corresponding gerund (-ing) forms. notable among this class of nouns are the '-al' forms, like removal, betrayal, etc.

unfortunately, there are no general tips of the form you're soliciting; such are the joys of the english language. the closest i can get to a general rule is this: if a special noun form exists, use it. if not, use the -ing form.
as for your examples above, you wouldn't want 'removing' because removal is a better substitute. clearing, though, is fine because there's no specially designated noun form for that one.

(1)
you can't use 'resulting from' as an adverbial modifier, as is done here. in general, 'resulting from' is only used as an adjective modifier, almost always without a comma, as in
the pollution resulting from the chemical spill forced all the local residents to evacuate.

Thanks Ron.

But is the clearance the n. of clear? Why use clearing instead of clearance?

hmm.
i've never actually seen 'clearance' used in that way, but a quick check of the dictionary shows that it can be. still, at least in american usage, it's largely used for physical height clearances (this parking garage has a 7-foot clearance) or for retail sales (these items are on clearance). there are exceptions, such as in medicine (where 'clearance' refers to the rate at which the kidneys clean substances out of the blood), but this is what i've observed.

still, you can't argue with the gmat. it will always win the argument, so there's no point in trying. sorry!

Hi Ron,

Is there a way that we can tell whether a phrase is an adjectival modifier or an adverbial modifier? I know that one rule you mentioned is if the phrase is used after a comma, it is almost always an adverbial modifier. However in question, why "resulting from..." is an adjectival modifier? I'm confused. Thanks a million!

I believe that Ron was making a point about diction (word choice) rather than a point about grammar, when he wrote "you can't use 'resulting from' as an adverbial modifier." That is, you can't use "resulting from" to modify a verb or clause.

You're right about the grammatical (structural) point; in C the -ing phrase after the comma must be an adverbial modifier. In fact, Ron acknowledges this when he writes "you can't use 'resulting from' as an adverbial modifier, as is done here."

The problem is precisely that C uses as an adverbial modifier an expression that musty be used as a noun modifier.

have the same question that " why it could not be used as adv for " ,resulting from" in choice C

Please help clarify

i'm sorry, i don't understand your question. could you please write it as a complete sentence, without abbreviations or shorthand?
thanks.

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

ron,
there was a rule that you mentioned regarding "preposition + verb-ing". it mentioned "preposition+verb-ing" is incorrect if verbing is the cause of action. i don't exactly remember it now. Can you please mention whether "of removing" in B can be eliminated on basis of that rule.

Ron,

So if I did not have option A ( I know you are going hate such assumptions :) But such understanding will help me in eliminating answer choices in the future.)

B is good enough by the GMAC standards to be a correct answer?

Are we selecting A for the only reason that A is superior to B and that there is absolutely nothing wrong with B?
And can I always go with this rule.

Because I selected B as as a result of removing || the clearing of surrounding woodlands.
So A overrides even the correct parallelism in B?

Thanks


Thanks

it isn't. but, without the comparison that exists in the current problem, that's too much of a "writerly" distinction.
in other words, if you remove the answer choice you're trying to remove, you get an issue that's well beyond the scope of what will actually be tested on the gmat.

this is one of the many reasons why trying to edit/change the official problems is a bad idea.


if you see this kind of comparison, you should be able to trust that principle.



(b) actually doesn't have correct parallelism.
the "the" in front of clearing indicates that it's a noun form. (there's no such word as clearage, or clearation, or whatever, so this is the best noun form you're going to get here.)
to be parallel to the clearing, you need another dedicated noun form. here, that's the removal.

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

"Clearing" can be used as verb or noun whereas "removing" can be used as verb only. In this context, "clearing" is used as noun. Usage of "removing" here may sound parallel construction but at the cost of introduction of wrong word.