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by aditya8062 » Wed May 07, 2014 5:55 am
what exactly is the doubt ?
i guess u want to ask as why B is wrong
B says : which includes the threat of a rival´s multi-billion dollar patent infringement suit and declining sales of
"which" is incorrectly referring to "companies" when in fact it should be referring to "numerous challenges"
u can also think from a different angle ---->there is a subject -verb disagreement in B ."numerous challenges" is plural and the verb "includes" is singular

the other problem with option B is that we have a much better parallelism in the correct answer than we have in option B .

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by AnjaliOberoi » Wed May 07, 2014 6:02 am
A- including and among them - redundant
B- Which modifies company, also includes doesn't agree in number with numerous challenges- wrong
C- Sales for is undiomatic and usage threat from changes the intended meaning
D- Correct
E- Sales for is undiomatic and usage threat from changes the intended meaning

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by tathastuGMAT » Sun May 11, 2014 7:00 am
Hi Mukherjee

In this sentence we have a modifier/parallelism as well as a pronoun issue.

A) pronoun "them" has no clear referent, does it refer to investors or to challenges? If

the referent is the latter, then the sentence ("including among them") is redundant.

Moreover "the threat" is not parallel to "declining". If it had been "the threat" and

"declining of" or "declining + preposition" it would have worked out. In such a case it would be a complex gerund.
Rule:
(i) An action noun cannot be parallel to simple gerunds.
(ii) But an action noun can be paralleled to complex gerunds.
"the threat" is an action noun here and "declining of/in" would be complex gerund.


B) comma+which refers to the wrong noun "company". The meaning falters.

C) Same story here, -ed modifies "company".

D) This is alright.

E) "these" as a demonstrative pronoun has no referent in this sentence, "sales for" is

unidiomatic, why using "as well as" when we can simply use and?

Hope it helps!

-tathastuGMAT
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by e-GMAT » Thu May 15, 2014 4:49 pm
Hi @mukherjee,

Thanks for posting this interesting question. :-)

It appears that you would like to clarify why choice B (the choice that you marked) is incorrect and how choice D is correct. To address this confusion, we will apply the e-GMAT process and begin with Choice A and then will address choices B and D. If after reviewing the response you have any doubts about any other choice, feel free to post your doubt.

Meaning Analysis of Original Sentence

At the annual stockholders meeting, investors heard a presentation on the numerous challenges facing the company, including among them the threat from a rival's multibillion-dollar patent-infringement suit and the declining sales for the company's powerful microprocessor chip.

"¢ At the annual stockholders meeting, investors heard a presentation on the numerous challenges facing the company,
o including among them
 the threat from a rival's multibillion-dollar patent-infringement suit and
 the declining sales for the company's powerful microprocessor chip.

The sentence states that investors in a certain meeting heard a presentation in which a number of challenges faced by the company were discussed. There were two main challenges here - firstly the threat of a suit and secondly the decline in sales of one of the products made by the company.

Error Analysis of Original Sentence

1. SV and Verb - No errors
2. Modifier - No error. The modifier "including among..." modifies "challenges". Note that "including" is not a typical verb-ing modifier. It typically modifies noun entities. So there is no modifier issue.
3. Parallelism: 'Threat' and 'sales', while grammatically parallel, are not logically parallel here. 'Sales' cannot be one of the challenges facing the company: the decline in sales is the challenge. Note that this option is not wrong because 'threat' and 'declining' are not grammatically parallel. 'Declining' is simply an adjective here; the noun phrase would remain the same, in grammatical terms, if we were to replace 'declining' with an adjective such as 'poor'. If the phrase had been 'poor sales', would we then have said that 'threat' and 'poor' were not parallel? Of course not. A noun without an adjective can be parallel to a noun that has an adjective before it. It's extremely important to note here that the parallelism error in this option is logical and not grammatical.

4. Redundancy: As Anjali has rightly pointed out, 'including' and 'among them' convey the same meaning.
5. Idiom: 'Threat from'. This idiom is usually used to refer to a threat from a person, or a body of people; e.g. 'threat from his manager', 'threat from service providers', 'threat from the neighboring country'. 'Threat of' refers to a threat posed by something inanimate: 'threat of war', 'threat of higher oil prices'.
6. Idiom: 'Sales for' is used incorrectly in this context. Note that this phrase is not wrong in itself: it just doesn't convey the intended meaning correctly in the context of this sentence. Let's look at some examples to see the difference between "sales of" and "sales for".
a. "Sales of" is usually used to indicate sales of a particular product.
i. Example 1: Pfizer's first-quarter profit declined 19% as sales of its top product, the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, tumbled 71% in the U.S.
ii. Example 2: As recently as last summer, sales of new cars were growing by 10% to 13% year over year while sales of building materials were expanding by more than 8%.
b. "Sales for" usually indicates the sales for a particular time period.
i. Example 1: NRF estimates holiday sales for November and December will increase 4.1% to $586.1 billion, compared with a 5.6% increase last year.
ii. Example 2: Automakers in India on Friday reported higher sales for December as a pickup in the local economy spurred demand.
iii. Example 3: Rémy Cointreau's consolidated sales for the financial year ended 31 March 2014 totalled EUR1,031.6 million, an organic decline of 10.7%.
Now, these are by no means the only ways in which these two phrases can be used. But they're pretty typical of the ways in which they are used. (Note: these example sentences are all from the Wall Street Journal.)

Answer choice Analysis
Now with this analysis of choice A, let's look at choice B.

Option B: Incorrect for the following reasons:
1. Modifier: The relative pronoun modifier 'which' logically refers to 'challenges'. But grammatically, there is a subject verb number agreement issue. 'Which' should have a plural verb since it refers to the plural noun 'challenges'. But as you can see, it has the singular verb 'includes'.
2. Parallelism: same issue as identified in choice A.

Let's focus our attention on choice D now:

Option D: Correct.

Since many people have concerns about the pronoun issue for this choice, we will focus on the same. There is no pronoun issue here: let's take a moment to understand why. A pronoun should have a clear antecedent: this is true. More importantly, a pronoun must have a logical antecedent. "Them" is a plural pronoun. The logical antecedent of "them" is "numerous challenges", a plural noun. The other plural noun in this sentence is "investors". Now "they" cannot refer to "investors" because it is not logical to say that "investors" are one of the numerous challenges faced by the company.

Take this example:

In an accident, the car hit the tree and so Joe had to take it to the garage.

Here, "it" can only refer to "the car" because the other singular entity in the sentence, "the tree", cannot be taken to the garage. So here we need not explicitly mention that Joe had to take his car to the garage. It makes no logical sense to say that the tree is a possible antecedent for the pronoun 'it': the car is the only possible noun that 'it' can logically refer to.

Now look at this sentence: In an accident, the car hit the tree and it was damaged pretty badly. Now here, "it" is ambiguous because both the singular entities, the car as well as the tree, can be damaged pretty badly. Hence, in this sentence "it" must be replaced by a noun stating what was damaged.

In this GMAT Prep question, "them" has only one logical referent and hence it is not ambiguous.
This concept has been covered in detail in the Pronouns concept file that is included in e-GMAT's free trial. Just register and learn!

Hope the above discussion helps. If you have any doubts about the above or about any of the other answer choices, feel free to ask your doubt here. �

Regards,
Meghna

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by Md Raihan Uddin » Sat Jul 25, 2015 1:21 am
e-GMAT wrote:Hi @mukherjee,

Thanks for posting this interesting question. :-)

It appears that you would like to clarify why choice B (the choice that you marked) is incorrect and how choice D is correct. To address this confusion, we will apply the e-GMAT process and begin with Choice A and then will address choices B and D. If after reviewing the response you have any doubts about any other choice, feel free to post your doubt.

Meaning Analysis of Original Sentence

At the annual stockholders meeting, investors heard a presentation on the numerous challenges facing the company, including among them the threat from a rival's multibillion-dollar patent-infringement suit and the declining sales for the company's powerful microprocessor chip.

"¢ At the annual stockholders meeting, investors heard a presentation on the numerous challenges facing the company,
o including among them
 the threat from a rival's multibillion-dollar patent-infringement suit and
 the declining sales for the company's powerful microprocessor chip.

The sentence states that investors in a certain meeting heard a presentation in which a number of challenges faced by the company were discussed. There were two main challenges here - firstly the threat of a suit and secondly the decline in sales of one of the products made by the company.

Error Analysis of Original Sentence

1. SV and Verb - No errors
2. Modifier - No error. The modifier "including among..." modifies "challenges". Note that "including" is not a typical verb-ing modifier. It typically modifies noun entities. So there is no modifier issue.
3. Parallelism: 'Threat' and 'sales', while grammatically parallel, are not logically parallel here. 'Sales' cannot be one of the challenges facing the company: the decline in sales is the challenge. Note that this option is not wrong because 'threat' and 'declining' are not grammatically parallel. 'Declining' is simply an adjective here; the noun phrase would remain the same, in grammatical terms, if we were to replace 'declining' with an adjective such as 'poor'. If the phrase had been 'poor sales', would we then have said that 'threat' and 'poor' were not parallel? Of course not. A noun without an adjective can be parallel to a noun that has an adjective before it. It's extremely important to note here that the parallelism error in this option is logical and not grammatical.

4. Redundancy: As Anjali has rightly pointed out, 'including' and 'among them' convey the same meaning.
5. Idiom: 'Threat from'. This idiom is usually used to refer to a threat from a person, or a body of people; e.g. 'threat from his manager', 'threat from service providers', 'threat from the neighboring country'. 'Threat of' refers to a threat posed by something inanimate: 'threat of war', 'threat of higher oil prices'.
6. Idiom: 'Sales for' is used incorrectly in this context. Note that this phrase is not wrong in itself: it just doesn't convey the intended meaning correctly in the context of this sentence. Let's look at some examples to see the difference between "sales of" and "sales for".
a. "Sales of" is usually used to indicate sales of a particular product.
i. Example 1: Pfizer's first-quarter profit declined 19% as sales of its top product, the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, tumbled 71% in the U.S.
ii. Example 2: As recently as last summer, sales of new cars were growing by 10% to 13% year over year while sales of building materials were expanding by more than 8%.
b. "Sales for" usually indicates the sales for a particular time period.
i. Example 1: NRF estimates holiday sales for November and December will increase 4.1% to $586.1 billion, compared with a 5.6% increase last year.
ii. Example 2: Automakers in India on Friday reported higher sales for December as a pickup in the local economy spurred demand.
iii. Example 3: Rémy Cointreau's consolidated sales for the financial year ended 31 March 2014 totalled EUR1,031.6 million, an organic decline of 10.7%.
Now, these are by no means the only ways in which these two phrases can be used. But they're pretty typical of the ways in which they are used. (Note: these example sentences are all from the Wall Street Journal.)

Answer choice Analysis
Now with this analysis of choice A, let's look at choice B.

Option B: Incorrect for the following reasons:
1. Modifier: The relative pronoun modifier 'which' logically refers to 'challenges'. But grammatically, there is a subject verb number agreement issue. 'Which' should have a plural verb since it refers to the plural noun 'challenges'. But as you can see, it has the singular verb 'includes'.
2. Parallelism: same issue as identified in choice A.

Let's focus our attention on choice D now:

Option D: Correct.

Since many people have concerns about the pronoun issue for this choice, we will focus on the same. There is no pronoun issue here: let's take a moment to understand why. A pronoun should have a clear antecedent: this is true. More importantly, a pronoun must have a logical antecedent. "Them" is a plural pronoun. The logical antecedent of "them" is "numerous challenges", a plural noun. The other plural noun in this sentence is "investors". Now "they" cannot refer to "investors" because it is not logical to say that "investors" are one of the numerous challenges faced by the company.

Take this example:

In an accident, the car hit the tree and so Joe had to take it to the garage.

Here, "it" can only refer to "the car" because the other singular entity in the sentence, "the tree", cannot be taken to the garage. So here we need not explicitly mention that Joe had to take his car to the garage. It makes no logical sense to say that the tree is a possible antecedent for the pronoun 'it': the car is the only possible noun that 'it' can logically refer to.

Now look at this sentence: In an accident, the car hit the tree and it was damaged pretty badly. Now here, "it" is ambiguous because both the singular entities, the car as well as the tree, can be damaged pretty badly. Hence, in this sentence "it" must be replaced by a noun stating what was damaged.

In this GMAT Prep question, "them" has only one logical referent and hence it is not ambiguous.
This concept has been covered in detail in the Pronouns concept file that is included in e-GMAT's free trial. Just register and learn!

Hope the above discussion helps. If you have any doubts about the above or about any of the other answer choices, feel free to ask your doubt here. �

Regards,
Meghna
Hi meghna,
It's a big article for explaining a simple issue. Most of the people will have no interest to read so many things. Why don't you make things simple? Follow Mitch Hunt and Ron. They explain things very nicely and easily.