gmat_perfect wrote:Contrary to financial analysts, who predicted last year that the market for home computers would dwindle, the personal computer industry continued to show strong growth in the first quarter of this year.
A. analysts, who predicted
B. analysts, whose predictions
C. analysts and their predictions
D. analysts' predicting
E. analysts' predictions
[spoiler]OA: Debated[/spoiler]
this question is awful. what's the source of the question?
whatever the source of this question, you should probably be quite suspicious of problems from that source, from now on.
choice (e) is the best of these five choices, but they are all bad.
first, "contrary" is an adjective, so the initial modifier that begins with this adjective must modify a NOUN. (this is what all adjectives do; they modify nouns.) therefore, the initial modifier actually modifies the following subject "the personal computer industry", which doesn't make sense as the referent for any of the options; the industry is not "contrary to analysts", nor is the industry itself "contrary to analysts' prediction".
if this problem showed up on the official test, then "contrary to analysts' prediction" would have to modify something like "the performance of the home computer market", since that is actually what was contrary to the prediction.
second, "prediction" should be singular, since we are just talking about one prediction. it doesn't matter that this prediction was made by multiple analysts; it's still one prediction.
horrible, sloppy problem.
what's the source?
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.
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