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Oneself vs Themselves

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by adityanarula » Mon Jul 06, 2009 5:37 am
Need help with this. I think the answer is B

575. Pensions are now viewed as a deferred payment of salary, money a worker is compelled to put away to take care of one’s later years.
(A) a worker is compelled to put away to take care of one’s
(B) that a worker is compelled to put away to take care of oneself in
(C) a worker is compelled to put away to take care of oneself in
(D) workers are compelled to put away to take care of them in
(E) workers are compelled to put away to take care of themselves in
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Source: — Sentence Correction |

by gmat740 » Mon Jul 06, 2009 5:49 am
As Stacey says in a reply to this question:
Grammatically speaking, you do need the "that," which seems to eliminate everything except for B. (Though in casual language, it would be acceptable to omit the "that.")

BUT B talks about singular "worker" and the previous part of the sentence talks about "pensionS." One worker doesn't have many pensions, so we need to talk about plural workers, which seems to eliminate everything except for D and E.

If I had to pick one, hmm. I'd agonize. But really - I wouldn't pick one. I just wouldn't study it at all.

You can search for 1000 SC's questions. Most of them have been answered, so that will save you a lot of time.

hope this helps
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by m&m » Mon Jul 06, 2009 6:16 am
extending on what was said in above post I would say E. First for plural...

"Pensions are money a worker is compelled..."
"Pensions are money workers are compelled..." <-- plural is better though in theory one person could have multiple pensions

So this leaves D and E,

D) workers are compelled to put away to take care of them in
-- them could refer to the money or to the workers, it's ambiguous

(E) workers are compelled to put away to take care of themselves in
--themselves clearly refers to the workers

Pick E
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by walker » Mon Jul 06, 2009 6:16 am
E looks OK

A,B and C are out bcause a Worker is being referred by one's, oneself... etc

singular worker should be referrd by his/her/himself/herself pronoun here..

between E and D,

D is OUT coz 'themselves' in E overtakes 'them'.

possesive pronoun clearly wins here coz the meaning requires that.
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by adityanarula » Mon Jul 06, 2009 8:49 am
Thanks!

Can you give explanation around why oneself is wrong and instead himself/herself would suit better?
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