Question
Between 14,000 and 8,000 B.C. the ice cap that covered northern Asia, Europe, and America began to melt, uncovering vast new areas that were to be occupied by migrating peoples moving northward.
Option A
Option B
Option C
Option D
Option E
(This question is from Official Guide. Therefore, because of copyrights, the complete question cannot be copied here. The question can be accessed at GMAT Club)
Solution
Sentence Analysis
- Between 14,000 and 8,000 B.C. (Prepositional phrase modifying the main verb)
- the ice cap (Main Subject)
- that covered northern Asia, Europe, and America (Dependent clause modifying ‘ice cap’. Subject: that; Verb: covered)
- began to melt, (Main Verb: began)
- uncovering vast new areas (Comma+Verb-ing modifier modifying the main clause)
- that were to be occupied by migrating peoples moving northward. (Dependent clause modifying ‘areas’ – Subject: that; Verb: ‘were to be occupied’)
- uncovering vast new areas (Comma+Verb-ing modifier modifying the main clause)
The sentence says that sometime in the past, some ice cap began to melt and that this melting uncovered vast new areas. These areas were eventually occupied by migrating people moving northward.
The sentence is correct as is.
Option Analysis
(A) Correct.
(B) Incorrect. The use of ‘to uncover’ nonsensically suggests that the ice cap began melting with an intention to uncover vast new areas.
(C) Incorrect. This construction suggests that the ice cap began to uncover new areas by melting. However, the ‘uncovering’ was not a direct action of the ice cap; it was just a result of melting of ice caps.
(D) Incorrect. This option nonsensically suggests that after melting, ice cap began uncovering new areas. Did the ice cap exist after melting?!!
Besides, the use of present tenses ‘are to be occupied’ seems nonsensical here since it indicates that those areas will be occupied in the future (from now). In these thousands of years, these areas have not been occupied, and we are making a prediction that these areas will be occupied by a particular type of people. This doesn’t make sense.
(E) Incorrect. Same error as in option C. The verb tense ‘would begin’ is fine; it indicates that we are narrating (from an observer perspective) what happened in that period.
An observation from this question is that the verb-ing ‘uncovering’ does not make sense with the subject ‘ice cap’: ice cap didn’t do the action of ‘uncovering’. ‘Uncovering of the areas’ happened on its own as a direct consequence of ‘melting’. Thus, we can learn from this question that in ‘comma+verb-ing structure’, verb-ing doesn’t need to always make sense with the subject as long as it provides a direct consequence of the action of the clause.
Another interesting observation is the use of “peoples” in the non-underlined part. We can learn from this question that “peoples” is also acceptable.
If you have any doubts regarding any part of this solution, please feel free to ask in the comments section.
Please could you comment on the usage of “were to be” – Isn’t this a subjunctive verb form? I know you should never reject any option based on what “sounds” awkward but this makes me question why is it written in this form?
“In 1990, I met a person who was to become the president of the US”.
The “was to become” in the above sentence and “were to be” in the given sentence are not presenting any hypothetical situations but presenting situations that happened in the future from the perspective of a moment in the past.
– Chiranjeev
Thanks for the great work on these solutions.
Is “to melt” “to + verb construction? There is no intention attached with “to melt”. Please help.
Regards,
Shiv
Yes. So, what do we take away from this? That to+verb doesn’t always indicate the purpose 🙂
Hi CJ,
It is not clear to me why “would begin” is fine in option E?
According to me, the event of ice cap melting happened b/w a given time period; there was no uncertainty about it as expressed by use of verb “would begin”.
Hi CJ!
I had a query in this question.
In the non underlined portion, the author starts of by saying “between certain periods”. Now the verb used here is Simple past (began).
I wanted to understand if it is Ok to use simple past for some event which occurred over a period of time (here b/w 14000BC and 8000 BC) as it essentially means that melting began between certain period of time.
Thanks
Yes. Perfectly ok.
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