Until Berta and Ernst Scharrer established the concept of ne

[tim]

pronoun ambiguity is considered an error sometimes

prove it.

can I say

"which clause" modifying a slightly far noun is considered an error sometimes.

i'm not sure why you are asking this question when you seem to have answered it in your post.

This discomfort us.

sorry to hear that, but sometimes we just have to accept the GMAT's rules even if we don't like them.

[divineacclivity]

Ok. B is incorrect because it is not parallel; is that what you're saying? I'd like to confirm if that is all that's wrong with option B.
Sorry I just couldn't figure that out from the discussion above. Thank you very much.

[jnelson0612]

Ok. B is incorrect because it is not parallel; is that what you're saying? I'd like to confirm if that is all that's wrong with option B.
Sorry I just couldn't figure that out from the discussion above. Thank you very much.

Yes, B is incorrect because of parallelism. Let us know if you need further explanation of B. :-)

[thanghnvn]

pronoun ambiguity is considered an error on many og questions but in other og question pronoun ambiguity appears in 5 choices.

similarly, "which clause" can modify slightly far noun and we can see this situation in many og questions. but in other og questions such as question 48 og13, "which clause" modifying slightly far noun is considered an error.


what I want to say here is that pronoun ambiguity and "which clause" modifying slightly far noun is not considered absolute error. They can be acceptable but we have to eliminate them if we have a better choice.

pls, comment/correct my thinking.

[tim]

you still have not provided actual question numbers where pronoun ambiguity is an issue or where "which" modifying something other than the closest eligible noun is correct. until you can demonstrate this with actual OG problems, you should be wary of incorporating these "rules" into your approach to SC..

[thanghnvn]

you still have not provided actual question numbers where pronoun ambiguity is an issue or where "which" modifying something other than the closest eligible noun is correct. until you can demonstrate this with actual OG problems, you should be wary of incorporating these "rules" into your approach to SC..

thank you , Tim. pls, continue this posting

e gmat makes an articles on "which" modifying slightly far noun. you can see many examples in the following

http://gmatclub.com/forum/noun-modifier ... 68-20.html

regarding the "which" modifying slightly far noun. The point is that in some og question, this is acceptable but in other og questions, this is not acceptable.

pls comment on this point. Tim, Thank you

[tim]

i'm not going to read through an entire web page to find examples that i have no reason to believe exist. until you can provide problem numbers as specific examples, i will consider this matter closed. if you continue to make irrelevant posts i will have to lock this thread..

[thanghnvn]

the following, from og, shows that "which/that clause " modifying far noun is acceatable.

[---]

the following, #48 og 13, shows that "which clause" modifying far noun is considered error.

[---]

they are from og. pls help explain this phenomenon. thank you very much.

[RonPurewal]

we had to delete the problems you listed -- remember that you can't post official guide problems here. (if you want to cite those problems, you can just list the OG edition and problem number.)

in general, modifiers starting with "that" can do the kind of thing you're talking about, but modifiers starting with "which" can't.

as far as i've seen, the largest construction that GMAC allows "which" to describe is of the form (noun + prep phrase + noun).

[thanghnvn]

in q 29 og13, "which clause" modifying far noun appears in the correct answer.

in q48 og 13, "which clause" modifying far noun is considered errors.

what I want to say is that "which clause" modifying far noun is considered inferior. some time this construction is considered error and other times, not an error.

I am confused. Pls help

[tim]

thank you for finally providing question numbers so we can discuss the problems you think are exceptions. the bottom line is this: there is no exception here, and the rule still absolutely holds. Ron has done an excellent job many times on this forum explaining exactly what the rule is - "which" modifies the closest eligible noun. no exceptions! please familiarize yourself with this rule, as this is one of the strictest and most inviolable rules i know of on the GMAT. in 29, the closest eligible noun is "letters", because "which" cannot modify a person..

[thanghnvn]

thank you Tim
I want to find Ron's the explanation of this point. How to find, pls tell me

[tim]

emily-dickinson-s-letters-to-susan-huntington-dickinson-were-t6529.html

look for Ron's post on April 28, 2009. this actually took me awhile to find; that's why i posted the direct link instead of asking you to search for it yourself. :) turns out i have written far more on this subject than Ron has; you may want to run a search for the words "which" and "eligible" with me as the author..

[thanghnvn]

Until Berta and Ernst Scharrer established the concept of neurosecretion in 1928, scientists believed that either cells secreted hormones, which made them endocrine cells and thus part of the endocrine system, or conducted electrical impulses, in which case they were nerve cells and thus part of the nervous system.

(A) either cells secreted hormones, which made them

(B) either cells secreted hormones, making them

(C) either cells secreted hormones and were

(D) cells either secreted hormones, in which case they were

(E) cells either secreted hormones, which made them

D or E？thoughts？ THX^-^

I do not question oa but pls explain why we use "believed" not "had belived"

untill 1928, I believed that thing

why we do not use "had belived"?

I think "had done" is used to show an action which happened before and continued into the latter past action/point of time or which finished before a past time/action.

pls, explain

[jnelson0612]

Until Berta and Ernst Scharrer established the concept of neurosecretion in 1928, scientists believed that either cells secreted hormones, which made them endocrine cells and thus part of the endocrine system, or conducted electrical impulses, in which case they were nerve cells and thus part of the nervous system.

(A) either cells secreted hormones, which made them

(B) either cells secreted hormones, making them

(C) either cells secreted hormones and were

(D) cells either secreted hormones, in which case they were

(E) cells either secreted hormones, which made them

D or E？thoughts？ THX^-^

I do not question oa but pls explain why we use "believed" not "had belived"

untill 1928, I believed that thing

why we do not use "had belived"?

I think "had done" is used to show an action which happened before and continued into the latter past action/point of time or which finished before a past time/action.

pls, explain

"had believed" is an example of past perfect tense, a complex verb tense. Past perfect tense is used when two distinct events happened in the past and we need to show which one happened earlier.

"believed" is an example of past tense, a simple verb tense. The GMAT prefers the use of a simple tense over a complex tense, so that is one point in favor of "believed". In addition, there is no reason to use past perfect tense to distinguish which event happened first. The sentence makes very clear the sequence of events through the use of the time marker "Until . . . . 1928". Thus, we can just use simple past tense.