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In a 5-to-4 decision

by sachin_yadav » Sat Aug 27, 2011 12:25 pm
In a 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that two upstate New York counties owed restitution to three tribes of Oneida Indians for the unlawful seizure of their ancestral lands in the eighteenth century.

(A) that two upstate New York counties owed restitution to three tribes of Oneida Indians for the unlawful seizure of

(B) that two upstate New York counties owed restitution to three tribes of Oneida Indians because of their unlawful seizure of

Sorry, I am posting only choice A and B. What is wrong with B ? The verbal review says "their" is ambiguous. If this is true, then what about the second their that is in the non-underlined part of the sentence. Is that ambiguous too ?

I know choice A is correct but i am looking for reasoning. I eliminated choice B because i thought "because of their unlawful seizure of" is wordier as compared to "for the unlawful seizure of"

Idiom "owed restitution to x for y", can anyone give examples in relation to this idiom ?

Please help

Thanks & Regards
Sachin
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by Geva@EconomistGMAT » Mon Aug 29, 2011 7:46 am
sachin_yadav wrote:In a 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that two upstate New York counties owed restitution to three tribes of Oneida Indians for the unlawful seizure of their ancestral lands in the eighteenth century.

(A) that two upstate New York counties owed restitution to three tribes of Oneida Indians for the unlawful seizure of

(B) that two upstate New York counties owed restitution to three tribes of Oneida Indians because of their unlawful seizure of

Sorry, I am posting only choice A and B. What is wrong with B ? The verbal review says "their" is ambiguous. If this is true, then what about the second their that is in the non-underlined part of the sentence. Is that ambiguous too ?

I know choice A is correct but i am looking for reasoning. I eliminated choice B because i thought "because of their unlawful seizure of" is wordier as compared to "for the unlawful seizure of"

Forget the idiom - B is eliminated because of pronoun ambiguity, as the pronoun "their" can refer to the counties or the three tribes, so it's no clear who unlawfully seized the lands. Not that the problem is completely solved in A as you have surmised, but A is definitely a less ambiguous and more effective version of the sentence. So it's not that B is wrong by itself per se - it's more that it is inferior to A.

Idiom "owed restitution to x for y", can anyone give examples in relation to this idiom ?

Please help

Thanks & Regards
Sachin
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by sachin_yadav » Mon Aug 29, 2011 9:53 am
Geva@MasterGMAT wrote: Forget the idiom - B is eliminated because of pronoun ambiguity, as the pronoun "their" can refer to the counties or the three tribes, so it's no clear who unlawfully seized the lands. Not that the problem is completely solved in A as you have surmised, but A is definitely a less ambiguous and more effective version of the sentence. So it's not that B is wrong by itself per se - it's more that it is inferior to A.
Thanks Geva for your reply. This is where i was confused. The second non-underlined "their" is ambiguous and can refer to "the counties or the three tribes". However, as you are saying that choice A is less ambiguous and more effective than B.

I will take this explanation as learning but still non-underlined "their" is ambiguous, perhaps less, and I think i might stuck again if these kind of sentence occur in the future.

If I compare

"because of their unlawful seizure of" with "for the unlawful seizure of"

then I am going to pick the second one. But second non-underlined "their" confuses me...


Thanks & Regards
Sachin
Last edited by sachin_yadav on Mon Aug 29, 2011 10:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by sachin_yadav » Mon Aug 29, 2011 9:54 am
Sorry deleting this one. Posted twice. Really sorry for this..
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by Geva@EconomistGMAT » Mon Aug 29, 2011 11:12 am
sachin_yadav wrote:
Geva@MasterGMAT wrote: Forget the idiom - B is eliminated because of pronoun ambiguity, as the pronoun "their" can refer to the counties or the three tribes, so it's no clear who unlawfully seized the lands. Not that the problem is completely solved in A as you have surmised, but A is definitely a less ambiguous and more effective version of the sentence. So it's not that B is wrong by itself per se - it's more that it is inferior to A.
Thanks Geva for your reply. This is where i was confused. The second non-underlined "their" is ambiguous and can refer to "the counties or the three tribes". However, as you are saying that choice A is less ambiguous and more effective than B.

I will take this explanation as learning but still non-underlined "their" is ambiguous, perhaps less, and I think i might stuck again if these kind of sentence occur in the future.

If I compare

"because of their unlawful seizure of" with "for the unlawful seizure of"

then I am going to pick the second one. But second non-underlined "their" confuses me...


Thanks & Regards
Sachin
Every pronoun is a potential problem, as it must have an ante-decedent somewhere. This creates the potential for problems of
a. agreement - when the pronoun does not agree with the noun it refer to, e.g. the government denies their involvement in the alleged hijack
b. ambiguity - when the pronoun has more than one potential noun it can refer to. e.g. the government has told the newspaper that it should deny its involvement in the matter.

Agreement is what we call a "hard" grammar issue, and cause for outright elimination - the right answer choice cannot have such an agreement error and must correct it somehow.

Ambiguity is a "soft" elimination, one that will probably be corrected in the right answer choice, but may still persist if the other answer choices commit even worse grammar/logic errors. An answer choice that corrects the ambiguity by replacing the pronoun with the explicit noun it is meant to refer to is preferable, but not if all other answer choices perform hard grammar errors, then we choose the ambiguous one.

In any case, don't worry about that which you cannot correct. The non-underlined "their" creates the same problem for all five answer choices, so it is a non-issue as far as elimination is concerned - ignore it.
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by sachin_yadav » Tue Aug 30, 2011 6:48 am
Ambiguity is a "soft" elimination, one that will probably be corrected in the right answer choice, but may still persist if the other answer choices commit even worse grammar/logic errors. An answer choice that corrects the ambiguity by replacing the pronoun with the explicit noun it is meant to refer to is preferable, but not if all other answer choices perform hard grammar errors, then we choose the ambiguous one.

In any case, don't worry about that which you cannot correct. The non-underlined "their" creates the same problem for all five answer choices, so it is a non-issue as far as elimination is concerned - ignore it.
Thanks Geva; now doubt is clear. Certainly, this one is the best explanation. I will keep in mind if this sort of sentence occurs in the future.

Thanks and really appreciate for you reply. :)

Regards
Sachin
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by navami » Sun Sep 04, 2011 4:40 am
A
This time no looking back!!!
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by lunarpower » Mon Sep 12, 2011 4:03 am
i received a message regarding this thread.

the issue with the pronouns in choice (b) isn't ambiguity -- it's lack of consistency. if you see "their x of their y", then those two instances of "their" need to refer to the same noun.
you can't extend this reasoning to all sentences; if another noun intervenes between the pronouns, then it's acceptable to shift the pronoun usage provided that the meaning is absolutely clear. for instance, Smith earned a better grade on his exam than Jones did on his report is an acceptable sentence; the intervening noun "jones" makes the separate meanings of the two pronouns absolutely clear.
however, when two identical pronouns are practically on top of each other with no intervening noun -- as in choice (b) here -- they should refer to the same noun.

--

as for the issue of pronoun ambiguity in general -- the best way to deal with the idea of pronoun ambiguity is to ignore it completely. here are some reasons:
* of the approximately 500 official sentence correction problems that i've seen, exactly one has depended on pronoun ambiguity.
* moreover, i have seen at least twenty different officially correct answers containing at least one pronoun that is technically "ambiguous". so that's a 20:1 ratio of false positives to helpful identifications.
* finally, let's not forget the opportunity cost! if you don't worry about potential ambiguity, then judging pronouns is quick and relatively simple: just use the context to figure out what the pronoun should stand for, and then check whether that noun is there (and, if it is, whether it matches the pronoun in terms of singular/plural). that's it. however, checking for pronoun ambiguity makes this process into a long and arduous ordeal -- for each pronoun, if you're checking for ambiguity, you now have to go through every possible antecedent in the entire sentence.
not worth it.

DO NOT worry about pronoun ambiguity.

fun fact: for the reasons mentioned above, we will be removing the discussion of pronoun ambiguity both from our 9-session course and from the next edition of our sentence correction guide.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by sachin_yadav » Thu Sep 15, 2011 10:48 am
Ron, thanks for your reply.

I do agree with you that checking for pronoun ambiguity is a long and confusing process. Most of the time I have to scratch my head if these kind of sentences occur, and specially this sentence in which second "their" is in non-underlined part; however your explanation is fantastic. I learned a new thing from your explanation. You are just awesome.
lunarpower wrote:as for the issue of pronoun ambiguity in general -- the best way to deal with the idea of pronoun ambiguity is to ignore it completely. here are some reasons:
* of the approximately 500 official sentence correction problems that i've seen, exactly one has depended on pronoun ambiguity.
* moreover, i have seen at least twenty different officially correct answers containing at least one pronoun that is technically "ambiguous". so that's a 20:1 ratio of false positives to helpful identifications.
* finally, let's not forget the opportunity cost! if you don't worry about potential ambiguity, then judging pronouns is quick and relatively simple: just use the context to figure out what the pronoun should stand for, and then check whether that noun is there (and, if it is, whether it matches the pronoun in terms of singular/plural). that's it. however, checking for pronoun ambiguity makes this process into a long and arduous ordeal -- for each pronoun, if you're checking for ambiguity, you now have to go through every possible antecedent in the entire sentence.
not worth it.

DO NOT worry about pronoun ambiguity.
Thanks & Regards
Sachin
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