The Ten Great Buildings of China were Built by the Community GMAT Sentence Correction

Question: The Ten Great Buildings of China were built by the Community rulers in 1959 in Beijing on a grand scale, constructions that comprised an architectural amalgam of three major factors of modernism, communism, and historicism and reflected the diverse aspects of the Chinese past and the then extant cultural canvas

A) that comprised an architectural amalgam of three major factors of modernism, communism, and historicism and reflected
B) comprising an architectural amalgam of three major factors of modernism, communism, and historicism and that reflecting
C) that comprised an architectural amalgam of three major factors of modernism, communism, and historicism and reflecting
D) that comprised an architectural amalgam of three major factors of modernism, communism, and historicism that reflected
E) comprising an architectural amalgam of three major factors of modernism, communism, and historicism and reflecting

Answer: E
Explanation: The following arguments could be used to defend the suggested language change:

• Parallelism
• Considering two separate truths
• Modifiers

The expression ‘the then extant’ has been used to refer to the prevailing culture at the time of the construction of the buildings to distinguish it from the then past culture. At this moment, both are past events. Looked in the same vein, the constructions also comprised those three factors that were prevailing then but still took the past tense verb. So the use of past tense ‘reflected’ isn’t aberrant.

Option E
comprising an architectural amalgam of three major factors of modernism, communism, and historicism and reflecting- Correct. Based on the usage of "comprised" and "reflected" this is the right choice. Since a historical monument once built will continue to depict its heritage and culture, usage of past tense isn't advisable. So instead of past participles we need present participles as used in this option. Further, this option does not need an active verb because it forms an absolute phrase, a type of modifier; absolute phrases are modifying phrases that modify the entirety of a clause.

Let’s see the available options.

Option A
that comprised an architectural amalgam of three major factors of modernism, communism, and historicism and reflected- Incorrect. Not parallel. Need that reflected after and. The constructions were doing two things 1. They comprised an amalgam and 2. They reflected the past and the present cultures. These two are independent of each other. Therefore we do need to have a “that” after the ‘and’ to keep the sentence symmetrical. It is missing the 'that' parallelism before the word 'reflected'.

Option B
comprising an architectural amalgam of three major factors of modernism, communism, and historicism and that reflecting- Incorrect. Can be eliminated for using various forms of unparalleled inputs.

Option C
that comprised an architectural amalgam of three major factors of modernism, communism, and historicism and reflecting- Incorrect. Not parallel. Same as B. Can be easily dispensed for using various forms of unparalleled inputs. The use of "that" in this option makes the sentence ambiguous for no reason.

Option D
that comprised an architectural amalgam of three major factors of modernism, communism, and historicism that reflected- Incorrect. Meaning issue. It changes the meaning.

“The Ten Great Buildings of China were built by the Community”- is a GMAT sentence correction question. These sorts of questions come up with grammatical errors in the underlined part of the sentence. The candidates need to select the correct statement given in the options. The GMAT sentence correction section demands good skills in grammar since the candidate has to identify common grammatical errors. GMAT sentence correction is a part of GMAT verbal.

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