Excavators at the Indus Valley Site of Harappa in Eastern Pakistan Say the Discovery of Inscribed Shards Dating to Circa 2800–2600 B.C

Question: Excavators at the Indus Valley site of Harappa in eastern Pakistan say the discovery of inscribed shards dating to circa 2800–2600 B.C. indicate their development of a Harappan writing system, the use of inscribed seals impressed into clay for marking ownership, and the standardization of weights for trade or taxation occurred many decades, it not centuries, earlier than was previously believed.

1. Indicate their development of a Harappan writing system, the use of
2. Indicate that the development of a Harappan writing system, using
3. Indicates that their development of a Harappan writing system, using
4. Indicates the development of a Harappan writing system, their use of
5. Indicates that the development of a Harappan writing system, the use of

“Excavators at the Indus Valley site of Harappa in eastern Pakistan say the discovery of inscribed shards dating to circa 2800–2600 B.C. indicate their development of a Harappan writing system, the use of inscribed seals impressed into clay for marking ownership, and the standardization of weights for trade or taxation occurred many decades, it not centuries, earlier than was previously believed.”- is a GMAT sentence correction question. This particular GMAT sentence correction topic has been taken from the book ‘The Official Guide of GMAT Verbal Review, 2nd Edition, 2009’. This question checks Parallelism, Comparison of two elements and Modifiers. GMAT Sentence Correction questions comprise 11-16 questions to be completed within 65 minutes. Each Sentence Correction question contains a sentence with an underlined portion that includes 0-2 errors.

Answer: E

Explanation: The following concepts are tested in the sentence:

1. Subject-verb agreement
2. Meaning
3. Modifiers
4. Pronouns

Option A: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because it refers to the singular noun “discovery” with the plural verb “indicate”. Also, this option suffers from pronoun error as the pronoun used in the option, “their” has no clear or logical referent. Option A uses the construction “indicate+clause” instead of using the preferred construction “indicate+that+clause” and it makes the sentence look awkward. So, Option A is incorrect.

Option B: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because it also refers to the singular noun “discovery” with the plural verb “indicate”. Also, this option changes the meaning of the sentence by using the phrase “using inscribed…..ownership”. The use of a present participle in this option indicates that the development of the Harappan writing system was done by using inscribed seals impressed into clay for marking ownership. So, Option B is incorrect.

Option C: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because the pronoun used in this option “their” has no clear and logical referent. It also changes the meaning of the sentence by using the phrase “using inscribed seals….ownership”. Since this option suffers from pronoun and meaning errors, Option C is incorrect.

Option D: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because it suffers from pronoun errors. The pronoun “their” has no clear and logical referent. Also, it uses the construction “indicate+clause” instead of using the preferred construction “indicate+that+clause”. So, Option D is incorrect.

Option E: Correct
This option is correct because it correctly refers to the singular noun “discovery” with the singular verb “indicates”. Also, this option avoids the pronoun error and it uses no pronouns, and the usage of the phrase “the use of….ownership” accurately conveys the intended meaning of the sentence. It also uses the preferred construction “indicates+that+clause” So, Option E is correct.

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