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Chambers and Tourists

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Chambers and Tourists

by SmarpanGamt » Tue Sep 28, 2010 12:00 pm
In late 1997, the chambers inside the pyramid of the Pharaoh Menkaure at Giza were closed to visitors for cleaning and repair due to moisture exhaled by tourists, which raised its humidity to such levels so that salt from the stone was crystallizing and fungus was growing on the walls.

(A) due to moisture exhaled by tourists, which
raised its humidity to such levels so that salt
from the stone was crystallizing
(B) due to moisture that tourists had exhaled,
thereby raising its humidity to such levels that
salt from the stone would crystallize
(C) because tourists were exhaling moisture, which
had raised the humidity within them to levels
such that salt from the stone would crystallize
(D) because of moisture that was exhaled by
tourists raising the humidity within them to levels
so high as to make the salt from the stone
crystallize
(E) because moisture exhaled by tourists had raised
the humidity within them to such levels that salt
from the stone was crystallizing


Please Explain : OE for its OA also in option E What is the reference of "them", chambers or tourists . What is the correct way to identify pronoun and its antecedant. I make lot of careless mistake in pronoun identification. Please suggest some resouces for improvement. Thank you
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by reply2spg » Tue Sep 28, 2010 5:15 pm
1. Replace Due to by caused by. If it works fine then due to is correct.
2. You need crystallizing since it is parallel to growing.

So we are left with only A and E.

A is out as per point 1 mentioned above.

Answer to your query, what is 'them' referring to. Replace 'them' with both antecedents.

moisture exhaled by tourists had raised the humidity within tourists - Incorrect. How can humidity increase in tourists? Is this logical? No. It is completely illogical. Humidity can raise in some physical place and not in human being.

moisture exhaled by tourists had raised the humidity within the chambers - Right. Humidity raised in chambers is correct.

HTH!!!!
SmarpanGamt wrote:In late 1997, the chambers inside the pyramid of the Pharaoh Menkaure at Giza were closed to visitors for cleaning and repair due to moisture exhaled by tourists, which raised its humidity to such levels so that salt from the stone was crystallizing and fungus was growing on the walls.

(A) due to moisture exhaled by tourists, which
raised its humidity to such levels so that salt
from the stone was crystallizing
(B) due to moisture that tourists had exhaled,
thereby raising its humidity to such levels that
salt from the stone would crystallize
(C) because tourists were exhaling moisture, which
had raised the humidity within them to levels
such that salt from the stone would crystallize
(D) because of moisture that was exhaled by
tourists raising the humidity within them to levels
so high as to make the salt from the stone
crystallize
(E) because moisture exhaled by tourists had raised
the humidity within them to such levels that salt
from the stone was crystallizing


Please Explain : OE for its OA also in option E What is the reference of "them", chambers or tourists . What is the correct way to identify pronoun and its antecedant. I make lot of careless mistake in pronoun identification. Please suggest some resouces for improvement. Thank you
Sudhanshu
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by arpita@gurome » Tue Sep 28, 2010 5:51 pm
SmarpanGamt wrote:In late 1997, the chambers inside the pyramid of the Pharaoh Menkaure at Giza were closed to visitors for cleaning and repair due to moisture exhaled by tourists, which raised its humidity to such levels so that salt from the stone was crystallizing and fungus was growing on the walls.

(A) due to moisture exhaled by tourists, which
raised its humidity to such levels so that salt
from the stone was crystallizing
(B) due to moisture that tourists had exhaled,
thereby raising its humidity to such levels that
salt from the stone would crystallize
(C) because tourists were exhaling moisture, which
had raised the humidity within them to levels
such that salt from the stone would crystallize
(D) because of moisture that was exhaled by
tourists raising the humidity within them to levels
so high as to make the salt from the stone
crystallize
(E) because moisture exhaled by tourists had raised
the humidity within them to such levels that salt
from the stone was crystallizing


Please Explain : OE for its OA also in option E What is the reference of "them", chambers or tourists . What is the correct way to identify pronoun and its antecedant. I make lot of careless mistake in pronoun identification. Please suggest some resouces for improvement. Thank you
This is a long underline SC. An easy way to get to the correct answer is to look for grammatical errors in the sentence and also look for internal inconsistency. Prephrasing in such questions is tough since they are too long, hence will either take up too much time or there could be more than one prephrase possible.

Coming to the question.

A - the 'its' refers to chambers. Pronoun error.
B - same as above
C - Wordy and ambigious. "would" is awkward. 'Crystallize' not parallel to 'was growing'.
D - Wordy and awkward and parallelism issue as C.
E - Clear concise and parallel. hence choose E.

As for the pronoun antecedent identification, there are a few things to look at - Number, gender, repeats, proximity and case. Any good grammar book should help here.

Hope this helps!
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by hitmis » Tue Sep 28, 2010 9:19 pm
I would still pick E since its clear and concise but I must admit that like 'SmarpanGamt', I too am confused why 'chambers' is not used instead of 'them' in (e). The 'them' refers to the tourists which is the closest noun/antecedent and if so that is wrong!?
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by arpita@gurome » Wed Sep 29, 2010 1:19 am
hitmis wrote:I would still pick E since its clear and concise but I must admit that like 'SmarpanGamt', I too am confused why 'chambers' is not used instead of 'them' in (e). The 'them' refers to the tourists which is the closest noun/antecedent and if so that is wrong!?
Ok two things:

1. We have to choose the best choice sometimes it may not be the ideal one. Hence from that stand point E is the best answer.
2. Proximity is not the only thing to look at when deciding a pronoun antecedent, as mentioned in my earlier post an antecedent identification is a mix of looking at other factors as well. The idea that the closest noun to a pronoun is its antecedent is not always true. However, one pronoun no matter how many times it is used in the sentence will refer to the same noun.
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by SmarpanGamt » Wed Sep 29, 2010 4:40 am
@Arpita

I agree with your Point 1 . That we have to choose the best pick. Any way in this particular question other choices are one go rejection and finally you are left with partially clear " E".

Thank you for the explaination.
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by vishal.pathak » Mon Dec 05, 2011 5:13 am
arpita@gurome wrote:
hitmis wrote:I would still pick E since its clear and concise but I must admit that like 'SmarpanGamt', I too am confused why 'chambers' is not used instead of 'them' in (e). The 'them' refers to the tourists which is the closest noun/antecedent and if so that is wrong!?
Ok two things:

1. We have to choose the best choice sometimes it may not be the ideal one. Hence from that stand point E is the best answer.
2. Proximity is not the only thing to look at when deciding a pronoun antecedent, as mentioned in my earlier post an antecedent identification is a mix of looking at other factors as well. The idea that the closest noun to a pronoun is its antecedent is not always true. However, one pronoun no matter how many times it is used in the sentence will refer to the same noun.
Hi Arpita,

We can all agree that "them" can refer to either chambers or tourists. Both the references are logical. So we clearly have a pronoun ambiguity problem and the problem is very evident. What is a clear way to figure out if there is a pronoun reference problem.

Regards,
Vishal
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by tuanquang269 » Tue Dec 06, 2011 7:10 am
SmarpanGamt wrote:In late 1997, the chambers inside the pyramid of the Pharaoh Menkaure at Giza were closed to visitors for cleaning and repair due to moisture exhaled by tourists, which raised its humidity to such levels so that salt from the stone was crystallizing and fungus was growing on the walls.

(A) due to moisture exhaled by tourists, which
raised its humidity to such levels so that salt
from the stone was crystallizing
(B) due to moisture that tourists had exhaled,
thereby raising its humidity to such levels that
salt from the stone would crystallize
(C) because tourists were exhaling moisture, which
had raised the humidity within them to levels
such that salt from the stone would crystallize
(D) because of moisture that was exhaled by
tourists raising the humidity within them to levels
so high as to make the salt from the stone
crystallize
(E) because moisture exhaled by tourists had raised
the humidity within them to such levels that salt
from the stone was crystallizing


Please Explain : OE for its OA also in option E What is the reference of "them", chambers or tourists . What is the correct way to identify pronoun and its antecedant. I make lot of careless mistake in pronoun identification. Please suggest some resouces for improvement. Thank you
Quickest approach is to find the parallelism signal. Only choice A and E are remain, choice A "which" is wrong placement.

"them" in choice E refers to "chambers", not "tourists", the word is place in the passive voice so that it cannot be referred to "them".

There are other splits such as "due to" and "because of" vs "because" (winner)
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