ShmoopTube

00:03

Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by people who sell vegetables.

00:07

You say tomato, he says...75 cents.

00:13

What should replace the underlined word below?

00:16

John raised vegetables and sells them later.

00:27

We need to rely on our old friend, parallel construction, to get this one right.

00:30

Let's hope he still remembers us after all these years.

00:34

We can cross out choice (A) right from the get-go.

00:36

"Raised" is in the past tense, and "sells" is in the present tense, so there's no way

00:41

these guys are parallel.

00:42

We guess raised is just a little too retro to chill with his present tense friend.

00:48

In choice (B), the helping verb, "has" signals that we're in the present perfect tense.

00:53

This, of course, doesn't match with the past tense of "raised," so (B) can be nixed.

01:01

(D) gets a little closer, because it does refer to the selling having occurred in the

01:05

past.

01:06

Unfortunately, the helping verb, "had," takes it out of the running, since it places it

01:11

in past perfect tense, rather than the past.

01:14

Too bad, (D). Maybe, you should've cut that helping verb out of your life a long time ago.

01:19

(C) is the correct answer because "sold" is in the past tense like "raised."

01:25

Although selling comes after raising, this sentence requires parallel verb construction

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since both actions are part of a single process.

01:31

If John raised vegetables in the past tense, then he sold them later in the past tense as well.

01:37

It must've been sad for John to sell those vegetables, after he'd seen them grow up from

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little seedlings...

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