Two doubts on sentence correction

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Two doubts on sentence correction

by quetz » Sun Mar 18, 2012 3:16 am
Hi all,
I need some expert grammar help. Hoping to get it here.

issue 1) Consider the below sentence structure.

Noun1 Verb1 Noun2, Verb2 blah blah blah.

I am not sure who performs the action verb2. Is there a specific rule for this? Does it depend on the roles of the nouns (subject/object) in the first part of the sentence? Do we have to logically decide who performs the verb2 action?


Eg: The historic buildings in London were long ignored by tourists, traveling instead to newer attractions in the Capital City.

who travels here? The building, or the tourists? (Logically its tourists, I want to know syntactically who performs the traveling action ). If I use a relative pronoun before "traveling", I know it unambiguously point to the previous noun, which is the tourists.

Issue 2) I would like to know how important the pronoun ambiguity error (having more than one antecedent to be precise, but logically clear) is in GMAT SC.

if the options are the ones given below, which one should I prefer?

Q) The new government requires employers to inform an employee of their legal right to holidays and overtime pay.

a) employers to inform an employee of their
c) employers to inform employees that he has a
d) employers to inform employees that there is a
e) that employers inform an employee of their
f) that employers inform the employees that they have a


Here option D is the one without a pronoun/noun error, but doesn't state that "employees have right", and is hence less emphatic to the extend that it changes the original meaning. To me option F sounds Intuitively better than the rest. Would like to hear your thoughts.
Source: — Sentence Correction |

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by EducationAisle » Sun Mar 18, 2012 4:08 am
quetz wrote:Eg: The historic buildings in London were long ignored by tourists, traveling instead to newer attractions in the Capital City.
Yeah, a handy thing to perhaps keep in mind is that on GMAT, Present Participle phrase to express the (direct/indirect) result of the preceding clause is not preferable when the preceding clause is in a passive voice. A case in point is the example "Emily Dickinson's letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson.." in OG. Do note however that tis is not a grammar rule, but an observation and so, if someone cites an official example to the contrary, I would welcome.
quetz wrote: if the options are the ones given below, which one should I prefer?

Q) The new government requires employers to inform an employee of their legal right to holidays and overtime pay.

a) employers to inform an employee of their
c) employers to inform employees that he has a
d) employers to inform employees that there is a
e) that employers inform an employee of their
f) that employers inform the employees that they have a
What is the source of this question? Are you saying D is the Official Answer? That would be very surprising.
Ashish
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by quetz » Sun Mar 18, 2012 4:55 am
Yes, D is the correct choice. I was surprised too. This is from MR verbal study companion.

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by scholardream » Sun Mar 18, 2012 10:03 am
I consider between A and D but I can't get the conclusion.
Can anyone help ?

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