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Noting that its revenues had fallen due to a recent prolonge

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by saranshpuri » Wed Apr 30, 2014 1:08 pm
Noting that its revenues had fallen due to a recent prolonged slump in CD sales, the music-store chain announced that it would be forced to raise prices at all of its outlets.

(A) its revenues had fallen due to a recent

(B) its revenues have fallen due to a recently

(C) its revenues are falling due to a recently

(D) their revenues are falling due to a recent

(E) their revenues had fallen due to a recent

OA is A , but my question is why cant we use Present perfect so as to emphasize the effect of falling revenue on sales. plz explain
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by Bill@VeritasPrep » Wed Apr 30, 2014 3:24 pm
The present perfect "have fallen" would place the decrease in revenue after the past tense "announced". Because the revenue drop caused the announcement, this order of events does not work.
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by aditya8062 » Wed Apr 30, 2014 8:04 pm
the usage of adverb "recently" is also wrong in option B and C
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by Bill@VeritasPrep » Wed Apr 30, 2014 10:36 pm
aditya8062 wrote:the usage of adverb "recently" is also wrong in option B and C
A good point.

"Recent prolonged slump" means that the slump was recent AND prolonged.

"Recently prolonged slump" means that the slump was somehow extended.
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by [email protected] » Wed Apr 30, 2014 11:21 pm
Hi saranshpuri,

This SC has a number of grammar rules that you can choose to deal with. Here's how I focused on:

1) Pronouns - the subject of this sentence is "the music store chain", which is singular (the sentence also provides two other pronouns that reference "the music store chain" - "it" and "its", so there is no doubt that we're dealing with a singular noun). Thus, we need a singular pronoun. Eliminate D and E.

2) Verbs - notice that "the music store chain ANNOUNCED….", which is a past tense verb. The announcement was about the fallen revenues and the recent prolonged slump, which PRECEDED the announcement. With two past events (the slump and the announcement), the sentence must use the word "had." Eliminate B and C.

Final Answer: A

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by ilyana » Thu May 01, 2014 4:22 am
What is the source of the question?

It seems to me that the usage of “due to” is wrong in this problem. “Due to” is a noun-modifier (generally we can substitute “caused by” for “due to”), but here it modifies the verb “had fallen”.
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by tathastuGMAT » Sat May 03, 2014 1:29 am
Hi Saranshpuri,

I think you already visualized the issue with answer choice D) and E) - the number of pronoun’s “their” referent is wrong- and answer choice C) “are” does not make sense at all, the action of “falling” happens first in the event’s time-line.

Since Present Perfect’s task is to highlight that an action effect reverberates to the present or that an action started in the past and is still ongoing, using Present Perfect would have no logical sense.

The sentence is a clear cut and it is delineated by two actions:

1st: revenues fall

this fact triggers a consequence which is the protagonist of our second sentence

2nd: the shop announces something.

We should highlight this sequence of events, for this reason we apply Past Perfect on the earliest event and simple past on the earliest.

Very soon we’re going to disclose an article on Perfect Tense, stay tuned for that.

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