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it in possessive case

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by theforrestgump » Thu Sep 29, 2011 11:56 am
Hey,

This was a sentence i came across in the MGMAT flash cards..

After the president of the college publicly lamented the sharp
drop in the value of its endowment, the head of faculty suggested that the college initiate a fundraising campaign immediately.

In the sentence above i was wondering how can its refer to the college and not the president? I know by meaning it would be wrong for "its" to refer to the president, but how so grammatically?
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by gunjan1208 » Thu Sep 29, 2011 9:35 pm
I think the answer is that we can not use IT for human beings. [Its would have been his]
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by theforrestgump » Fri Sep 30, 2011 3:26 pm
gunjan1208 wrote:I think the answer is that we can not use IT for human beings. [Its would have been his]
Hmm...i guess logic takes precedence over grammar in some cases...
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by DevitaN » Fri Sep 30, 2011 3:42 pm
Yah. I have noticed some seemingly ambiguous pronouns, or even on the higher lvl problems two seemingly ambiguous pronouns. However, in the end, since each pronoun could only possibly logically refer to one antecedant, the sentence is correct.

Pronouns are definitely one of the first things I look for in SC sentences. Apparently they are used more incorrectly than correctly.
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by catfreak » Mon Oct 03, 2011 12:57 pm
Logically perfect but grammatically "its" is ambiguous. Can't say which one takes preference over the other.
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