Sentence Correction

Until 1868 and Disraeli, Great Britain had no prime ministers not coming from landed family.

A) Until 1868 and Disraeli, Great Britain had no prime ministers not coming

B) Until 1868 and Disraeli, Great Britain had had no prime ministers who have not come

C) Until Disraeli in 1868, there were no prime ministers in Great Britain who have not come

D) It was not until 1868 that Great Britain had a prime minister - Disraeli - who did not come

E) It was only in 1868 and Disraeli that Great Britain had one of its prime ministers not coming

OAD

Hi Experts ,

Please explain also please explain that what is the use of[spoiler] (-)[/spoiler] in OA

Given Sentence: The first error in this sentence is in the phrase Until 1868 and Disraeli. There is nothing wrong with Until 1868, but DISRAELI is not a time, and therefore Until ... Disraeli makes no sense. (It would of course be possible to use DISRAELI as the subject of a clause beginning with UNTIL, as in Until Disraeli took over the Prime Ministership ..., but this is not the case in this sentence.) This is the simplest error in this sentence, and it allows you to eliminate options A and B.

Option C: The phrase Until Disraeli in 1868 continues to present Disraeli as though he were a time: the change in the structure of the phrase does not alter the nature of the mistake.

Option D: The problem is resolved by using the name DISRAELI to specify who became the Prime Minister in 1868 and what distinguished him from previous Prime Ministers. The name is placed between hyphens in order to to emphasize that the Prime Minister in question was this man, Disraeli, and no other. Thus, the name logically modifies PRIME MINISTER.

Option E: The problem that allows the elimination of A, B, and C recurs here in a slightly different form. Its substance, however, remains unchanged. It was only in 1868 and Disraeli continues to present DISRAELI as a time or as an aspect of a time-context.

Each of the options discussed - except option D - has other errors: double negatives, the use of tenses, and idiom. Nevertheless, the most direct way of resolving the question is arguably the one used here.

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One consideration that can be key in getting sentence correction questions right is the level of confidence one has in a decision point.

In this question, the first issue one may notice is that, as Fabio mentioned, the expression Until ... Disraeli does not make sense as Disraeli is not a time but rather a person.

Still, often in colloquial English people do use expressions such as until Lincoln, after JFK and before Ghandi. So a person doing this question might not be 100% sure that the presence of the expression Until ... Disraeli is sufficient reason for eliminating an answer choice.

Often, if you are not certain about the validity of a decision point, your optimal next move is to seek another decision point, one in which you have more confidence. In fact GMAT SC questions can include FALSE decision points in the form of expressions that don't quite "sound right" but are actually fine.

There are multiple ways to eliminate each of the wrong answer choices in this question. So it's a good example of a question that one could answer correctly without being certain about a particular decision point.

In A, for instance, the use of the present participle expression not coming is awkward and inaccurately conveys the meaning that prime ministers were coming on an ongoing basis. Better than not coming would be something along the lines of who had not come.

B has mixed tenses, incorrectly pairing past perfect had had with present perfect have not come.

C also has a tense error, starting off in the past tense with 1868 and were and then jumping into the present with have not come.

E is awkward, conveys that something, possibly Great Britain, was in Disraeli, and then goes on to repeat the incorrect use of coming seen in A.

So there a multiple ways to eliminate the wrong answers to this question, and a skilled SC hacker can in general exploit the multiplicity of decision points in SC questions to get right answer after right answer, and rock GMAT verbal.

Each of the options discussed - except option D - has other errors: double negatives

Hi Fabio &Marty ,

Thanks for your reply. All clear.

Can you please explain the above double negatives part.

Many thanks in advance.

SJ

What I referred to in a rather approximate way as a double negative is present in the given sentence. (I think, incidentally, that a typographical mistake was made when the sentence was copied, because from landed family should be either from a landed family or from landed families. Since the correct answer would require from a landed family, I am going to assume that this is how the phrase was originally written.)

The problem is therefore no prime ministers not coming from a landed family. In the first place, the plural no prime ministers leaves open the possibility that Great Britain could have had several prime ministers all at once: the correct option resolves this illogicality. But apart from that matter, no prime ministers not coming is a very clumsy and unidiomatic way of saying that until Disraeli's time each British prime minister had come from a landed family. The statement means, really that Britain had all its prime ministers coming - simultaneously, it would seem - from a landed family, and what's more, from a single landed family. It's an idea that doesn't take shape very readily in the reader's mind. One solution could be, for instance, what Marty suggested: no prime minister who had not come. The two negatives remain, but they are not a problem here, because NO negates PRIME MINISTER and NOT negates the verb in a clause that describes that person.

I hope this will help to clear it up.

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Hi Fabio,

Thanks for your reply. It helps.

Thanks,

SJ