Participle

[sonu_gmat]

The war, lasting for 60 days, was faught b/w A & B.

The war, which lasted for 60days, was fought b/w A & B.

Is first one wrong because it uses present participle 'lasting'. I've seen such usage. This not a official problem. This is a part of an SC which I rephrased it for my understanding. I went with first one because it is less wordy. But the second one is OA.

Following is from one of MGMAT staff's post.

if the participial phrase comes before the verb of the main clause, then you usually can check it with the rule that you're propounding:
(1) joe, racing down the wet sidewalk, slipped and fell.
(2) racing down the wet sidewalk, joe slipped and fell.
either of these sentences means the same thing as 'joe slipped and fell as/while he was racing down the wet sidewalk'. by contrast, trying to place the participle after the verb - joe slipped and fell, racing down the sidewalk - yields a sentence that doesn't make any sense.

Following the same way as above, Only interpretation I think I can make from the SC I posted is 'which was lasting for 60 days'. If we interpret this way then second one is better.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Here is one more similar type. Please explain.

X continued working, in spite of recurrent injuries, always hoping to return........
X continued on working, even with injuries that recurred, and always hoped to return.......

Is 'continued on' redundant? If the second choice were "X continued working, in spite of recurrent injuries,and always hoped to return......." would it have been correct?

Thanks in advance.

[RonPurewal]

The war, lasting for 60 days, was faught b/w A & B.

The war, which lasted for 60days, was fought b/w A & B.

what is "b/w"?
from context, i'll assume that it means "between", but i've never seen this before. the only "b/w" i've ever seen is "black & white", as for television sets.)

an admonishment:
please, please, DO NOT USE ABBREVIATIONS IN YOUR EXAMPLES AND QUESTIONS.
this is especially important since you are a relatively frequent poster here these days.
we thank you in advance for taking the extra 0.5 seconds required to type "between" in its entirety.

--

Is first one wrong because it uses present participle 'lasting'. I've seen such usage. This not a official problem. This is a part of an SC which I rephrased it for my understanding. I went with first one because it is less wordy. But the second one is OA.

Following is from one of MGMAT staff's post.

if the participial phrase comes before the verb of the main clause, then you usually can check it with the rule that you're propounding:
(1) joe, racing down the wet sidewalk, slipped and fell.
(2) racing down the wet sidewalk, joe slipped and fell.
either of these sentences means the same thing as 'joe slipped and fell as/while he was racing down the wet sidewalk'. by contrast, trying to place the participle after the verb - joe slipped and fell, racing down the sidewalk - yields a sentence that doesn't make any sense.

note the difference between my example sentence and yours.

joe, racing down the sidewalk, slipped and fell makes sense.
in particular, you DON'T want "racing" and "slipped and fell" to be PARALLEL, because the IDEAS are not parallel: one event (slipped and fell) happened DURING or AS PART OF of the other event (racing down the sidewalk).
if i were to write this as a parallel construction - joe raced down the sidewalk, slipped, and fell - it wouldn't make sense, because that would imply that (a) racing down the sidewalk, (b) slipping, and (c) falling were all events of equal priority (which were not necessarily related, and, presumably occurred in sequence).

your example, on the other hand, is not like this.
in your example, THE TWO IDEAS ARE COMPLETELY PARALLEL: both of them are standalone, unrelated facts about the war.
therefore, the verbs should be in the same tense. in the case of "the war, which lasted 60 days, was fought between A and B", this is the case: "lasted" and "fought" are both in the simple past tense.
if you wrote "the war, lasting 60 days, was fought between A and B", that's the wrong relationship. think about joe's running down the sidewalk when, all of a sudden, he slipped and fell; the war was NOT busy lasting for sixty days when, all of a sudden, it was fought between a and b. that makes no sense.

Is 'continued on' redundant?

yes. this would be a fatal error if it appeared on the gmat.
as would "reply back", "added bonus", etc.

If the second choice were "X continued working, in spite of recurrent injuries,and always hoped to return......." would it have been correct?

Thanks in advance.

that's probably acceptable, but it's inferior to the correct version.

* first, "hoping" was an ongoing process, contemporaneous with "working", so the parallelism makes sense. moreover, the use of "-ing" to represent an ongoing process is appropriate.

* second, and more importantly, "and hoped" does not imply any relationship between the actions in the sentence and "hoping". since the sentence is clearly intended to imply such a relationship, this is illogical.
examples:
* joe trained hard and ate lots of food, hoping to become a professional bodybuilder --> this is the preferred version. the -ing modifier CONNECTS the IDEA of "hoping" to the other two actions - i.e., joe undertook these actions because he was hoping to become a bodybuilder. moreover, "trained" and "ate" themselves are in parallel because they are contemporaneous but separate actions (i.e., neither is the genesis of the other).
* joe trained hard, ate lots of food, and hoped to become a professional bodybuilder --> this may look superficially good because all three verbs are parallel, but it's specious parallelism. these verbs shouldn't be parallel, because "hoping" was an ongoing thing associated with the other two (which, in turn, should be parallel because they are contemporaneous but separate actions).

this stuff is pretty subtle. indeed, you may find that your best course of action is simply to commit the acceptable versions to memory, and then look for sentences that look like them.
that's the entire way we learn language as kids - imitate the "proper" speech of adults - so it may be the best way to go here, too. unless you have a ridiculous memory, it's probably not worthwhile to try to memorize all the "rules" governing subtleties such as this one.

[sonu_gmat]

Ron,

Thanks a lot for such a nice and elaborate explanation. Very much appreciate your time and help.

b/w is just a shorthand(my own) of 'between'. I was too much focussed on the content. I'll avoid those in future.

Can you please comment on the following two posts.

http://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/post25584.html#p25584

http://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/one-of-structure-t6822.html

[StaceyKoprince]

If you have a question about a specific post / problem, please post your question as part of that problem's thread. Please also make sure that you ask a specific question / indicate what you want to know about that problem.

Ron is the last poster on your first link and I'm the last poster on your second link, so I'll assume that your questions have been answered. If you have additional questions about either of those, please post your specific questions in those threads. Thanks!

[destmba]

I found a sentence structure similar to the following one in an article.

The Europian colonies attracted a mass immigration of poor people during the 19th century, coming from all parts of the world.

The above sentence does not sound right. The participle seems to modify the "Europian colonies" though the author intended it to modify the "immigrants".

In such structures, does the participle always modify the main subject of the sentence?

Please clarify.

[sonu_gmat]

When a phrase modifies preceeding noun does it need to be followed by comma? or it depends on the type of phrase it is.

I observed in the OG that when it's a participial phrase it is not followed by comma.
e.g. SC awarded CIA discretionary power enabling it to .....
....., a technique called X-ray emission, which........, is finding uses......

When the modifying phrase is adjectival phrase OG says it must be set off by a pair of commas.
The bridge of Trinquetaille, X's view over the ... , was sold for $$$, the highest price ever paid for...

Please explain.

[RonPurewal]

I observed in the OG that when it's a participial phrase it is not followed by comma.
e.g. SC awarded CIA discretionary power enabling it to .....

with -ING MODIFIERS:

* if the modifier functions as an ADJECTIVE (modifying the preceding NOUN), then you DO NOT use a comma before it.

* if the modifier functions as an ADVERB (modfying the entire preceding CLAUSE), then you DO use a comma before it.

examples:

* joe turned off the highway, heading toward gainesville
--> joe is NOW heading toward gainesville (i.e., AFTER turning off the highway). in this case, "heading toward gainesville" modifies the entire preceding clause "joe turned off the highway".

* joe turned off the highway heading toward gainesville
--> joe is NOT heading toward gainesville ANYMORE (i.e., the highway itself is headed toward gainesville, and joe has turned off it). in this case, "heading toward gainesville" modifies only the word "highway"..

big distinction.

....., a technique called X-ray emission, which........, is finding uses......

for PAST participles (taken, called, grown, etc.), this turns on the difference between essential and nonessential modifiers.

if the modifier is ESSENTIAL - i.e., it's needed to distinguish the particular noun you're talking about from other nouns in its class - then you DON'T use a comma.

if the modifier is NONESSENTIAL - i.e., it just gives additional detail, but the sentence makes sense without it - then you DO use a comma.

examples:

* the girl named stephanie is on the left.
--> ESSENTIAL modifier. there are other girls, with other names, and i have to distinguish stephanie from them.

* the girl, named stephanie, is on the left.
--> NONESSENTIAL modifier. we already know who "the girl" is, from some previous context.

When the modifying phrase is adjectival phrase OG says it must be set off by a pair of commas.
The bridge of Trinquetaille, X's view over the ... , was sold for $$$, the highest price ever paid for...

yeah. these kinds of things would be absolute gibberish without commas.

i can think of one exception to this, and that's when sentences BEGIN with the construction "The (general category) (specific name)".
example:
The author Ernest Hemingway lived in Key West, Florida.

[wangjieava23]

Hi， Ron and other instructors, look at this OG sentence:

Neuroscientists, having amassed a wealth of knowledge over the past twenty years about the brain and its development from birth to adulthood, are now drawing solid conclusions about how the human brain grows and how babies acquire language.

This is a correct sentence fron SC. But in this context, ving modifier seem not to have any means related with "as or during." Is "having amassed...." an adjective modifier describing "Neuroscientists"? And What role does this modifier play in the sentence?

[RonPurewal]

I found a sentence structure similar to the following one in an article.

The Europian colonies attracted a mass immigration of poor people during the 19th century, coming from all parts of the world.

The above sentence does not sound right. The participle seems to modify the "Europian colonies" though the author intended it to modify the "immigrants".

In such structures, does the participle always modify the main subject of the sentence?

Please clarify.

the above sentence is not written correctly. what's the source of this article?

[RonPurewal]

Hi， Ron and other instructors, look at this OG sentence:

Neuroscientists, having amassed a wealth of knowledge over the past twenty years about the brain and its development from birth to adulthood, are now drawing solid conclusions about how the human brain grows and how babies acquire language.

This is a correct sentence fron SC. But in this context, ving modifier seem not to have any means related with "as or during." Is "having amassed...." an adjective modifier describing "Neuroscientists"? And What role does this modifier play in the sentence?

it modifies neuroscientists.

it's the modifier form of "they have amassed..." (= a present perfect construction, implying that the accumulation of knowledge has an impact upon the present situation).