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Quasars

by goelmohit2002 » Sat Sep 05, 2009 11:04 am
Hi All,

In the below question OG-12, Q#45.....

[spoiler]OA = B. For kicking out C...OG says "The clause some believe them to be does not supply a verb to accompany quasars as the subject of the sentence, and the clause supplies an object them so that quasars cannot be the object, making the sentence ungrammatical."
[/spoiler]

Can someone please tell what is meant by bold one above ?

=============================================

Quasars, at billions of light-years from Earth the most distant observable objects in the universe, believed to be the cores of galaxies in an early stage of development.

(A) believed to be
(B) are believed to be
(C) some believe them to be
(D) some believe they are
(E) it is believed that they are
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by bharathh » Sat Sep 05, 2009 1:09 pm
This one can easily be solved by looking for Subject verb agreement

In fact only B has subject-verb agreement.

When I find the subject of a phrase, first thing I do is to find the verb associated with it. In this case it has to come after the extraneous information.

Only B has a verb that agrees with the subject.

If you feel that A also has subj verb agreement... check out the phrase

Quasars, believed to be the cores of galaxies ..

It does not feel complete. If you copy paste the above phrase in MSWord, the application will complain that it is a fragment.
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by scoobydooby » Sat Sep 05, 2009 1:20 pm
guess the og explanation for C means: a pronoun in an objective case (them) cannot be used to refer to a noun (quasars) in the subjective case.
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by goelmohit2002 » Sat Sep 05, 2009 1:23 pm
scoobydooby wrote:guess the og explanation for C means: a pronoun in an objective case (them) cannot be used to refer to a noun (quasars) in the subjective case.
Hi Scooby,

Thanks....but why so....i guess there are plenty of examples in OG that does not follow the same....

or there is something that i am missing here ?

kindly tell...
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by scoobydooby » Sun Sep 06, 2009 11:11 am
quasars is the subject. the part within the commas modifies quasars. we need a verb to go with the subject quasars. this is best provided in B

C: quasars, (modifier),some believe them to be x
here quasars is a subject, "some" is also a subject and the verb "believe' agrees with subject "some", not with quasars. so the subject "quasars" is without a verb.

for the og explanation, is there a typo? does it say "quasars cannot be the subject" ?
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by goelmohit2002 » Fri Sep 25, 2009 3:10 am
scoobydooby wrote:quasars is the subject. the part within the commas modifies quasars. we need a verb to go with the subject quasars. this is best provided in B

C: quasars, (modifier),some believe them to be x
here quasars is a subject, "some" is also a subject and the verb "believe' agrees with subject "some", not with quasars. so the subject "quasars" is without a verb.

for the og explanation, is there a typo? does it say "quasars cannot be the subject" ?
Hi Scooby,

No there is no typo....in neither the question nor in the explanation that I wrote for kicking out C that OG gives....

Can you please help understand what does the highlighted one as mentioned in OG explanation says ?

Copy pasting again for quick reference:

==============================================

OA = B. For kicking out C...OG says "The clause some believe them to be does not supply a verb to accompany quasars as the subject of the sentence, and the clause supplies an object them so that quasars cannot be the object, making the sentence ungrammatical."


Can someone please tell what is meant by bold one above ?
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by scoobydooby » Fri Sep 25, 2009 7:36 am
guess it means:
subject is "quasars". in the clause "some beleive them...", the object is "them", "them" stands for quasars, the subject.
so "quasars" is both the subject and the object, which makes it awkward. (subjects and objects can be the same in case of reflexive actions though- x ej: killed himself)
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by goelmohit2002 » Fri Sep 25, 2009 8:10 am
scoobydooby wrote:guess it means:
subject is "quasars". in the clause "some beleive them...", the object is "them", "them" stands for quasars, the subject.
so "quasars" is both the subject and the object, which makes it awkward. (subjects and objects can be the same in case of reflexive actions though- x ej: killed himself)
oh ok thx...

does it mean that the folllowing sentence would have been correct(in case we are not aware whether Quasars are living or non living) ?

Quasars believe themselves blah blah blah...
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by Stacey Koprince » Wed Oct 07, 2009 2:40 pm
The basic idea is that you have this noun, quasars, sitting by itself at the beginning. It's not part of a prepositional phrase or subordinate clause or something like that. So, is it the subject? Is it the object? What is it?

Well, it can't be the subject, because there's no verb to go with it.

Okay, so then "some" must be the subject and "believe" must be the verb, which leaves "them" as the object... wait, so quasars can't be the object either.

So we have this word that doesn't fit any proper category in the sentence. Bad sentence.
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by sarthak » Sun Feb 14, 2010 12:33 am
this is a subjunctive mood right ? believe indicates subjunctive right ?
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by Stacey Koprince » Tue Feb 16, 2010 10:37 am
No, actually. It isn't the case that any use of the verb "believe" indicates subjunctive.

I believe in ghosts.

Nothing subjunctive about that.

You could use the verb "believe" in a hypothetical subjunctive construction:

If I were to believe in ghosts, then I would also believe in fairies. (NOTE: This construction doesn't get used much on the GMAT. Also note: this depends more on the "If" and "were" constructions, not so much on what the other specific verbs are.)

You could also use "believe" in a command subjunctive construction:

I believe it is imperative that she be made president of the club. (Though this is kind of clunky - it would be cleaner to chop off the "I believe" and just say "It is imperative that..." Again, the construction here really depends on the command language, imperative, and is not triggered simply by usage of the word "believe.")
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by jeffedwards » Tue Feb 16, 2010 11:45 am
A complete sentence needs a
Subject + a verb

Choice C does not have a verb. Quasars is the subject. Knock out the middle part of the sentence, sectioned off by commas, then read the sentence with the answer choices. B should become the obvious choice.
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by tomada » Tue Feb 16, 2010 12:42 pm
Am I the only one who thought "at billions of light-years from Earth the most distant observable objects in the universe" was clunky as written?
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by Stacey Koprince » Fri Feb 19, 2010 7:44 am
No, you're not the only one. It is awkward - but it's grammatically correct, and that's what really matters. "Awkward" only matters if there's something better with which you can replace it, because avoiding awkwardness is a preference, not a rule.
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