Sentence Correction

Enginpasa1 wrote:Because ancient Egyptians considered animal fibers impure,religious garments were made only of plant based materials, while wool was used to make clothing for everyday wear

a.
b.they used only p;ant based materials in the production of religious clothing, unlike wool,which they would use to make clothing for everyday wear.
c.they used only plant based materials in the production of religious garments but used wool to make clothing for everyday wear.
d.it was used, as is wool, for making into clothing for daily, while only plant based materials were used to produce religious garments
e.they, like wool, would only be used to make clothing for daily wear........



qa is C

comes down to b and c

b has a faulty hidden comparison. BUT ISN'T THE "THEY" AMBIGUOUS? Can't it refer to fibers or Egyptians? This has puzzled me for a while?

hey -

you are right that, technically, yes, 'they' is ambiguous. however, the gmat has been known to allow pronouns that are technically ambiguous when BOTH of the following criteria hold:
* there is only one possible antecedent that is GRAMMATICALLY PARALLEL to the pronoun (i.e., subject if the pronoun is the subject; object if the pronoun is the object; etc.)
* the context of the sentence makes the other possibilities ridiculous

in this example, both conditions are satisfied:
* 'ancient egyptians' is the subject of the first clause, and 'they' is the subject of its clause
* the idea that fibers could use other fibers to make things is beyond ridiculous.

STILL, if you're going to select an answer choice that uses pronouns in this way, it's a good idea to check to see whether ALL the decently good answer choices do likewise. that's the case here: the only choices that don't use 'they' are a and d, and both of those choices are fatally flawed (neither of them contains any implication that the egyptians were the ones making the clothing).

was this question from gmatprep, or from another source? that matters a lot, too.