Annual stock holders meeting...

[RonPurewal]

Hi Instructors ,

Can We do a split with regard to parallelism first and eliminate all options except D and E ?

Please let me know your comments.

the order in which you handle splits is irrelevant, as you will ultimately end up with the same result. perhaps i'm misunderstanding the question.

[RonPurewal]

Hi,

Can you kindly confirm why A is wrong? Is it because of wrong usage of including or unidiomatic threat from?

the parallelism in that option doesn't make sense.
in that wording, the two parallel elements are "threat" and "(declining) sales". this is incorrect: the sales themselves are not a challenge facing the company.
to be sufficiently accurate, the sentence should state that the decline in sales, not the sales themselves, poses a threat.

Also, C can we say usage of both include and among causes redundancy.

yes.
note that this question was answered 2 posts before yours; please read the thread in its entirety before posting. thanks.

Also, from one of GMAT official blog, I figured that GMAT has removed/ atleast removed idioms from their test questions, do we still need to remember such idiom list??

i believe that idioms could still be tested, if the particular choice of idiom has a fundamental effect on the meaning of the sentence.
on the other hand, the test writers have an explicitly stated goal of NOT writing problems that can simply be solved by memorization (in fact, they wrote this in that very same blog post), so i don't imagine you're going to be seeing many problems that will test idioms that don't affect the context of the sentence.

[gmatwork]

Question about the modifier 'including'

This is a noun modifier that modifies the noun right before itself or does it have some flexibilty? It is used to express the specific attributes or a list related to that noun.

Please confirm.

'included' - Is this a noun modifier always? Will this also modify the noun that comes right before?

[tim]

"included" should always be a noun modifier if it's a modifier at all (i can't think of any exceptions but they may exist), and when used as a noun modifier it follows the usual rules - it must touch the noun it modifies or be connected to the modified noun through a chain of other modifiers of the same noun..

[thanghnvn]

At the annualstock holders meeting, investors heard a presentation on the numerous challenges facing the company, //including among them the threat from a rival's multi-billion dollar patent-infringement suit and the declining sales for// the company's powerful microprocessor chip.

A. including among them the threat from a rival's multi-billion dollar patent-infringement suit and the declining sales for
B. which includes the threat of a rival's multi-billion dollar patent-infringement suit and declining sales of
C. included among these the threat from a rival's multi-billion dollar patent-infringement suit as well as a decline in sales for
D. among them the threat of a rival's multi-billion dollar patent-infringement suit and the decline in sales of
E. among these the threat from a rival's multi-billion dollar patent-infringement suit as well as the decline in sales for

Ron used to say that
"this/that" never is a stand alone pronoun/noun

I infer that "these" which is plural of "this" can not be stand alone pronoun

so "these" in D and E is wrong flat out

is my inference correct ? pls help confirm

[tim]

where did Ron say that? i think we have direct evidence to the contrary on #34 from the verbal supplement 2nd edition..

[thanghnvn]

where did Ron say that? i think we have direct evidence to the contrary on #34 from the verbal supplement 2nd edition..

Thank you Tim
"this,these" are never used as stand alone pronouns on gmat. This is why "these" in this question is wrong, flat out.

"that,those" are used in ONLY paralel structure and refers to a noun which is different from previous noun.
in contrast, "it,they" refers to the same noun as previous noun and can be used in non paralel structure.

question 34 VR 2nd has correct answer D. In D, "that" is used in the paralel structure. " amount of energy used by equipment" is parallel with "that used by unobstructive equipment" . This is consistent with my saying.

sorry for saying not clearly.

in my above thingking correct?

[tim]

please understand we cannot spend all of our time on the forums confirming "rules" of yours that seem to come from nowhere. as Ron and i have both told you numerous times, your biggest obstacle to success on the GMAT is that you seem to be trying to boil everything down to a rule without ever approaching any real understanding of the sentences. moreover, it is starting to look like you are just making up random "rules" to see if one will stick - as evidenced by this thread, where you asked about a "rule" that i had a clear counterexample for and then changed the "rule" slightly to ask for confirmation again.

STOP TRYING TO DERIVE RULES!!!

if a rule does not show up somewhere reputable where you can look it up, it is probably not worth having as a rule. put another way, every rule you ask us for verification for falls into one of two categories: (1) it is already written down as a rule somewhere, and you can look it up and verify it for yourself, or (2) it is not already written down somewhere, and therefore it is probably not worth remembering as a rule even if it is true..

[ivonnecy]

hi Ron.

I choose A though I think it is kind of weird.
I'm really confused why we should eliminate including.
Actually I don't know why it should be" among them"
Is it sth like REVERSAL?
"the challenges are among the threat and the decline blabla", am I right?

Also, I remember that among applies to sth not fewer than 3, if it is 2, we should use and.
?.?(confused)

I'm not a native speaker, hope you can understand what I ask.

desire for a reply.plz

[RonPurewal]

hi Ron.

I choose A though I think it is kind of weird.
I'm really confused why we should eliminate including.

There's nothing wrong with "including" by itself.
The issue is that the combination of "including" and "among them" is redundant.

(The correct answer would still be correct if "among them" were replaced with "including".)

Is it sth like REVERSAL?
"the challenges are among the threat and the decline blabla", am I right?

That's the intended meaning, yes.

I don't know what you mean by "reversal", but it doesn't make much sense to conceptualize this construction as a literal transformation of another sentence.
Just be familiar with (a) how it looks, and (b) what it means. (In fact, this is good advice for any grammatical construction at all.)

Also, I remember that among applies to sth not fewer than 3, if it is 2, we should use and.

That's correct.
The company is facing "numerous challenges", implying that there are several of them. Two things couldn't be described as "numerous".

[ivonnecy]

hi Ron.

I choose A though I think it is kind of weird.
I'm really confused why we should eliminate including.

There's nothing wrong with "including" by itself.
The issue is that the combination of "including" and "among them" is redundant.

(The correct answer would still be correct if "among them" were replaced with "including".)

Is it sth like REVERSAL?
"the challenges are among the threat and the decline blabla", am I right?

That's the intended meaning, yes.

I don't know what you mean by "reversal", but it doesn't make much sense to conceptualize this construction as a literal transformation of another sentence.
Just be familiar with (a) how it looks, and (b) what it means. (In fact, this is good advice for any grammatical construction at all.)

Also, I remember that among applies to sth not fewer than 3, if it is 2, we should use and.

That's correct.
The company is facing "numerous challenges", implying that there are several of them. Two things couldn't be described as "numerous".

thanks Ron,
But for the last point, "the threat and the decline" there are only two things! threat and decline.

the three apples are divided among the two boys---->wrong
the three apples are divided among the three boys---->right

so I assume that,
the challenges are among the threat and the decline---->wrong

[tim]

"among them" indeed implies that there are three or more challenges. And the correct answer happens to identify two of those challenges. Just because the sentence doesn't specifically name three or more of the challenges doesn't mean there aren't three or more challenges.

[HemantR606]

Hi Ron,

My question may be silly, but I am totally confused with this question.

This modifier in the correct answer choice - "among them the threat of a rival's......." seems totally strange to me. I cannot figure out what kind of modifier this is - a noun modifier / an adverbial modifier.

Usually, a noun modifier may start with a present participle, a past participle, a preposition, a noun, or a word like 'which', 'that, 'who' etc..
And a verb modifier starts with a present participle seperated by a comma, a past participle, or a preposition.

But the modifier used in this sentence doesn't seem to fall under any category.


Please help!


Thanks in advance,
Hemant

[RonPurewal]

Hi Ron,

My question may be silly, but I am totally confused with this question.

This modifier in the correct answer choice - "among them the threat of a rival's......." seems totally strange to me. I cannot figure out what kind of modifier this is - a noun modifier / an adverbial modifier.

is this construction weird / fairly uncommon?
yes.

should you have any trouble figuring out what it modifies?
no.

"among them xxx and yyy" is listing two specific items among the challenges facing the company, so the modifier is describing the noun "challenges".

'among them' could be replaced with 'including'—which would also work, and which would play precisely the same role (and have precisely the same meaning) as 'among them'. but that's just not the way they chose to write this one.
(the use of both 'including' and 'among them' is redundant.)

[douyang]

Hi Ron,

What's wrong with E?
Before the OG2016 came out, we could use "these" to eliminate E since "these" cannot fulfill the duty of they. But now we can not rely on this rule to eliminate E.
I realized that "threat from" and "threat of" can be used as a split to eliminate E, but I have a feeling that it is a little bit subtle because it is not a basic issue (i.e. modifier, structure, parallelism, pronoun, etc.). Any suggestions?