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British Museum - Kapellan Test Question

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British Museum - Kapellan Test Question

by goelmohit2002 » Fri Mar 13, 2009 12:09 am
Hi All,

Can somebody please help me in the below question ?

As per OG who refers to people. But the answer in the below question is "D" and is referring to authorities. Are there any instances when who can refer to non-living things too....

Despite forceful legal pleas for the restitution of expropriated cultural artifacts to the place of their origin, the British Museum continues to rebuff the Greek authorities requesting that it should return the Parthenon marbles removed from the Acro by Lord Elgin in 1806.

(A) requesting that it should
(B) requesting them to
(C) and its request to
(D) who request that it
(E) who request them to

Thanks
Mohit
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by pakaskwa » Fri Mar 13, 2009 1:01 am
Hi Mohit,
If we put D into the sentence,
...the British Museum continues to rebuff the Greek authorities who request that it return the Parthenon marbles removed from the Acro by Lord Elgin in 1806.

who refers to (and is right after) Greek authorities
it refers to British Museum

request that + infinitive verb
"We request that you be here on time."
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by goelmohit2002 » Fri Mar 13, 2009 7:16 am
yes..."who" refers to authorities here....but as per OG...."who" should refer to people/living things..but here who is referring to authorities....so how "who" is correct here ?
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by Nailya » Fri Mar 13, 2009 11:46 am
authorities is people:-)
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by goelmohit2002 » Fri Mar 13, 2009 11:50 am
Are you joking or serious ???? :-)
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by Nailya » Fri Mar 13, 2009 11:54 am
I am serious B-) What did you think authorities were, things? :D
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by goelmohit2002 » Fri Mar 13, 2009 12:06 pm
IMO authorities are organizations just like say a firm/company.

We use "which/that" to refer to a company so how can we use "who" for authorities.

Please tell what I am missing here.

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by Nailya » Fri Mar 13, 2009 12:22 pm
As far as I understand authorities are the governing people - chief, mayor, president etc.
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by goelmohit2002 » Fri Mar 13, 2009 12:33 pm
Nailya wrote:As far as I understand authorities are the governing people - chief, mayor, president etc.
I just checked the wordweb meaning of authorities, it says:

==========================================
authorities = "The organization that is the governing authority of a political unit"

But for authority it says:
authority = can be people or organization based on the context. It gives all the following meanings of authority:

1. An administrative unit of government
2. (usually plural) persons who exercise (administrative) control over others
3. An expert whose views are taken as definitive
============================================
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by Nailya » Fri Mar 13, 2009 2:33 pm
if in this context "authorities" has a meaning of organizations (not people) we should use that or which (instead of who) but we do not have that option anyways, therefore who is the correct one.
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by goelmohit2002 » Fri Mar 13, 2009 9:33 pm
Thanks. Does this type of ambiguous questions come in actual GMAT paper ? This is actually a Kaplan question and not really a GMAT question.

Who clearly refers to people as per OG....so is it worthwhile to spend more time on this issue ?
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by Nailya » Sat Mar 14, 2009 6:13 pm
I don't know, I guess if you have time:-)
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by lunarpower » Tue Mar 24, 2009 10:22 pm
the use of "authorities" to refer to people is standard; i can't imagine that the gmat would object to that usage. if any users here have seen evidence in an official problem either confirming or denying this, please post.

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this question is ok, because the other 4 choices are all ungrammatical.

(a) is incorrect because it's unidiomatic (or redundant, depending on how you look at it).
* you could say that it's unidiomatic, because you're not allowed to use "should" with the verb "request".
* you could also say that it's redundant, because the word "request" already carries the implicit meaning of "should" (or is at least related). therefore, you are to use only one of these two words:
they requested that you come to the meeting.
they said that you should come to the meeting.

(b) is unidiomatic: you can't say "request PERSON to INFINITIVE". it must be written in the command subjunctive, as in choice (d).

the literal meaning of (c) is that the museum rebuffed the authorities and separately rebuffed a request. moreover, the pronoun "its" doesn't refer to anything valid; the only possible "it" is the british museum itself, absurdly suggesting that the museum rebuffed its own request.

(d) is correct.

(e) is wrong for the same reason as (b).
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by goelmohit2002 » Tue Mar 24, 2009 10:40 pm
Thanks Ron.

Another reason, I think we can kick out "B" and "E" based on "them" too..since museum is singular.
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by lunarpower » Tue Mar 24, 2009 10:50 pm
goelmohit2002 wrote:Thanks Ron.

Another reason, I think we can kick out "B" and "E" based on "them" too..since museum is singular.
yes, good.

i didn't even look that far, because of the flagrantly incorrect idiom.

well done.
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