Sentence Correction

lunarpower wrote:

goelmohit2002 wrote:Moreover I guess.....there is no referent for "it" in B...

Kindly tell if there is flaw in my reasoning....

nah, "oil barge" is a legitimate antecedent for "it" in this case.

(they would allow this to stand. "san juan" is also in there, but it's both (a) completely nonsensical in context and (b) the object of a preposition. therefore, that wouldn't amount to pronoun ambiguity in the eyes of the gmat writers.)

lunarpower wrote: if you say "X-ing while Y-ing", then you must be describing two separate but simultaneous actions.

goelmohit2002 wrote:

lunarpower wrote:

goelmohit2002 wrote:Moreover I guess.....there is no referent for "it" in B...

Kindly tell if there is flaw in my reasoning....

nah, "oil barge" is a legitimate antecedent for "it" in this case.

(they would allow this to stand. "san juan" is also in there, but it's both (a) completely nonsensical in context and (b) the object of a preposition. therefore, that wouldn't amount to pronoun ambiguity in the eyes of the gmat writers.)

Hi Ron,

The sentence want to say that leaking => pollution...

IMO "it" cannot refer to leaking.....so IMO "it" has wrong referent.....as you mentioned for oil barge etc...

Please correct me if there is any flaw in my reasoning.

Thanks
Mohit

lunarpower wrote:

Does while by itself does not mean "although", "whereas" ?

it does, yes.
however, for "while" to have this meaning, it must subordinate an entire CLAUSE (i.e., it can't just be VERBing while VERBing).

for instance:
while most of jim's friends studied for four to six hours per day, jim only studied for half an hour per day.
here "while" has the meaning you're talking about, but it's followed by an entire clause ("most of jim's friends studied for four to six hours per day").

lunarpower wrote:

goelmohit2002 wrote: "ask" and "request" are very similar words.

however, they don't follow the same idioms:
you can write ask PERSON to VERB, but you CANNOT write request PERSON to VERB.
you can write ask for NOUN, but you can't write request for NOUN.
etc.

sorry. i wish there weren't so many idioms, but that's the way it is.

Hi Ron, as I checked up in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 5th Edition, It do have Request sb to do sth.

lunarpower wrote: hmm.
the longman dictionary isn't the most reliable source in the world. for instance, on that same page (if you look up "request"), it gives the following as one of its examples:
*The prosecution has requested that all charges against Hodgkins are dropped

this is actually 100% incorrect; in this instance, we have to use the command subjunctive:
The prosecution has requested that all charges against Hodgkins be dropped.

i've also noticed a few other sloppy/incorrect examples in the same source. it's not totally worthless, but it's also not consistently reliable.

i stand by my assertion that "request PERSON to do something" is incorrect. (i'm open to official counterevidence -- i.e., please let me know if you find a counterexample in GMATPREP or OG's.)

lunarpower wrote:
if you write "...with X VERBing", the implication is that this is happening at the same time as the verb in the main clause.

analogy:
roy ran down the hallway, with his arms flapping frantically.
the implication is that roy's arms are flapping frantically AS he runs down the hallway.

by the same reasoning, the above choice (b) asserts that the oil was already leaking in the ocean AS the barge ran aground. this clearly isn't the case; the two events actually occurred in sequence, and the one was the consequence of the other.

--
.

lunarpower wrote:

hariharakarthi wrote:B. with its cargo of 750000 gallons leaking into the ocean, and it polluted

in January 1994 an oil barge ran aground off the coast of San Juan, Puerto Rico, with its cargo of 750000 gallons leaking into the ocean, and it polluted
the city's beaches.

Is it a pronoun error?
Can you explain what is wrong with B?

Regards,
hhk

if you write "...with X VERBing", the implication is that this is happening at the same time as the verb in the main clause.

analogy:
roy ran down the hallway, with his arms flapping frantically.
the implication is that roy's arms are flapping frantically AS he runs down the hallway.

by the same reasoning, the above choice (b) asserts that the oil was already leaking in the ocean AS the barge ran aground. this clearly isn't the case; the two events actually occurred in sequence, and the one was the consequence of the other.

--

the other problem with that choice is "...and it polluted..."

you don't use "and" in this sense unless the two items you're describing are essentially independent of each other.
for instance, if i said the following:
there was lots of traffic on the freeway and i was late to work.
...then i'm implying, strangely enough, that the traffic had nothing to do with my being late. (perhaps i'm just listing two reasons why it was A Bad Day.)

on the other hand, you could salvage the construction with a connector word that implies causation, such as "so" or "thus". for instance, either of the following would convey the intended meaning accurately in the aforementioned case:
there was lots of traffic on the freeway and i was thus late to work.
there was lots of traffic on the freeway and so i was late to work.
these are both ok.
however, choice (b) doesn't use such a word; it merely uses "and" by itself, which, for the reasons mentioned above, is wrong.