sudeshpatodiya wrote:
Quote:
Neanderthals had a vocal tract that resembled those of the apes and so were probably without language, a shortcoming that may explain why they were supplanted by our own species.
(A) Neanderthals had a vocal tract that resembled those of the apes
(B) Neanderthals had a vocal tract resembling an ape’s
(C) The vocal tracts of Neanderthals resembled an ape’s
(D) The Neanderthal’s vocal tracts resembled the apes’
(E) The vocal tracts of the Neanderthals resembled those of the apes
GMATNinja Can you please explain this one.
Have read a lot of comments but still confused.
How is the subject of second part 'and so' - Neanderthals? Didn't understand this. Why is E wrong?
Quote:
(A) Neanderthals had a vocal tract that resembled those of the apes
First, check out the parallelism: "Neanderthals (1)
had a vocal tract {...} and (so) (2)
were probably without language..." - we have a parallel list of verbs, and both verbs make sense with the subject "Neanderthals". No issue there.
But notice that the comparison is between ONE vocal tract (“
a vocal tract”) and MULTIPLE ape vocal tracts (“
those of the apes”). Comparing a
singular vocal tract to
plural vocal tracts isn't ideal here.
In addition, the use of “the” in front of "apes" makes it seem like the vocal tracts of the Neanderthals are like those of SPECIFIC apes, not apes in general. Is that grammatically
wrong? Probably not... but it doesn't fit with the context, which suggests that the author wants to compare the vocal tracts of Neanderthals to those of apes
in general. The use of "the" leaves the reader wondering, "WHICH specific apes are we talking about?".
Admittedly, these aren't particularly solid reasons to eliminate (A), so let's hang on to it for now and check out the other options.
Quote:
(B) Neanderthals had a vocal tract resembling an ape’s
Again, the parallelism checks out: "Neanderthals (1)
had a vocal tract {...} and (so) (2)
were probably without language..." - We have two parallel verbs, and both work with the subject "Neanderthals".
In (B), we are comparing a SINGULAR body part (the vocal tract of Neanderthals) to another SINGULAR body part (the vocal tract of an ape), so the comparison works a little better than the one in (A).
Also, (B) compares the vocal tract of a general ape (AN ape) to the Neanderthals’ tract. If that's not clear, consider of these two examples:
1) "The ape has five fingers on each hand." - The article "the" suggests that we are talking about ONE specific ape.
2) "An ape has five fingers on each hand." - The article "an" suggests that we are talking about a non-specific ape--pick an ape, any ape, and that ape ought to have five fingers.
That's probably enough to go with (B) over (A), so let's keep this one.
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(C) The vocal tracts of Neanderthals resembled an ape’s
There are two main problems here.
First, the comparison isn’t great... the issue is similar to what we saw in (A), only now we have MANY Neanderthal vocal tracts compared to only ONE ape vocal tract.
More importantly, there's a meaning issue with the parallelism: “The vocal tracts of Neanderthals (1)
resembled an ape’s and (so) (2)
were probably without language...”.
- We have a parallel list of verbs, but notice that both verbs can be tied back to the subject "vocal tracts"--that gives us, "The vocal tracts … were probably without language.”
- That doesn't make much sense. As explained in this post, "vocal tracts" can produce sound, but they can't have a language of their own--parts of the body usually can’t speak on their own (unless we're talking about Osmosis Jones--then maybe!).
We can get rid of (C).
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(D) The Neanderthal’s vocal tracts resembled the apes’
Here the sentence is comparing ONE Neanderthal’s vocal tracts to MULTIPLE apes’ vocal tracts. My knowledge of biology isn’t great, but I’m pretty sure Neanderthals (and humans) only have ONE vocal tract, so this doesn’t make much sense.
Also, as we saw above, it’s a bit weird to compare the tract(s) of SPECIFIC (“the”) Neanderthal’s to the tract(s) of SPECIFIC ("the") apes.
More importantly, we have the same meaning issue that we saw in (C): “the Neanderthal’s
vocal tracts … were probably without language.” It’s the
Neanderthals who were probably without language, not their
vocal tracts.
We can say goodbye to (D).
Quote:
(E) The vocal tracts of the Neanderthals resembled those of the apes
The comparison is okay here, but, again, the articles aren't ideal: we have "the" (specific) Neanderthals and "the" (specific) apes.
But we have the same glaring meaning issue that we saw in (C) and (D), so (E) is out.
(B) is the best one!
Disclaimer: If you aren't convinced that (B) is better than (A), don't stress over it too much. Most of these are pretty subtle arguments, and that might be why this question was retired from the official guides before 2009.
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