Declining values for farm equipment and land, the collateral

ruplun wrote:Declining values for farm equipment and land, the collateral against which farmers borrow to get through
the harvest season, is going to force many lenders to tighten or deny credit this spring.
(A) the collateral against which farmers borrow to get through the harvest season, is
(B) which farmers use as collateral to borrow against to get through the harvest season, is
(C) the collateral which is borrowed against by farmers to get through the harvest season, is
(D) which farmers use as collateral to borrow against to get through the harvest season, are
(E) the collateral against which farmers borrow to get through the harvest season, are

I find the ans to be D .. Can anyone also suggest their opinion

Hello,

We can eliminate A, B and C because "values" is plural and so the verb should be "are." But between D and E, E is the better choice. Stylistically, it is best to avoid placing the preposition "against" apart from its indirect object "collateral"--this is a common blunder in everyday speech, but it should not be used formally. For example:

- "the place I will go to" --> prefer, "the place to which I will go"; now, "which" is the object of "to"

Yes, we can often get away with this for a direct object:

- "the food I eat" is acceptable

But since in this question we are dealing with an object of a preposition, it is an indirect object (dative case) and we should not place it before the preposition.

cant understand the explanation ...can someone explain it simply

imo E
oa and source?

ruplun wrote:Declining values for farm equipment and land, the collateral against which farmers borrow to get through
the harvest season, is going to force many lenders to tighten or deny credit this spring.
(A) the collateral against which farmers borrow to get through the harvest season, is
(B) which farmers use as collateral to borrow against to get through the harvest season, is
(C) the collateral which is borrowed against by farmers to get through the harvest season, is
(D) which farmers use as collateral to borrow against to get through the harvest season, are
(E) the collateral against which farmers borrow to get through the harvest season, are

I find the ans to be D .. Can anyone also suggest their opinion

ruplun wrote:cant understand the explanation ...can someone explain it simply

Sorry for the late reply.

In brief, "against" is a preposition and needs to have a noun object. In choice D, this appears to be "collateral." The problem is that it is not proper form to put the object of a preposition BEFORE the preposition.

E solves this problem by using a relative pronoun to stand in for the object of the preposition: "collateral against which" works.

I think the answer should be A

because "Declining values" is singular and hence the use of 'is' is right.

IMO:A

ranjeet75 wrote:I think the answer should be A

because "Declining values" is singular and hence the use of 'is' is right.

Hey,
No..it is plural. 'rusty polymath' has actually given a nice explanation.

Hi Frank,

Can you please explain why E,
Unable to understand the explanation given!

GmatKiss wrote:Hi Frank,

Can you please explain why E,
Unable to understand the explanation given!

Hey,
You can refer to Mitch's(GMATGURuNY's) post at:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/declining-va ... 60223.html

Thanks Frank It helped!

I think a lot of people get confused by the separation of a relative pronoun from the noun to which it's referring. That is, when I say:

"This is the post which will explain everything,"

it is easy to see that "which" refers to "post." It gets a little bit harder (but it shouldn't!) when I say:

"This is the post in which I will explain everything."

Here the word "in" is inserted but it's still okay. The reason that we have "in which" is that, logically, if we made the Relative Clause ("in which I will explain everything") into the main sentence, it would read: "I will explain everything in this post." So, since "post," replaced by "which" in the original sentence, would be the object of "in," "which" should also be the object of "in," so they have to go together: "in which" instead of "in the post."

No problem so far. But then it turns into this:

"This is the post the topic of which will be the explanation of everything."

Again, take the relative clause and pretend it's the main sentence. It would read: "The topic of this post will be the explanation of everything." This sentence would NOT make sense if we split up the left hand side. "Of this post, the topic will be the explanation of everything"? NO. The only way it makes sense is if "the topic of this post" is all together at the beginning of the sentence. As a result, when we use a relative clause, we have to slip "which" into its rightful place in the same construction. This leads us to the seemingly-awkward-but-actually-correct "the topic of which."

So, when you see a few words before the "which" or "who" or other relative pronoun, words that are part of the logic of the Relative Clause, realize that that's totally okay: the "which" still refers to the last noun or noun idea in the previous clause and, as long as it's in its rightful position in the logic of the relative clause, it's not only correct, it's actually grammatically clearer.