SC: With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees

[cesar.rodriguez.blanco]

I do not know how to deal with this SC: I like none of the options
Consider as is wrong, so C and D are out.
What happens with A, B and E?

With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Farenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with 60 square miles of water though to be frozen from top to bottom

A) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with
B) Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, its
C) Europa has long been considered as far too cold to support life and has
D) Europa, long considered as far too cold to support life, and its
E) Europa, long considered to be far too cold to support life, and to have

[sunny.jain]

IMO : A

With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Farenheit, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life, and with 60 square miles of water though to be frozen from top to bottom

Can be reconstructed as :
With surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Farenheit and with 60 square miles of water though to be frozen from top to bottom, Jupiter's moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life.

I think the reason why they kept, Jupiter's moon.... in between, because of modifier issue, Modifier must touch the Noun.

C,D,E are out because of incorrect IDIOM :
consider as, consider to are wrong.
consider X Y is correct idiom.

Out of A and B : A maintains parallelism.
Please provide OA.

[cesar.rodriguez.blanco]

OA is B.
What is wrong with the other answer choices?

[RonPurewal]

OA is B.
What is wrong with the other answer choices?

brief explanations:

(a)
"and with ..." isn't parallel to anything.
AND sets up parallelism, so there must be something to which "with..." can be parallel (other prepositional phrase, or other adverbial modifier). there is no such thing.

(b)
correct.
this is a type of modifier with which you should be familiar. (i have no idea what it's called - sorry)
here's another example:
john, his arms flailing in the wind, called out desperately for help.

note that the presence of frozen water SUPPORTS the claim that europa is "far too cold to support life", so it should be a MODIFIER.
this is done here.
it's inappropriate to place these two things in parallel with AND.

(c)
AND is rhetorically inappropriate (see above).
"considered as" is unidiomatic here.

(d)
this is not a sentence. (the clause before "and" doesn't have a verb; "considered" is a participle, not a verb, here)
"considered as" is unidiomatic here.

(e)
i don't think "considered to be" is wrong, although it's wordier than just "considered..."
this sentence has no verb at all! the only verb forms present are participles and infinitives, none of which is eligible to be the main verb of the sentence.

[purduesr]

In Choice A,

How come "With 60 square miles of..." isn't parallel to "To support life"

Aren't they prepositional phrase????

[RonPurewal]

In Choice A,

How come "With 60 square miles of..." isn't parallel to "To support life"

Aren't they prepositional phrase????

first of all, no, "to support life" is not a prepositional phrase. it's an infinitive. these are totally different constructions.

it's possible for "to" to be a preposition - e.g., i went to the grocery store - but that's not what this "to" is doing.
to help you tell the difference, note that ALL prepositions must be followed by NOUNS. since "support life" is a verb, not a noun, you have proof that this "to" is not a preposition.

second, "with... is a MODIFIER, and "to support life" is PART OF THE MAIN CLAUSE. therefore, there are no grounds for parallelism here.

[manjeet.singh]

Hi Ron..

How to identify such modifiers because while solving this question i ruled out the right answer choice considering it a run on sentence

[RonPurewal]

Hi Ron..

How to identify such modifiers because while solving this question i ruled out the right answer choice considering it a run on sentence

the best way to recognize them -- indeed, the only way -- is to look at examples of correct usage of each construction, until the constructions are thoroughly burned into your head.

this particular sort of construction is known as an "absolute phrase".
google it if you want to see tons and tons and tons of examples.

here's one hit i got on google:
http://www.cc.ysu.edu/~tacopela/Writing/Absolutes1.htm

(by the way, this is the one and only reason to care what grammatical constructions are called -- so you can google them and look at examples. if you're naming grammatical constructions during the actual problems, you're almost certainly not going to finish the problems on time.)

[shatabdo.kal]

Ron don't you think an "And" is missing in B ?
life, AND its

[RonPurewal]

Ron don't you think an "And" is missing in B ?
life, AND its

no.

this is a type of modifier with which you should be familiar. (if you're the type who likes to name things, this is called an "absolute phrase".)
here's another example:
john, his arms flailing in the wind, called out desperately for help.

--

far more importantly, remember that this is an OFFICIAL problem.
DO NOT QUESTION THE CORRECT ANSWERS TO OFFICIAL PROBLEMS.
it will always be a waste of your time to do this -- the official answers are never incorrect.

in summary:
* the WRONG question to ask is, "isn't that wrong?"
(the answer to this question will, 100% of the time, be "no, it's not wrong.")
* the RIGHT question to ask is, "what sort of construction is this, how is it used, and what can i do to recognize it in the future?"

[punzo]

[quote="RonPurewal"[/quote]

here's another example:
john, his arms flailing in the wind, called out desperately for help.
[/quote]

Hi Ron,

One question.
In the above example given by you, 'John' is the noun and 'his arm flailing in the wind' is the noun modifier, which is touching the noun.
But the noun modifier 'its 60 square miles of ......' does not touch the noun 'Jupiter's moon Europa' that is supposed to be modified.

Thanks.
Punzo

[RonPurewal]

here's another example:
john, his arms flailing in the wind, called out desperately for help.

Hi Ron,

One question.
In the above example given by you, 'John' is the noun and 'his arm flailing in the wind' is the noun modifier, which is touching the noun.
But the noun modifier 'its 60 square miles of ......' does not touch the noun 'Jupiter's moon Europa' that is supposed to be modified.

Thanks.
Punzo

this is correct.

in fact, this sort of modifier ("absolute phrase") usually DOESN'T touch the noun that is actually describing.

check out this problem:
shark-s-tooth-t6220.html
in that correct answer, "each one ready..." modifies "spare teeth", which is the SUBJECT of the preceding clause.

[jenn.kimbal]

Does the "and" in choices a, d and e necessarily create/mandate two independent clauses? Can you say that these choices are wrong because they create fragments?

[jnelson0612]

Does the "and" in choices a, d and e necessarily create/mandate two independent clauses? Can you say that these choices are wrong because they create fragments?

Hi Jenn,
Check out Ron's explanation of A:
(a)
"and with ..." isn't parallel to anything.
AND sets up parallelism, so there must be something to which "with..." can be parallel (other prepositional phrase, or other adverbial modifier). there is no such thing.

The "and" does not mandate independent clauses; as Ron points out, a prepositional phrase or adverbial modifier would create the necessary parallelism.

[martelena]

At first, I thought that the choice A had the parallelism:
"...moon Europa has long been considered far too cold to support life,
and
with 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom."

or even more concise:
"... Europa has been considered and ... thought ..."

But then I figured out that in that case we wouldn't need comma after "to support life", so I ruled out A mostly on that basis. Was I at least partially correct?

After reading Ron's post, I see now that A does not have proper parallelism.
Do I understand it correctly , that we need to have an EXACT parallel structure to "and with 60 square miles of water thought".

For example, would be such sentence correct (as awkward as it is)?
"Jupiter's moon Europa has long been with surface temperatures estimated at minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit considered far too cold to support life and with 60 square miles of water thought to be frozen from top to bottom."

thanks in advance