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Portuguese (pronoun)

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by Mission2012 » Mon Oct 07, 2013 2:08 am
Unique among the Romance languages, Portuguese features days that are not named but numbered, evidence of their strong mercantile heritage.

A>features days that are not named but numbered, evidence of their strong mercantile heritage
B>features days that are not named but numbered, evidence of its strong mercantile heritage
C>has numbered rather than named its days, evidence of its strong mercantile heritage
D>numbered rather than named its days, out of its strong mercantile heritage
E>features days that are not named but numbered, evidence of the strong Portuguese mercantile heritage

[spoiler]I am not sure why antecedent of "its" ambiguous.[/spoiler]
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by theCodeToGMAT » Mon Oct 07, 2013 2:37 am
{A} - INCORRECT; "their" SVA error
{B} - INCORRECT; "its" is not needed..
{C} - INCORRECT; Meaning Issue.
{D} - INCORRECT; Meaning Issue
{E} - CORRECT; concise
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by vinay1983 » Mon Oct 07, 2013 2:42 am
Mission2012 wrote:Unique among the Romance languages, Portuguese features days that are not named but numbered, evidence of their strong mercantile heritage.

A>features days that are not named but numbered, evidence of their strong mercantile heritage
B>features days that are not named but numbered, evidence of its strong mercantile heritage
C>has numbered rather than named its days, evidence of its strong mercantile heritage
D>numbered rather than named its days, out of its strong mercantile heritage
E>features days that are not named but numbered, evidence of the strong Portuguese mercantile heritage

[spoiler]I am not sure why antecedent of "its" ambiguous.[/spoiler]
Their is wrong usage. Also we can observe splits here. "Its" has no antecedent here. option E correctly clears the doubt by including "Portuguese" in it
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by rakeshd347 » Mon Oct 07, 2013 3:51 am
Mission2012 wrote:Unique among the Romance languages, Portuguese features days that are not named but numbered, evidence of their strong mercantile heritage.

A>features days that are not named but numbered, evidence of their strong mercantile heritage
B>features days that are not named but numbered, evidence of its strong mercantile heritage
C>has numbered rather than named its days, evidence of its strong mercantile heritage
D>numbered rather than named its days, out of its strong mercantile heritage
E>features days that are not named but numbered, evidence of the strong Portuguese mercantile heritage

[spoiler]I am not sure why antecedent of "its" ambiguous.[/spoiler]
Only B and E stands out but to be honest I don't know why its doesn't have clear antecedent. Well its clearly refers to portugese. E is more clear of course and the best choice but I doubt it if GMAT give two choices too close to call.
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by Mission2012 » Mon Oct 07, 2013 4:08 am
Hi Rakesh,

Thanks for seconding my doubt.

I also believe that Portuguese is clearly an antecendent to its.

Let hope some experts would be able to point out what I am missing here.

rakeshd347 wrote:
Mission2012 wrote:Unique among the Romance languages, Portuguese features days that are not named but numbered, evidence of their strong mercantile heritage.

A>features days that are not named but numbered, evidence of their strong mercantile heritage
B>features days that are not named but numbered, evidence of its strong mercantile heritage
C>has numbered rather than named its days, evidence of its strong mercantile heritage
D>numbered rather than named its days, out of its strong mercantile heritage
E>features days that are not named but numbered, evidence of the strong Portuguese mercantile heritage

[spoiler]I am not sure why antecedent of "its" ambiguous.[/spoiler]
Only B and E stands out but to be honest I don't know why its doesn't have clear antecedent. Well its clearly refers to portugese. E is more clear of course and the best choice but I doubt it if GMAT give two choices too close to call.
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by theCodeToGMAT » Mon Oct 07, 2013 6:12 am
Yes, "its" has a clear antecedent..

I searched on Web and found that the issue with {B} is that "its" is referring to Adjective "Portuguese"

The words: "Japanese", "Italian" .. all are Proper Adjectives and NOT Noun.. so we cannot refer to them using "pronoun"
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by ceilidh.erickson » Mon Oct 07, 2013 7:09 am
What is the source of this question? (Please always NAME YOUR SOURCES!)

In common English usage, it's perfectly acceptable to use "Portuguese" as a noun. Yes, it's implied that we mean "the Portuguese language," but that doesn't make "Portuguese" a modifier. In fact, we know that it's a noun because it's being used as the subject: "Portuguese features..."

As such, it's perfectly acceptable to use it as an antecedent for the pronoun "it."

The GMAT would never test you on something like this. It's a bad question.
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by Mission2012 » Mon Oct 07, 2013 10:29 am
Source : Veritas
ceilidh.erickson wrote:What is the source of this question? (Please always NAME YOUR SOURCES!)

In common English usage, it's perfectly acceptable to use "Portuguese" as a noun. Yes, it's implied that we mean "the Portuguese language," but that doesn't make "Portuguese" a modifier. In fact, we know that it's a noun because it's being used as the subject: "Portuguese features..."

As such, it's perfectly acceptable to use it as an antecedent for the pronoun "it."

The GMAT would never test you on something like this. It's a bad question.
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by rakeshd347 » Mon Oct 07, 2013 1:23 pm
Mission2012 wrote:Source : Veritas
ceilidh.erickson wrote:What is the source of this question? (Please always NAME YOUR SOURCES!)

In common English usage, it's perfectly acceptable to use "Portuguese" as a noun. Yes, it's implied that we mean "the Portuguese language," but that doesn't make "Portuguese" a modifier. In fact, we know that it's a noun because it's being used as the subject: "Portuguese features..."

As such, it's perfectly acceptable to use it as an antecedent for the pronoun "it."

The GMAT would never test you on something like this. It's a bad question.
See What I told you. Its too close and B and E are both good. GMAT will never test your only on proper noun name and pronoun in the options.
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