SC prep 07 33

小小白一只

Like the great navigators who first sailed around the Earth, to gather information about its size and curvature of its surface, new observations have been made by astronomers that show with startling directness the large-scale geometry of the universe.                     

• A Like the great navigators who first sailed around the Earth, to gather information about its size and curvature of its surface, new observations have been made by astronomers
• B Like the great navigators who first sailed around the Earth for gathering information about its size and also the curvature of its surface, new observations have been made by astronomers
• C Similar to the great navigators who first sailed around the Earth, where they gathered information about its size and the curvature of its surface, astronomers have made new observations
• D Like the great navigators who first sailed around the Earth gathering information about its size and the curvature of its surface, astronomers have made new observations
• E Just as with the great navigators who first sailed around the Earth, gathering information about its size and curvature of the surface, astronomers have made new observations
  

答案D
我想问一下D中的gathering前面没有， 难道不是就近修饰名词earth吗。。这样语义不就错了吗。。
还是，doing也可以跳跃修饰，navigators（定语从句）doing，  修饰navigators， 只是不优而不是绝对错误呢。。            

kluivert

你这提问充分说明了中国人的聪明好学

我刚不久前学了Ving ,有无逗号修饰关系，这道题就打破了常规

查了查大神ron的回复：

Part 1:

if this is an authentic gmatprep problem (which it should be, given its having been posted in this folder), then the answer to this quandary is simple:
it's the official answer, so, "gathering" CAN, as you put it, "skip through the preceding noun." or, more likely, it's used as an adverbial modifier, modifying the preceding CLAUSE.

while you should of course be attuned to the vagaries of official gmat grammar, there's really no point in questioning practices that are deemed acceptable in official answers. if the gmat thinks that something is grammatically ok, then it's grammatically ok. it's their playground, they make the rules, and you're honestly wasting your study time by questioning those rules. (the gmat isn't a democracy.)


Part2:

that's how the modifier is used here, but, otherwise, GMAC's use has been quite consistent (the modifier applies to the noun directly in front of it).

what's MUCH MORE IMPORTANT to notice, though, is that unusual constructions appear along with far simpler eliminations.
• A and B compare navigators with observations. whoops.
• 'where' doesn't make sense in C.
• in E, 'its size' and 'the surface' are non-parallel. (also 'with' is nonsense.)

...so, the weird modifier—like basically everything else that's 'weird'—is just a distraction from easier things.