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aflaam: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 132; Joined: Sat Jan 02, 2016 2:52 pmFollowed by: 1 member; Thanked: 4 times

by aflaam » Fri Feb 12, 2016 9:38 am

Unlike the short flights of the shuttle and earlier spacecraft, which carried sufficient power in fuel cells and batteries, a permanently orbiting space station will have to generate its own electricity.

A: the short flights of the shuttle and earlier spacecraft, which carried sufficient power in fuel cells and batteries
B: the shuttle and earlier spacecraft, with sufficient enough power in fuel cells and batteries for their short flights
C: the short flights of the shuttle and earlier spacecraft, which enabled them to carry sufficient enough power in fuel cells and batteries
D: the shuttle and earlier spacecraft, which were capable of carrying sufficient power in fuel cells and batteries for their short flights
E: the flights of the shuttle and earlier spacecraft, whose shortness allowed them to carry sufficient power in fuel cells and batteri

Source is GMAT prep
OA is D
My doubt is as we know no two pronouns can have same referent.
But in D, which and their have same referent.
What am i missing?

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Sentence Correction | Fri Feb 12, 2016 9:38 am

MartyMurray: Legendary Member; Posts: 2135; Joined: Mon Feb 03, 2014 9:26 amFollowed by: 140 members; Location: https://martymurraycoaching.com/; Thanked: 955 times; GMAT Score:800

by MartyMurray » Fri Feb 12, 2016 10:27 pm

aflaam wrote:My doubt is as we know no two pronouns can have same referent.
But in D, which and their have same referent.
What am i missing?

It sounds as if possibly you have misunderstood something or have been misled.

I have not really considered the rule that you are referring to, but let's try a simple hack, creating sentences that are clearly correct and have multiple pronouns referring to the same referent.

As John ran out the door, he lost his keys.

Writing As John ran out the door, he lost John's keys. would be absurd. So clearly using a personal pronoun and then a possessive pronoun both of which refer to the same person is OK.

The car that is going down the street is missing one of its hubcaps.

Writing The car that is going down the street is missing one of the car's hubcaps. does not make sense either.

Here's another one.

Andrew was finally able to locate the woman who had interviewed him when he had applied for his previous job.

In the that sentence, him, he and his all correctly refer to Andrew.

So the rule you have cited is different from how you understood it to be.

I think that what you are talking about may have something to do with situations involving relative pronouns.

For an example, look at the following sentence.

The dog that ate the food, which ran across the street, is still around somewhere.

I am not sure that there is a rule that says that that and which cannot refer to the same noun, but that sentence is a bit awkward, and it also seems to convey that the food ran across the street.

In any case, maybe you should go back to the source that you got this idea from and get a clearer sense of what was said about pronouns.

Marty Murray
Perfect Scoring Tutor With Over a Decade of Experience
MartyMurrayCoaching.com
Contact me at [email protected] for a free consultation.

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GMATGuruNY: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 15539; Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 12:04 pmFollowed by: 1906 members; Location: New York, NY; Thanked: 13060 times; GMAT Score:790

by GMATGuruNY » Tue Feb 16, 2016 6:53 am

aflaam wrote:But in D, which and their have same referent.

Unlike the short flights of the shuttle and earlier spacecraft, which were capable of carrying sufficient power in fuel cells and batteries for their short flights, a permanently orbiting space station will have to generate its own electricity.
Here, which serves to refer to flights, while their serves to refer to which.
Grammatically, their does not directly refer to flights.
Rather, their serves to refer to the preceding plural subject (which).

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