Question
About 5 million acres in the United States have been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia with milky sap that gives mouth sores to cattle, displacing grasses and other cattle food and rendering rangeland worthless.
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
Here’s the sentence structure:
- About 5 million acres (Main subject: ‘acres’)
- in the United States (Prepositional phrase modifying the main subject)
- have been invaded by leafy spurge, (Main Verb: have been invaded)
- a herbaceous plant (A noun – technically, an appositive – modifying ‘leafy spurge’)
- from Eurasia (Prepositional phrase modifying ‘plant’)
- with milky sap (Prepositional phrase modifying ‘plant’)
- that gives mouth sores to cattle, (relative clause modifying ‘plant’. Subject: that; Verb: gives)
- displacing grasses and other cattle food (First Verb-ing modifier modifying the previous clause)
- and rendering rangeland worthless. (Second Verb-ing modifier modifying the previous clause)
- a herbaceous plant (A noun – technically, an appositive – modifying ‘leafy spurge’)
The main part of the sentence is that some land (about 5 million acres) in the US have been invaded by a plant (leafy spurge). The plant is from Eurasia and has milky sap. The plant gives mouth sores to cattle, displaces grasses and other cattle foods and (common sensibly) by doing so, renders rangeland worthless.
There are a couple of problems in the original sentence:
- ‘displacing grasses and other cattle food’ is presented as a verb-ing modifier modifying the preceding clause ‘that gives mouth sores to cattle’. However, the verb-ing modifier does not provide additional information about the clause. ‘Giving mouth sores to cattle’ is unrelated to (and independent of) ‘displacing grasses and other cattle food’.
- The reference of ‘that’ is not very clear. While the clause ‘that gives mouth sores to cattle’ may make sense even if ‘that’ refers to milky sap, the verb-ing ‘displacing grasses…’ will not make sense in such a case since milky sap cannot displace grasses. Ideally, ‘that’ should clearly refer to ‘herbaceous plant’.
Option Analysis
(A) Incorrect. For the issues explained above.
(B) Correct. The option corrects both the problems in the original sentence without introducing any new problem. Since ‘with milky sap’ is enclosed within double commas here, ‘that’ can only refer to ‘herbaceous plant’.
(C) Incorrect. For the following reasons:
- Parallelism (Deterministic error): ‘displacing’ is not parallel to anything before ‘and’.
- Same as 2nd problem in the original sentence
(D) Incorrect. For the following reasons:
- (Deterministic error) There’s no main verb in the sentence. ‘having been invaded’ is a perfect participle (modifier).
- Same as 2nd problem in the original sentence
(E) Incorrect. For the following reasons:
- (Deterministic error) There’s no main verb in the sentence. ‘having been invaded’ is a perfect participle (modifier).
- Since we are presenting a general fact about the ‘herbaceous plant’ and not something true about it currently, we need to use a relative clause with simple present tense (that gives and displaces) rather than the verb-ing form (giving and displacing).
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I think that E has something wrong around “giving”, giving had non-comma, so i think “giving” had modified sap, while according to the original meaning, this action,”give”, was made by “plant”.
That aforementioned point is my thought. Hoping you can give me some information, sincerely
How can we be sure that “gives” goes with the “plant” and not the “sap” in the original sentence? I’ll remain open in this context. Besides, as long as the meaning communicated by an option is logical, it can be different from the meaning in the original sentence.
i don’t know, for a, “comma+ving” should modify the main part or preceding clause. which noun is the subject of Ving?
Hi Eddie,
I’m sorry. I didn’t understand your question. Can you please explain your question again? Also, are you referring to option A?
Hi CJ,
Can’t we assume that the middle part is just an non-essential modifier and that the last part contains two modifiers that are directly modifying the first clause?
1) invaded by leafy spurge- causing displacement of grasses and other cattle food.
2) invaded by leafy spurge- rendering rangeland worthless.
Thanks.
In a way, we can. However, in such a case, the passive construction of the original clause won’t make sense with the verb-ing modifiers. The correct way to write would be an active construction such that the subject of the clause is the doer of the verb-ing modifiers. For example:
Leafy spurge has invaded about 5 million acres in the United States, displacing grasses and other cattle food and rendering rangeland worthless.
Hi CJ,
Follow up on your reply to Palash’s question, does it mean that if we were to analyse sentence as-is without changing into active form, then doer of have been invaded will be 5mn acres of US land, while doer of displacing is leafy spurge, hence doers are not same, therefore verb-ing would not make sense? And then does this apply to all passive voice sentences.
This topic is slightly confusing, request you to please guide. Thank you soo much.
This applies to all passive constructions in which there is actually a doer of the action depicted in the verb-ing modifier. For example:
The company offered Joe a promotion, making him happy. (Correct)
Joe was offered a promotion by the company, making him happy. (Incorrect)
On the other hand, if there’s a construction in which there’s no doer of the action depicted in the verb-ing modifier, we can have a passive construction. For example, in the below question, the correct option has a passive construction followed by a verb-ing modifier. This is fine since the doer is nowhere mentioned in the sentence.
https://gmatclub.com/forum/in-a-previous-design-the-weight-of-the-discus-used-in-track-competiti-100508.html
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