Tense - MGMAT test 4.

[lionKing1976]

The following Qn is taken from MGMAT test.


Pests had destroyed grape, celery, chili pepper crops, sugar beet and walnut in the region, but in the 1880s, more effective pest-control methods saved the citrus industry.
Pests had destroyed grape, celery, chili pepper crops, sugar beet and walnut in the region, but in the 1880s, more effective pest-control methods saved the citrus industry.
Pests had destroyed grape, celery, chili pepper, sugar beet and walnut crops in the region, but in the 1880s, more effective pest-control methods saved the citrus industry.
Pests had destroyed grape, celery, chili pepper, sugar beet and walnut crops in the region, but more effective pest-control methods that were introduced in the 1880s saved the citrus industry.
In the 1880s, pests destroyed grape, celery, chili pepper, sugar beet and walnut crops in the region and more effective pest-control methods saved the citrus industry.
In the 1880s, more effective pest-control methods saved the citrus industry from what was destroying grape, celery, chili pepper, sugar beet and walnut crops in the region.


OA is B.
This is correct answer. But I have few questions..


1. Had doesn't clearly show the time line of events.. The above sentence means that pests stopped destroying crops sometime before 1880, but doesn't clearly tell that they were destroyed because of pest-control methods of 1880s..

2. Will simple past tense work in this case..

Pests destroyed grape, celery, chili pepper, sugar beet and walnut crops in the region, but in the 1880s, more effective pest-control methods saved the citrus industry.


3. Do we need a until here to tell exactly when pests stopped destroying crops ?

[shiv]

In my opinion a past perfect should show a precedence of events. the sentence should be like this:

Previously pests had destroyed grape, celery, chili pepper crops, sugar beet and walnut in the region, but in the 1880s, more effective pest-control methods saved the citrus industry.

MGMAT staff will like to clarify.

[StaceyKoprince]

The original sentence indicates that the pest destruction happened prior to the 1880s. We don't know when exactly. It also indicates that pest-control methods saved the industry in the 1880s. That's all we have to maintain for the meaning.

They could've given us more, but they didn't, and there's nothing wrong with the information as presented. You're assuming that we have to explicitly spell out more than that, but we don't - we only have to maintain the original meaning, and the original meaning only indicates that the destruction happened sometime prior to the 1880s.

I also think you could use simple past here for both verbs here (there's always more than one right way to write a sentence!) but, in this case, they don't give us a correct simple-past-only option. (Answer D, which uses simple past, moves the 1880s modifier and it ends up modifying the wrong thing.)

Also, you wouldn't want to use the word "previously" with "had destroyed" - in this case, that's redundant, because the past perfect construction already tells us that this event happened prior to the other event.