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parallel and pronoun issue

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by gmatwarroom » Sun Feb 17, 2013 2:35 pm
A majority of the international journalists surveyed view nuclear power stations as unsafe at present but that they will, or could, be made sufficiently safe in the future.

(A) that they will, or could,
(B) that they would, or could,
(C) they will be or could
(D) think that they will be or could
(E) think the power stations would or could

I chose answer E but answer seems given as D ... can someone validate this for me?
my reasoning:
A, B, C are not parallel --
"A majority of the international journalists surveyed" -- I see this Subject.
So, "Subject view..." would match with "Subject think..."

Now, between D and E:
in D, it's not clear what "they" is referring to.
E makes it clear by saying "think power station...."

Any input please?
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by adthedaddy » Mon Feb 18, 2013 9:49 am
Hi,
(D) as answer is correct. (E) cannot be the answer as the correct form will be "think THAT the power stations would BE or could".

A,B,C are not parallel so the remaining answer is (D).
Hope this helps.
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by srcc25anu » Mon Feb 18, 2013 12:36 pm
IMO D
View and think are parallel. So that leaves A,B and C out.
Between D and E, i don't think we need to repeat power stations as the only intended referent of THEY is power stations.
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by Tommy Wallach » Mon Feb 18, 2013 1:23 pm
Hey All,

Good discussion here already. Just a bit more detail:
A majority of the international journalists surveyed view nuclear power stations as unsafe at present but that they will, or could, be made sufficiently safe in the future.

(A) that they will, or could,
(B) that they would, or could,
(C) they will be or could
(D) think that they will be or could
(E) think the power stations would or could
(A) Missing verb "think" (there's no verb that would require "that"). Commas are weird.
(B) Same as (A), also "Would" is incorrect. "Would" means there's something in the way of them being made safe (I would go to the store, if I had more money...), a meaning that isn't supported here.
(C) Same parallel error as (A).
(D) At first glance, it may look like the pronoun is wrong here, but the structure of the sentence gives it away. The other possible confusing antecedent (international journalists) are already present in this clause, through the parallelism:

...but [A majority of the international journalists] think that they will be or could...

(E) Makes the "would" error. Also, the GMAT uses THAT after the verb "think," though in everyday English it's often elided.

Hope that helps!

-t
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by ceilidh.erickson » Tue Feb 19, 2013 10:32 am
Try not to use pronoun ambiguity to eliminate answer choices, because the GMAT is not 100% consistent on this issue. Very occasionally, the GMAT will directly test pronoun ambiguity. More often than not, though, the GMAT will allow seeming ambiguity if the meaning is clear enough.

This question falls into the latter category. It wouldn't make much sense for journalists to be made safe, so "they" must refer to power stations. Now, I personally agree that it would be better not to use the pronoun here! And if we were asked to choose between:
think that they will be or could
think that the power stations will be or could
Clearly, we'd choose the second one. But since E had other grammar issues, we're allowed to ignore pronoun ambiguity in D.

So, always deal with all other grammar issues before looking at pronoun ambiguity! Here are some more posts on the subject:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/declaration- ... tml#539397
https://www.beatthegmat.com/bear-markets ... tml#549435
Ceilidh Erickson
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