请教OG18-716语法结构

葱花kdku

附上原题：
Digging in sediments in northern China, evidence has been gathered by scientists suggesting that complex life-forms emerged much earlier than they had previously thought.

(A) evidence has been gathered by scientists suggesting that complex life-forms emerged much earlier than they had
(B) evidence gathered by scientists suggests a much earlier emergence of complex life-forms than had been
(C) scientists have gathered evidence suggesting that complex life-forms emerged much earlier than
(D) scientists have gathered evidence that suggests a much earlier emergence of complex life-forms than that which  was
(E) scientists have gathered evidence which suggests a much earlier emergence of complex life-forms than that

想请问一下正确答案的C选项中suggesting是做什么成分....为什么这里要用v-ing形式不太懂...

Tina奋发

个人认为suggesting在这里修饰evidence，应该是作为定语。我觉得这里用v-ing或是that/which引导的定语从句都可以接受，看了OG的解释，它并没有提到suggest的用法，而它的意思是这题选C的主要问题是在emerge这个词用被动语态比用它的名词形式更好，具体为什么，我表示也不明白，希望有大神来解释一下。cite一下OG 解释：
“(C) Correct. Choosing scientists as the subject of gathered, this version corrects the dangling participle. It also uses a parallel active form of the verb emerge, and does not use redundant material.
(D) In this context it would be preferable to use a verb (emerged). The phrasing used here (suggests a much earlier emergence of) sounds more stilted and is less clear and direct. In addition, inserting that which before previously thought is not only redundant but incorrect English.
(E) The problems described in (D) above are also in evidence here.”
补充一下，在CD上一位大神分享的千行里的解释：ving和have gathered在同一个time frame里，所以用suggesting

葱花kdku

Tina奋发 发表于 2017-10-17 11:48
个人认为suggesting在这里修饰evidence，应该是作为定语。我觉得这里用v-ing或是that/which引导的定语从句 ...

谢谢~

danyuchn

在這題裡，用分詞片語或關代修飾都可以，不是這題的考察點。