Sentence Correction

A group of FBI investigators, in connection with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, are searching a small area of a rural Milford Township horse farm.

A. A group of FBI investigators, in connection with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, are searching a small area of a rural Milford Township horse farm.

B. A group of FBI investigators, in connection with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, is searching a rural Milford Township horse farm, a small area within.

C. A group of FBI investigators, searching a small area of a rural Milford Township horse farm, is connected with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa.

D. A group of FBI investigators, in connection with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, is searching a small area of a rural Milford Township horse farm.

E. A small area of a rural Milford Township horse farm is being searched by a group of FBI investigators in connection with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa

[spoiler]OA D
I chose E because I thought "in connection with...." should modify "searched" and not the "group of investigators". Any other way to eliminate E except that it uses a passive construction?[/spoiler]

Source: MGMAT 750 slam Homework.

It's between B & D.
In D we know exactly where search is being conducted.
In C modifier " a small area within" modifies whom is not clear

souvik101990 wrote:A group of FBI investigators, in connection with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, are searching a small area of a rural Milford Township horse farm.

A. A group of FBI investigators, in connection with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, are searching a small area of a rural Milford Township horse farm.

B. A group of FBI investigators, in connection with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, is searching a rural Milford Township horse farm, a small area within.

C. A group of FBI investigators, searching a small area of a rural Milford Township horse farm, is connected with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa.

D. A group of FBI investigators, in connection with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, is searching a small area of a rural Milford Township horse farm.

E. A small area of a rural Milford Township horse farm is being searched by a group of FBI investigators in connection with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa

[spoiler]OA D
I chose E because I thought "in connection with...." should modify "searched" and not the "group of investigators". Any other way to eliminate E except that it uses a passive construction?[/spoiler]

Source: MGMAT 750 slam Homework.

IN CONNECTION...HOFFA is a prep modifier (prep ph + comma) - ideally modify an action. In D it modifies action IS SEARCHING (why A group of FBI is searching? They are searching in connection with disappearance of Hoffa).

In E this prep modifier comes after a noun (or noun phrase without a comma). It appears A GROUP OF FBI INVESTIGATORS are CONNECTED WITH DISAPPEARANCE.

And what is gramatically wrong with C?

I see that it says, that the FBI guys are in connection with the disapperance, but who says that this is not what they actually meant.

Secondly, why cant the group of FBI investors not be modified by "in connection.." in D. Because there is a comma? Thanks.

Thanks a lot Ron for clarifying.
*Feels ready for the GMAT*

lunarpower wrote:i received a private message regarding this thread.

thanks for pointing out this problem. in fact, (e) is the best of these answer choices.

the modifier placement is better in choice (e) than in the other choices.
the modifier "in connection..." describes the searching of the farm, not the group of investigators, and so should be attached to the words describing the act of searching. choice E is the only choice in which this modifier is placed in a sensible location.

there's no problem with "is being searched...".
the sentence could also be written in the active voice -- "a group of investigators is searching xxxxxx in connection with yyyyy..." -- but that doesn't mean anything is actually wrong with the passive construction.

i will inquire into fixing this issue.

Ron,

I have many correct sentences as E (in connection with modifying verb, not the immediately preceding noun), eg

The Rosen Law Firm is investigating the Board of Directors of Ancestry.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: ACOM) for possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of state law in connection with its going private transaction involving its CEO, CFO, Spectrum Equity and Permira, a European private equity firm (source: NYTIMES).

But, I get confused when I think of choice A the following OG problem:

(A) The nephew of Pliny the Elder wrote the only eyewitness account of the great eruption of Vesuvius in two letters to the historian Tacitus"

Here "A" is wrong because IN TWO LETTER TO THE HISTORIAN TACITUS can modify many preceding nouns (eg VESUVIUS). In that sense its ambiguous whether this prepositional phrase is an adjective modifier or an adverb modifier (modifying verb WROTE). Because of this ambiguity, A is wrong, even though we know logically that ERUPTION cannot happen in two letters or VESUVIUS cannot happen in two letters.

Similar situation could happen in choice E of original question (investigators ARE in connection - connected - with disappearance). I do not find such an ambiguity in D as IN CONNECTION comes before a comma and we know that prepositional phrases before a comma are generally an adverbial modifier. But even then you think E is better than D. What is wrong with my reasoning? Could you help me identify.

I see a lot of rules and grammar here and Ron is never wrong. I will jut throw in my thoughts
A group of FBI investigators, in connection with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, are searching a small area of a rural Milford Township horse farm.

A. A group of FBI investigators, in connection with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, are searching a small area of a rural Milford Township horse farm.

B. A group of FBI investigators, in connection with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, is searching a rural Milford Township horse farm, a small area within.

C. A group of FBI investigators, searching a small area of a rural Milford Township horse farm, is connected with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa.

D. A group of FBI investigators, in connection with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, is searching a small area of a rural Milford Township horse farm.

E. A small area of a rural Milford Township horse farm is being searched by a group of FBI investigators in connection with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa

Doing a lot of difficult(meaning based if you want to call that), I felt that its best to understand modifiers by doing a lot of official examples and develop a gmat-ear.
Reading D, I could clearly see the phrase is telling something about the FBI investigators which could not be correct, and I needed a sentence which uses the same phrase modifying some kind of an action. E did exactly that.

Thanks Ron
I remember the time when I was just studying rules and attempting questions. Well it helped, but not generally beyond V32-V36 or something like that.
Then I saw your post and I tried working on the strategy to spend a lot of time on each official question.
I found out something amazing
Almost all GMAT incorrect answer choices has more than one stuff wrong with them.
For example there was this question (i do not remember exactly) which contained twice, double, twice as much, twice as many and doubling and all of us in various forums were debating over which construction was correct. Almost all of us missed there was a has/had/did issue at the end which provided a much easier way to solve a problem.
Hope this strategy helps others as well.
Souvik