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Confused between two options

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by r2kins » Thu Jun 23, 2011 11:08 am
In medieval times, Libya was the principal corridor for the transmission of goods by merchants between Europe and Africa.

A. for the transmission of goods by merchants between
E. through which merchants goods were transmitted between.

E (the latter choice) is mentioned as the correct answer.
I can't see how it can be a better choice than A?
Pls help

Source - 800score.com
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Source: — Sentence Correction |

by sameerballani » Thu Jun 23, 2011 11:27 am
r2kins wrote:In medieval times, Libya was the principal corridor for the transmission of goods by merchants between Europe and Africa.

A. for the transmission of goods by merchants between
E. through which merchants goods were transmitted between.

E (the latter choice) is mentioned as the correct answer.
I can't see how it can be a better choice than A?
Pls help

Source - 800score.com
What i feel is that:
It is so because here we are considering the role of Libya, which can be a mean of doin something.

Also on reading again option A. it says
Libya was the principal corridor for the transmission of goods
But as per meaning of the sentence
it should be -
Libya was the principal corridor for the merchants, who .....

As per the correct meaning, Libya should make sense : THE MEAN of transporting between X and Y
I hope this makes sense

Thanks
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by GMATGuruNY » Thu Jun 23, 2011 11:56 am
r2kins wrote:In medieval times, Libya was the principal corridor for the transmission of goods by merchants between Europe and Africa.

A. for the transmission of goods by merchants between
E. through which merchants' goods were transmitted between.

E (the latter choice) is mentioned as the correct answer.
I can't see how it can be a better choice than A?
Pls help

Source - 800score.com
It must be clear what a modifier is modifying.
A modifier should be as close as possible to what it's modifying.

Given the phrase goods by merchants, a reader might think that the goods were PRODUCED by the merchants.
Given merchants between Europe and Africa, a reader might think that the MERCHANTS were between Europe and Africa.
Neither interpretation is what the sentence intends to convey.

E makes the meaning clear.
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by r2kins » Thu Jun 23, 2011 12:06 pm
Thanks Sameer and Mitch !

Your explanations helped.

Going forward, perhaps it would be a good strategy to scan the suspect answer choices for possible change of meaning!
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by deep.amangmat » Thu Jun 23, 2011 8:16 pm
This difference in meaning was definitely interesting. Thanks @Mitch to clarify this :)

I need to be careful about such differences going forward.
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