Sentence Correction

agautam7879 wrote:what the heck is human food - i thought the when a noun comes after another noun than the first noun becomes an adjective ...and should make sense ...what does human food mean ...food which is made of human....

Hi, there. I'm happy to help.

To some extent, this is idiomatic. We when say "dog food", "cat food", "fish food", "horse food", the animal indicates what eats the food. Dogs eat dog food, cats eat cat food, etc. By analogy, humans eat "human food." In understanding an unusual construction, it's helpful to consider familiar constructions that follow the same pattern.

In some sense, the first noun is an adjective, but it doesn't necessarily mean "made of". For example, when we say "horse hair", "dog hair", "human hair", the first noun indicates where the hair grows --- horse hair is the hair that grows on a horse --- but it's wrong to say "horse hair is hair made of horse."

Similarly, a "race car" is not a car made of race. A "fruit market" is not a market made of fruit. A "psychology lab" is not a lab made of psychology. Yes, the first noun acts as an adjective, but you have to be flexible in your understanding of how to interpret it as an adjective. Adjectives have thousands of different shades and connotations. Understanding grammar is always about being flexible and sensitive to the context: it's never about applying rules in a "one size fits all" way.

Would you like help with the SC question as well? I would be more than happy to answer any further questions you have.

Mike

Hello all,

I'm happy to give my analysis of this question.

20. Scientific interest in providing suitable habitats for bottom-dwelling animals such as river clams arises not because they are important sources of human food but from their role as an integral link in the Aquatic food chain.
(A) not because they are important sources of human food
(B) although they are not an important sources of human food
(C) not in that they are important as human sources of food
(D) not from their importance as a source of human food
(E) not from being important sources of food for human beings

First of all we have the classic "not X but Y" parallelism. The second part is fixed as "from their role", so we need a "from" phrase in the first part. (A) & (B) & (C) are out. That leaves (D) & (E).

New, we need parallelism.
(D) has "from their importance" in parallel with "from their role" --- noun to noun, a perfect parallel construction.

(E) has "from being important sources ..." in parallel with "from their role" ---- a verb-form, a gerund, set up in parallel with a noun --- in GMAT SC terms, this is an abysmal failure of parallelism. Parallel structure might be the single most tested concept on the GMAT SC, and they are sticklers for having exactly two of the same thing in parallel. That's why (E) is a trainwreck failure and incorrect.

Answer = D. I completely agree with confuse mind and 1947 and sandeep_thaparianz.

Let me know if anyone reading this has any further questions.

Mike

rajcools wrote:@mike
isnt "their" in D ambiguous... logically we can make out what it refers too but isnt it ambiguous as per GMAT
there can be three antecedents to "their"
river clams
bottom-dwelling animals
suitable habitats

I agree the pronoun usage is not stellar. The "their" is not as ambiguous, because it's pretty clear it has the same antecedent as "they", but we determine the antecedent of "they" only by the logical meaning of the words, not by the inherent grammatical structure. I think D is still the best answer among the five, but I think this question as a whole is from a less-than-excellent source. It's surprising how many substandard sources of GMAT practice questions are floating around out there.

Mike