Old GMAT Test Q, Paper 8

[nagendra.nagendrayadav]

Usage Frequency: Monkfish
"Monkfish" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 96.15% of the time. "Monkfish" is used about 26 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)
Parts of Speech Percent Usage per
100 Million Words Rank in English
Noun (singular) 96.15% 25 69,787
Noun (proper) 3.85% 1 339,140
Total 100.00% 26 N/A

[RonPurewal]

I'm still confused with the above example.
For instance, if we say:

I found a pen on this table. --> singular.(1 pen)
I found the pen on this table --> singular. (1 specific pen)
I found pen on this table --> (Doesn't this mean, I found one pen on the table) ?
I found pens on this table. --> plural.

I checked in dictionary too:
pen(singular)<---> pens (plural)

Please explain this doubt Ron...I'm novice with these subtleties in english.

Thanks!

GeeMate.

#3 is grammatically unacceptable.

you can't use singular, COUNTABLE nouns (such as "pen") without an article or a possessive.
so, you can say "i found a pen", or "i found the pen", or "i found my pen", etc. but you can't just say "i found pen".

for NON-COUNTABLE nouns, also called "mass nouns" - such as "water", "silverware", "furniture", etc. - you CAN do this. i found furniture in the abandoned house.
notice that you CANNOT use "a/an" with such nouns. it would make no sense, for instance, to say "a furniture".

...and it gets worse: some english words can be EITHER mass nouns OR countable nouns, depending on the context.
for instance, "fish" (singular), referring to a fish swimming in a tank, is countable. so, if you see 1 fish swimming in a tank, you can write "i see a fish swimming in a tank", but not "i see fish swimming in a tank".
however, "fish", in the sense of stuff that you eat, is a mass noun. so you can say "i left fish on my plate", but not "i left a fish on my plate" (unless there's a live fish wiggling around on your plate)

[zhongshanlh]

Instructors, can somebody please throw light on this one. It is not so out of date.I took GMAT PREP 2 today (08/09/2009) and received the exact same question. I marked the answer as A. But I am curious to know, why others are wrong?

There are no legal limits, as there are for cod and haddock, on the size of monkfish that can be caught, a circumstance that contributes to their depletion through overfishing. Here is my take though -


A. There are no legal limits, as there are for cod and haddock, on the size of
monkfish that can be caught, a circumstance that contributes to their depletion
through overfishing.
B. There are no legal limits on the size of monkfish that can be caught, unlike cod or haddock, a circumstance that contributes to depleting them because they are being overfished. Comparison error. Compares size of monkish with cod and haddock
C. There are legal limits on the size of cod and haddock that can be caught, but not for monkfish, which contributes to its depletion through overfishing. I debated between A and C on exam. But the word 'which' I read somewehere on the forum must refer to the noun before it. And here to the noun is monkfish. So I thought this has a modifier problem and picked A.
D. Unlike cod and haddock, there are no legal size limits on catching monkfish,
which contributes to its depletion by being overfished. Comparison error. Same like B.
E. Unlike catching cod and haddock, there are no legal size limits on catching
monkfish, contributing to their depletion because they are overfished. Comparsion error. Compares catching cod and haddock to legal limits on catching monkfish

hi Ron, i am a little confused about the use of unlike and comparison in this problem
i definitely know that when we use like/unlike to introduce comparisons, the subject of the main clause should always immediately follow the like/unlike phrase, however ,in option B/D/E as following:
B.There are no legal limits on the size of monkfish that can be caught, unlike cod or haddock, a circumstance that contributes to depleting them because they are being overfished.
D.Unlike cod and haddock, there are no legal size limits on catching monkfish, which contributes to its depletion by being overfished.
E.Unlike catching cod and haddock, there are no legal size limits on catching monkfish, contributing to their depletion because they are overfished

we see that it is the there be construction that immediately follows the like/unlike phrase,and the analysis i quoted seems to ignore this error.

am i thinking right??

besides, in option B,i also think that the placement of the unlike phrase is somehow ambiguous,because it could be attached to either the preceding part or the following part, what do you think about it??

[tim]

sorry, we're actually not supposed to be posting old paper test questions. i'll leave up the original post because it was already here, but i'm locking the thread because it is a bad idea to be discussing questions that are so old when there are so many great newer questions that are both appropriate and relevant. if you have a question that does not relate directly back to a paper test problem, feel free to start another thread with it..