Sentence Correction

By applying optimization techniques commonly used to plan operations, it is possible to
determine how much effort ought to be devoted to each of a company's products in order to
meet its goals in both the short and long terms.

"¢ it is possible to determine how much effort ought to be devoted to each of a company's
products in order to meet its goals in both the short and long terms

"¢ a company's managers can determine how much effort should be dedicated to each of the
company's products in order to meet its short and long term goals

"¢ it can be determined by company managers how much effort ought to be devoted to each of
the company's products in order to meet its goals, both short and long term

"¢ it may be possible for company managers to determine how much effort should be dedicated
to each of these products in order to meet the company's short and long term goals

"¢ managers at a company can determine how much effort ought to be dedicated to each of
these products in order to meet the company's goals in both the short and long term

OA is B. I didn't chose B because we have no antecedent for its...Now company's products is mentioned in the sentence but the company is not. So how can we refer to the company if it is in possessive form. Can someone please give parallel example.
Why is E wrong?

Source: MGMAT

The problem with "E" is the usage of "these"

For B, "its" is a possessive pronoun .. and according to rule.. possessive will always refer back to possessive noun.. so "company's"

This sentence could have gone more confusion if "managers" in second option were replaced by "manager"

rakeshd347 wrote:By applying optimization techniques commonly used to plan operations, it is possible to
determine how much effort ought to be devoted to each of a company's products in order to
meet its goals in both the short and long terms.

"¢ it is possible to determine how much effort ought to be devoted to each of a company's
products in order to meet its goals in both the short and long terms

"¢ a company's managers can determine how much effort should be dedicated to each of the
company's products in order to meet its short and long term goals

"¢ it can be determined by company managers how much effort ought to be devoted to each of
the company's products in order to meet its goals, both short and long term

"¢ it may be possible for company managers to determine how much effort should be dedicated
to each of these products in order to meet the company's short and long term goals

"¢ managers at a company can determine how much effort ought to be dedicated to each of
these products in order to meet the company's goals in both the short and long term

OA is B. I didn't chose B because we have no antecedent for its...Now company's products is mentioned in the sentence but the company is not. So how can we refer to the company if it is in possessive form. Can someone please give parallel example.
Why is E wrong?

Source: MGMAT

I feel the correct option is B. Here is my reasoning.

Here the phrase starts with "By using blah blah blah". Now we need to find who uses this technique.Also we can observe 3/2 splits here.

"Some person/people" should be at the beginning of the options.
Also we needed "short and long term goals at the end"

So we can narrow our choices to B and E. I immediately though E was the correct option. Then 2 things struck me:

1. "these"===Antecedent?
2. goals in both the short term and long term

So ruled it out.

B then became an attractive choice, and here is why i feel it is correct.

"a company's managers" so managers of the company use this technique
"each of the company's products (Option E was wrong here)==so products of the company. The latter part of the option uses "its" , which correctly refers to company's here

Hope i could be of some help

ceilidh.erickson wrote:

rakeshd347 wrote:I didn't chose B because we have no antecedent for its...Now company's products is mentioned in the sentence but the company is not. So how can we refer to the company if it is in possessive form.

The rule that you're referring to is often called POSSESSIVE POISON - it states that the antecedent can't be acting as a possessive, because then technically it's a modifier, and not a noun. And you're right, the GMAT will often fix this antecedent issue in the correct answer.

Unfortunately... this is just one of those rules (like pronoun ambiguity) that the GMAT is inconsistent on. Sometimes they allow it, sometimes they don't. Look at SC #109 in OG13. The correct answer states:

"... either asking the goddess Bona Dea's aid in healing physical and mental ills or thanking her for such help."

The antecedent of "her" is clearly "Bona Dea," even though it's used as a possessive here. So, just don't worry about the possessive poison issue!

As others have noted, the problem with E is the use of "these," which has no antecedent.

Hi Ceilidh,

Thank you for the response. I figured out the issue with E and B too. However, Can I conclude that we can use possessive pronoun to refer to passive noun. As I have been reviewing all the MGMAT CAT answers from my previous exams, I can across lot of SC question in which MGMAT have used possessive pronoun to refer to possessive noun. According to the most of the explanations given, You can use possessive pronoun to refer to possessive noun but you can't use object or pronoun to refer to possessive pronoun.

Thanks,
Rakesh

ceilidh.erickson wrote:

rakeshd347 wrote:I didn't chose B because we have no antecedent for its...Now company's products is mentioned in the sentence but the company is not. So how can we refer to the company if it is in possessive form.

The rule that you're referring to is often called POSSESSIVE POISON - it states that the antecedent can't be acting as a possessive, because then technically it's a modifier, and not a noun. And you're right, the GMAT will often fix this antecedent issue in the correct answer.

Unfortunately... this is just one of those rules (like pronoun ambiguity) that the GMAT is inconsistent on. Sometimes they allow it, sometimes they don't. Look at SC #109 in OG13. The correct answer states:

"... either asking the goddess Bona Dea's aid in healing physical and mental ills or thanking her for such help."

The antecedent of "her" is clearly "Bona Dea," even though it's used as a possessive here. So, just don't worry about the possessive poison issue!

As others have noted, the problem with E is the use of "these," which has no antecedent.

I do not know why "these" in E is wrong, pls explain fully this point.thank you

vietmoi999 wrote:

ceilidh.erickson wrote:

rakeshd347 wrote:I didn't chose B because we have no antecedent for its...Now company's products is mentioned in the sentence but the company is not. So how can we refer to the company if it is in possessive form.

The rule that you're referring to is often called POSSESSIVE POISON - it states that the antecedent can't be acting as a possessive, because then technically it's a modifier, and not a noun. And you're right, the GMAT will often fix this antecedent issue in the correct answer.

Unfortunately... this is just one of those rules (like pronoun ambiguity) that the GMAT is inconsistent on. Sometimes they allow it, sometimes they don't. Look at SC #109 in OG13. The correct answer states:

"... either asking the goddess Bona Dea's aid in healing physical and mental ills or thanking her for such help."

The antecedent of "her" is clearly "Bona Dea," even though it's used as a possessive here. So, just don't worry about the possessive poison issue!

As others have noted, the problem with E is the use of "these," which has no antecedent.

I do not know why "these" in E is wrong, pls explain fully this point.thank you

Because these has no one to refer to.

"this,these" is used when some thing is close to us

or

when the noun/nouns is mentioned already.

we do not need to mention a noun before we use "this/these"

there is no good reason to eliminate "these" in E. there is no og questions in which this error is tested.