Please verify sentences & learning from Economist Magazine

[shailendra.sharma]

I saw all of these sentences in Economist magazine, 22nd June 2013 edition --

1) The dispute has raised the threat of a snap election in crisis-hit Greece, which could endanger its bail-out programme.

Question: In this case "which" seem to refer to "the threat of a snap election" - but there is "in crisis-hit Greece" phrase" in between too - so may be because of modifier-touch-rule "which" can refer to "crisis-hit Greece". Please clarify ?

2) A parliamentary committee published a long-awaited report into the failings of the British banking system.

Question: Searched on Google for more uses of "report into" idiom -- I did not find many. (One more such use here: http://www.hsj.co.uk/home/francis-report)

Looking at the context - report into X is used where X is some event or phenomenon. And the mentioned report is the explanation of that X. Please clarify ?

3) More than 100 people died in floods in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. The flooding, which washed away roads, bridges and houses, has also affected several other states as well as India’s capital, Delhi.

Question: I want to clarify why author has used "flooding" (a gerund noun) rather than more popular noun "flood". Is such use to emphasize that flood or its effect is still going on ? But I seem to be wrong as I have seen other uses of flooding for past events too.

Flooding also temporarily closed part of Route 50 west of Royal Gorge Bridge and Park.
New York Times Aug 11, 2013

The next year Thailand witnessed its worst flooding in half-a-century, inundating 90 billion square kilometers of land.
Time Aug 9, 2013

A spokesman said despite the flooding, paediatric emergency and elective in-patient services remained unaffected.
BBC Aug 6, 2013

4) The Los Angeles council approved an ordinance to outlaw plastic supermarket bags, by far the biggest city in America to do so. The measure will come into effect next year and includes a 10-cent charge on paper bags for shoppers who do not bring their own reusable ones.

Two questions --

4.A) How "city" (in bold) can refer to Los Angeles which is not available as noun, but rather as Adjective to the council ?

4.B) 2nd Sentence uses "The measure will come into effect ... and includes ..." -- probably two different tenses are parallel because measure is already defined - so at present also it includes the definition? But, then also those two things does not look parallel to me -- one talks about "coming into effect" and other talks about "the definition of the measure". Please clarify ?

[RonPurewal]

hey,
when you look at stuff in periodicals, you should be aware that you're not always looking at things that have been meticulously edited and re-edited. (those things are published on an extremely tight timeline -- especially now that they have to compete with internet sites.)

also, the english tested on the gmat is VERY formal.
the economist is pretty formal, but not necessarily all the time. with magazines, you've got this tension between perfectly formal language -- which is, well, formal, but also less immediately accessible to many readers -- and more informal language.

--

finally, don't forget that the economist is a british magazine, and so the writing is british english, not american english.
most things are the same, but the idioms are at times quite different, as are some grammar points (e.g., americans say "the team is going to be late to the game", but brits say "the team are going to be late to the match").

1) The dispute has raised the threat of a snap election in crisis-hit Greece, which could endanger its bail-out programme.

Question: In this case "which" seem to refer to "the threat of a snap election" - but there is "in crisis-hit Greece" phrase" in between too - so may be because of modifier-touch-rule "which" can refer to "crisis-hit Greece". Please clarify ?

right, this is a technically incorrect use of "which".

2) A parliamentary committee published a long-awaited report into the failings of the British banking system.

Question: Searched on Google for more uses of "report into" idiom -- I did not find many. (One more such use here: http://www.hsj.co.uk/home/francis-report)

Looking at the context - report into X is used where X is some event or phenomenon. And the mentioned report is the explanation of that X. Please clarify ?

i haven't really seen that either. i'd guess that it's a british thing.

remember that the gmat doesn't really test obscure idioms these days anyway, so i'd suggest that you don't have to worry about this.

[RonPurewal]

3) More than 100 people died in floods in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. The flooding, which washed away roads, bridges and houses, has also affected several other states as well as India’s capital, Delhi.

Question: I want to clarify why author has used "flooding" (a gerund noun) rather than more popular noun "flood". Is such use to emphasize that flood or its effect is still going on ? But I seem to be wrong as I have seen other uses of flooding for past events too.

"flooding" isn't exactly the same thing as "flood".

"flood" refers to the natural disaster as a thing, rather than as a vivid ongoing depiction of events.
"flooding" refers to the physical action of the rushing water.

it's sort of like this:
flood --> earthquake
flooding --> shaking/tremors

[color=#00BFFF]Flooding also temporarily closed part of Route 50 west of Royal Gorge Bridge and Park.
New York Times Aug 11, 2013

in this sentence, the point is not that there was [i]a flood (= a natural disaster that's thought of as a thing). the point is just that a bunch of water flowed into the road.

this is not the kind of difference that the gmat exam will test, by the way. it's too subtle; the gmat only tests meaning differences that are pretty big.

The next year Thailand witnessed its worst flooding in half-a-century, inundating 90 billion square kilometers of land.
Time Aug 9, 2013

you could also write "...its worst flood in ..."

(by the way, note that COMMA -ING is misused in this quote)

they didn't really put hyphens in "half a century", did they? i certainly hope not.

[RonPurewal]

4) The Los Angeles council approved an ordinance to outlaw plastic supermarket bags, by far the biggest city in America to do so. The measure will come into effect next year and includes a 10-cent charge on paper bags for shoppers who do not bring their own reusable ones.

Two questions --

4.A) How "city" (in bold) can refer to Los Angeles which is not available as noun, but rather as Adjective to the council ?

yep, you can't do that in strictly formal english. (on the gmat, this would be wrong.)

4.B) 2nd Sentence uses "The measure will come into effect ... and includes ..." -- probably two different tenses are parallel because measure is already defined - so at present also it includes the definition? But, then also those two things does not look parallel to me -- one talks about "coming into effect" and other talks about "the definition of the measure". Please clarify ?

this is fine.
"the measure" is just "the law" (perhaps this wasn't clear). so...
* the law will go into effect on xxxx date;
* the law includes a fee on bags.

it seems you're trying to object to this language on the grounds that the former describes the action of the law, while the latter describes the text of the law.
that's not really an objection, though, because both of those are aspects of "the law".

analogy:
this story was first published in 1868 but describes situations that are still relevant today.
this sentence is also fine.
strictly speaking, the first part ("published...") describes the physical books in which the story was printed, while the second ("describes...") refers to the story's plot ... but using "the story" to represent both of these is ok.

[shailendra.sharma]

Thanks a lot Ron for your detailed replies :)

I have some followup questions :--

when you look at stuff in periodicals, you should be aware that you're not always looking at things that have been meticulously edited and re-edited. (those things are published on an extremely tight timeline -- especially now that they have to compete with internet sites.)

also, the english tested on the gmat is VERY formal.
the economist is pretty formal, but not necessarily all the time. with magazines, you've got this tension between perfectly formal language -- which is, well, formal, but also less immediately accessible to many readers -- and more informal language.

1) Can you please suggest me some alternate reading I can do that is very near to GMAT standards ? Being an engineer, I have not done enough literature reading since past many years and I see bad effects (surprises) for that during GMAT mocks / exam.

The next year Thailand witnessed its worst flooding in half-a-century, inundating 90 billion square kilometers of land.
(by the way, note that COMMA -ING is misused in this quote)

they didn't really put hyphens in "half a century", did they? i certainly hope not.

I copied the sentence verbatim from the citation.

2) You say COMMA-ING is misused because "witnessing" can not "inundate" (or flood) ?

The Los Angeles council approved an ordinance to outlaw plastic supermarket bags, by far the biggest city in America to do so. The measure will come into effect next year and includes a 10-cent charge on paper bags for shoppers who do not bring their own reusable ones.

it seems you're trying to object to this language on the grounds that the former describes the action of the law, while the latter describes the text of the law.
that's not really an objection, though, because both of those are aspects of "the law".

3) Yes, the reason was same - somewhere I read for lists to be parallel items in the list should do (or mean) similar things. In this particular case though they were talking about same subject "the law" but in different manner, so I got confused. Do you see any exception to this new understanding - till items in the list are talking about the same subject, and in structurally same manner as far as possible - parallelism is good.

[RonPurewal]

1) Can you please suggest me some alternate reading I can do that is very near to GMAT standards ? Being an engineer, I have not done enough literature reading since past many years and I see bad effects (surprises) for that during GMAT mocks / exam.

You could always try the NY Times.

Remember, though, that GMAC spends over $2000 per question on the development and editing (and more editing, and even more editing) of these things. Obviously, no book/magazine/internet site can be edited to the tune of $2000 per sentence, so you won't really see the same standard in any widely and/or frequently distributed source.

On the other hand, if you read these sources enough, you'll develop a general intuition, which is really the end goal here. (I.e., you want to get to a point where you can rely mostly on intuition, and don't have to think explicitly about "rules" except as a last resort in case of total confusion.)
If you see anything sketchy, go ahead and post it here.

2) You say COMMA-ING is misused because "witnessing" can not "inundate" (or flood) ?

yep.

3) Yes, the reason was same - somewhere I read for lists to be parallel items in the list should do (or mean) similar things. In this particular case though they were talking about same subject "the law" but in different manner, so I got confused. Do you see any exception to this new understanding - till items in the list are talking about the same subject, and in structurally same manner as far as possible - parallelism is good.

so yeah, you're forgetting the most important thing here, which is that gmat problems are multiple-choice.
so, this sort of thing is a non-issue. you'll see 5 choices, and the only judgment you'll have to make is "Which choice(s) is/are MOST logically parallel?" That kind of decision doesn't require the sort of knowledge you're asking for here.

[shailendra.sharma]

Thanks Ron. It does help.

[RonPurewal]

sweet