Use of "its"

[goMba]

Hi
Can someone explain the proper use of "its"?

I understand that "its" is a possessive pronoun and can refer back to a possessive noun only. But i have come across couple of SC questions where "its" refers back to a regular noun not a possessive noun and is still considered correct. Can someone please explain with reference to the example below:


The government's failing to keep it's pledges will earn the distrust of all the other nations in the alliance.

(A) government's failing to keep it's pledges
(B) government failing to keep it's pledges
(C) government's failing to keep its pledges
(D) government failing to keep its pledges
(E) governments failing to keep their pledges

[poojakrishnamurthy1]

Lets get somethings clear first.

It's = It is

its = possessive of it.

The challenge in the question is to understand as to what will earn the distrust of the other nations in the alliance? Obviously it would be the government and NOT the government's failing that earns the distrust. So eliminate A and C. The possessive of it should precede pledges so the correct form its pledges should be used. Eliminate B also.

You are now left with D and E. I think both are equally correct but given the context of the sentence, I don't have much reason to doubt D. The switch from singular government to plural governments is both unsupported and unexplained. I've seen Manhattan explanations saying that "since the original sentence has a singular noun, choice D would be a better choice than choice E, even though both are grammatically and logically correct." However, I'm pretty sure that in your actual GMAT, there shouldn't be any confusion as I'm yet to encounter any question in two OGs that apply this "Original Sentence" logic.

Anyways, my answer - D

Let me know what the Original Answer for this question is. :-)

[goMBA]

Thanks. I dont know the OA but this one again i noticed on another forum where they were debating between C & D but no one posted the OA.

I am also inclining towards D because "government's failure" or "government's failures" sounds better than "government's failing". But what i am not clear about is that since 'its' is a possessive pronoun referring to government isnt it required to refer to the possessive form of the noun i.e. government's instead of government?

Can someone clarify this specific point?

Thanks.

[poojakrishnamurthy1]

A possessive pronoun can refer to a noun and to a possessive noun. However, a pronoun cannot refer to possessive noun or possessive pronoun.. For example -

Correct: John went to the party in his car. His refers to John.
Correct: John's car is as fast as his bike. His correct refers to John's.

Incorrect: John's car met with an accident and this incident made him sad. Him cannot refer to possessive John's.

The same rule will apply for the its, their, and other possessive pronoun.

I hope this helps.

[esledge]

Pooja is correct in all of the possessive discussion above. Thanks!

goMba, it looks like you don't know the author of the question, but if someone knows could you please post it? Without an author cited, we are required to delete the original question text. Thanks!

[Xins]

I found this question in Barrons guide. OA is C

I wonder why not D?

[Xins]

I found this question in Barrons guide. OA is C

I wonder why not D?

[esledge]

First, let me say that I think this question is not great.

Pooja argued pretty convincingly that the "government" is what earns distrust, not the "government's failing." At least the possessive "government's" makes it clear that "failing" is intended to be the main noun in (A) and (C). In my view, the two possible answers to "what earns distrust?" (either government or its action) are so close in meaning that the real GMAT would never make a question hinge on the answer.

Furthermore, there is a better noun to use for "the ... failing": failure! The GMAT tends to reject the use of gerunds when alternate noun forms exist for a word. One big reason is that when -ing word "failing" following government is that you can interpret it two ways:

(1) The government failing to keep its pledges: "government" as noun, "failing to keep" as modifier (which government?)

(2) The government failing to keep its pledges: "failing" as noun, "government" as modifier (whose failing?)

Judging by the official answer, the author of this problem intended "failing" to be the main noun. But (D) could be interpreted that way, too.

This question is a bad example, but there may be a good lesson here. The real GMAT would possibly have given a choice between failing and failure. The more multipurpose a word form, the more ambiguous its usage/meaning could be. Thus, failure is the better choice because it can only be used as a noun.