Sentence Correction

Unlike [u]that of earlier works on slavery, Blassingame's [/u]innovative study relies not on the records of White slave owners but on the records of the salves themselves, especially the 70 or so autobiographies and memoirs that have been preserved.

A. that of earlier words on slavery, Blassingame's
B. that of earlier works on slavery, Blassingame in his
C. earlier works on slavery, Blassingame in his
D. earlier works on slavery, Blassingame's
E. the earlier works on slavery, Blassingame in his

OA is [spoiler]A[/spoiler]

Wheter 'earlier works' is not parallel to Blassingame's. What is the need to use 'that of'

I think D should be the answer.

I felt D sounds ok too.

What is the source of this question?

ranjeet75 wrote:Unlike that of earlier works on slavery, Blassingame's innovative study relies not on the records of White slave owners but on the records of the salves themselves, especially the 70 or so autobiographies and memoirs that have been preserved.

A. that of earlier words on slavery, Blassingame's
B. that of earlier works on slavery, Blassingame in his
C. earlier works on slavery, Blassingame in his
D. earlier works on slavery, Blassingame's
E. the earlier works on slavery, Blassingame in his

OA is A

Wheter 'earlier works' is not parallel to Blassingame's. What is the need to use 'that of'

I think D should be the answer.

Should be D.
Works and one more work (Study in this case) are parallel

ranjeet75 wrote:Unlike that of earlier works on slavery, Blassingame's innovative study relies not on the records of White slave owners but on the records of the salves themselves, especially the 70 or so autobiographies and memoirs that have been preserved.

A. that of earlier words on slavery, Blassingame's
B. that of earlier works on slavery, Blassingame in his
C. earlier works on slavery, Blassingame in his
D. earlier works on slavery, Blassingame's
E. the earlier works on slavery, Blassingame in his

OA is A

Wheter 'earlier works' is not parallel to Blassingame's. What is the need to use 'that of'

I think D should be the answer.

Yup I am also confused with the usage of "that of" in option A. Apart from this I have one doubt i.e can we compare "plural" things with "singular" things??????

I'm saying it's A

Unlike that(=the innovative study) of ........., Blassingame's innovative study ........

Parallel.

C,D,E compares the works to his study.

I think D would be correct had it been:
Unlike earlier works....., Blassingame's work??

I'd question the source here a little bit. The singular "that" in A and B is off - do we know that there's only one other study on earlier works on slavery? It's much, much more logical that we'd need "those" here to show that Blassingame's study is unique among many. To use "that", the sentence would need to better denote that we're comparing Blassingame's study to one other...you'd really need to mention it by name "Unlike that of Wilson, Blassingame's study...".

Even with that, you don't need to compare "study" directly to "study". "Earlier works" are similar enough to "study" that it's an apt comparison. Each term can refer to an academic undertaking ("Einstein's early works on relativity are quite similar to Edison's first study on electricity in that...), so there's no fatal flaw in choice D. D is about as good an answer choice as you'll find for this question, so if you picked D I'd say move on confidently - you're right!

A... I guess they may be trying to equate these two things:

1) Studies (or the general term "study" not for one particular study, but rather "the study of physics..") of early writings on slavery

2) Blassingame's study of other, later biographies and memoirs on slavery

BUT this sentence doesn't go far enough to mandate that that is the ONLY potential apt comparison that can be made. You're not at all wrong for comparing:

A) Blassingame's study on slavery

B) Earlier works on slavery (that came before Blassingame's more recent study, the first of its kind)


So, like I said, I don't think this could be an official GMAT question - the author admirably tried to add that great GMAT-type subtlety but didn't close off the option of other apt comparisons like an official question (they cost thousands of dollars to write and test, so they're amazingly airtight) will. On this one, D is a pretty clear correct answer without much doubt; if you follow that logic I threw out there A may have some merit but it's a bit roundabout and you still can't eliminate A.

I'd mark this question as interesting practice but not much for a test-taker to sweat...if you've read this far in this thread you've more than learned enough from this one!

@Brian@VeritasPrep: Thanks Brian for your input here. I had chosen D as well; however, the OA in the original post made be feel dizzy.

There is one poster(niksworth) who asked to mention the source , i believe that's a good idea. I will ask Eric to make that post sticky post with some more inputs/guidelines for SC questions. some quality control at least.

Brian@VeritasPrep wrote:I'd question the source here a little bit. The singular "that" in A and B is off - do we know that there's only one other study on earlier works on slavery? It's much, much more logical that we'd need "those" here to show that Blassingame's study is unique among many. To use "that", the sentence would need to better denote that we're comparing Blassingame's study to one other...you'd really need to mention it by name "Unlike that of Wilson, Blassingame's study...".

Even with that, you don't need to compare "study" directly to "study". "Earlier works" are similar enough to "study" that it's an apt comparison. Each term can refer to an academic undertaking ("Einstein's early works on relativity are quite similar to Edison's first study on electricity in that...), so there's no fatal flaw in choice D. D is about as good an answer choice as you'll find for this question, so if you picked D I'd say move on confidently - you're right!

A... I guess they may be trying to equate these two things:

1) Studies (or the general term "study" not for one particular study, but rather "the study of physics..") of early writings on slavery

2) Blassingame's study of other, later biographies and memoirs on slavery

BUT this sentence doesn't go far enough to mandate that that is the ONLY potential apt comparison that can be made. You're not at all wrong for comparing:

A) Blassingame's study on slavery

B) Earlier works on slavery (that came before Blassingame's more recent study, the first of its kind)


So, like I said, I don't think this could be an official GMAT question - the author admirably tried to add that great GMAT-type subtlety but didn't close off the option of other apt comparisons like an official question (they cost thousands of dollars to write and test, so they're amazingly airtight) will. On this one, D is a pretty clear correct answer without much doubt; if you follow that logic I threw out there A may have some merit but it's a bit roundabout and you still can't eliminate A.

I'd mark this question as interesting practice but not much for a test-taker to sweat...if you've read this far in this thread you've more than learned enough from this one!

Hi Brian,

I had one doubt i.e can we compare "singular things" with "plural things"???????

Great question, Aspirant - I'm always happy when this comes up because I think there's a lot of undo worry about this.

YES, you can compare singular items with plural items! We do it every day:

My boss's car is more expensive than those of all my other coworkers combined.

One share of Google stock costs more than ten shares of Microsoft.

What we can't do is make illogical comparisons:

My boss's car is more expensive than all my other coworkers combined.

Here, that doesn't make sense - we're comparing the cost of a car to people.


The single most-important thing to consider with comparisons is "Is this LOGICAL?". I'd look at parts of speech (noun/verb/gerund/etc.) much, much further down the list if even at all. I've seen a lot of cases of students worrying about whether they can compare singular to plural or verbs of different tenses (e.g. "What Barack Obama has already done is less impressive than what he intends to do" - that's logical...we have to compare past to future there because that's the whole basis of comparison). Focus first on "is this even logical" and you'll find that to be much more manageable than trying to dissect parts of speech down too granularly.

Brian@VeritasPrep wrote:Great question, Aspirant - I'm always happy when this comes up because I think there's a lot of undo worry about this.

YES, you can compare singular items with plural items! We do it every day:

My boss's car is more expensive than those of all my other coworkers combined.

One share of Google stock costs more than ten shares of Microsoft.

What we can't do is make illogical comparisons:

My boss's car is more expensive than all my other coworkers combined.

Here, that doesn't make sense - we're comparing the cost of a car to people.


The single most-important thing to consider with comparisons is "Is this LOGICAL?". I'd look at parts of speech (noun/verb/gerund/etc.) much, much further down the list if even at all. I've seen a lot of cases of students worrying about whether they can compare singular to plural or verbs of different tenses (e.g. "What Barack Obama has already done is less impressive than what he intends to do" - that's logical...we have to compare past to future there because that's the whole basis of comparison). Focus first on "is this even logical" and you'll find that to be much more manageable than trying to dissect parts of speech down too granularly.

Hi Brian,

Really thankful for your explanation. In the example given by you

My boss's car is more expensive than those of all my other coworkers combined. The "those" is refering to what????? Is it refering to cars or car??????

Hey Aspirant,

Good question, and it goes back to the point I'm trying to make in that post. "Those" refers to "cars" - and even though there's only a singular referent ("my boss's car") it's much, much more logical that my coworkers have more than one car between them, so "those" is a logical pronoun to use.

When using "that of" or "those of" in a comparison, it's only necessary that the singular/plural be logical...it doesn't necessarily have to match the referent in number because you're not referring directly to THAT noun, but rather one that can logically be compared to it.

So in that car example, because it's logical that a large group of people will have multiple cars between them, "those" should refer to the "cars" that belong to them.

Now, if we're referring to that same particular car, such as:

My boss's car amazes anyone who is lucky enough to drive it.

We have to use a singular "it" because we're definitely talking about exactly one car. There's no logical usage of "them" there so "them" is horrendously wrong.

thanks a lot Brian