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Bench-Warming Basketball Players

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Bench-Warming Basketball Players

by hemant_rajput » Fri Jul 05, 2013 8:47 am
The surge of the bench-warming basketball player to the starting lineup was positively received by the city, where hopes for a good team that would actually make it to the playoffs had been dwindling day by day earlier in the season.

(A)city, where hopes for a good team that would actually make it to the playoffs had been dwindling
(B)city whose hopes for a good team that would actually make it to the playoffs would have been dwindling
(C)city where hopes for a good team that would actually make it to the playoffs had been dwindled
(D)city, whose hopes for a good team that would actually make it to the playoffs had been dwindled
(E)city, the site of dwindling hopes for a good team that would actually make it to the playoffs

what is wrong with [spoiler]D?

OA:A[/spoiler]
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by [email protected] » Sun Jul 07, 2013 7:40 pm
Hi hemant_rajput,

I can spot two immediate problems with answer D (either of which would help me to knock out this answer):

1) Since the sentence discusses "the city", we're dealing with a place/location, so the word "where" would be appropriate (as opposed to the word "whose")
2) The verb phrase "had been dwindled" sounds clunky

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by hemant_rajput » Sun Jul 07, 2013 8:02 pm
[email protected] wrote:Hi hemant_rajput,

I can spot two immediate problems with answer D (either of which would help me to knock out this answer):

1) Since the sentence discusses "the city", we're dealing with a place/location, so the word "where" would be appropriate (as opposed to the word "whose")
2) The verb phrase "had been dwindled" sounds clunky

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I disagree with you on the usage of whose. Whose can be used to modify places, for example - the house, whose front gate is black in color, is of Jamie.

Now can you please explain why "had been dwindled" sounds clunky. I'm not a native speaker of English, hence I prefer not to eliminate anything based on its awkwardness or clunky sound.
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by satish_iitg » Mon Jul 15, 2013 1:14 pm
I eliminated D because, even though where can be used to modify places, in this context we are talking about citi's (city - whose) hopes to be dwindled and not a city where hopes were dwindled.
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by [email protected] » Mon Jul 15, 2013 4:39 pm
Hi hemant_rajput,

The first issue that you're curious about is a grammar rule that we call "The Ws" (in the Empowergmat course). It's an issue that usually shows up once in SCs, so it's not a huge deal. However, as you learn all of the "little" rules, you'll find that SCs are actually pretty easy to handle, because the GMAT is a standardized test, so you're going to see the same rules tested, regardless of what day you take the test.

The word "whose" is typically used for "living things", not inanimate objects. In addition, "whose" implies some type of possession. In that context, "The City" shouldn't be referenced by the word "whose" because the city doesn't possess anything (neither does a house, for that matter). Some people will use the word "whose" while speaking about inanimate objects, but most people don't speak in a grammatically accurate way (and GMAT SCs are based on established grammar and style rules).

As to the phrase "had been dwindled", it's clunky because the sentence refers to something (hopes) that were changing "day by day." The word "dwindling" is the only word that makes sense because it refers to an ongoing activity (the hopes had been dwindling). I can't even come up with a suitable example for the phrase "had been dwindled" - thus, it's clunky. The good news about this second rule is that it's irrelevant to this SC if you know the first rule.

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