Sentence Correction

A recent survey showed that while many banks have service charges on interest-bearing and non-interest-bearing accounts with balances that are falling below a set minimum, some banks provide virtually free checking regardless of the account balance.

a. with balances that are falling below
b. whose balances fall below
c. whose balances fall below that of
d. that have balances falling below that of
e. that have balances that fall below those of

Please provide explanations to why one answer is correct and why the other 4 is wrong.

sorry i could not underline for you, everytime i try to use the underline button, it reverts me back to the home page. not sure if this is a glitch of some sort...but it happened before too...

A recent survey showed that while many banks have service charges on interest-bearing and non-interest-bearing accounts with balances that are falling below a set minimum, some banks provide virtually free checking regardless of the account balance.

a. with balances that are falling below (it's not a continuous action, so we don't need an -ing verb)
b. whose balances fall below
c. whose balances fall below that of (that of indicates a balance of a set minimum, which doesn't make sense)
d. that have balances falling below that of (that of indicates a balance of a set minimum, which doesn't make sense)
e. that have balances that fall below those of ("those of" indicates balances of a set minimum, which doesn't make sense)

Bill@VeritasPrep wrote:A recent survey showed that while many banks have service charges on interest-bearing and non-interest-bearing accounts with balances that are falling below a set minimum, some banks provide virtually free checking regardless of the account balance.

a. with balances that are falling below (it's not a continuous action, so we don't need an -ing verb)
b. whose balances fall below
c. whose balances fall below that of (that of indicates a balance of a set minimum, which doesn't make sense)
d. that have balances falling below that of (that of indicates a balance of a set minimum, which doesn't make sense)
e. that have balances that fall below those of ("those of" indicates balances of a set minimum, which doesn't make sense)

doesn't whose need to refer to people? similiar to who? What are the things whose and who can refer to? there is some rule here that i must not know.

You can use whose with inanimate objects.

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/645/01/

Whose is the only possessive relative pronoun in English. The antecedent of "whose" can be both people and things:

The family whose house burnt in the fire was immediately given a complimentary suite in a hotel.

The book whose author won a Pulitzer has become a bestseller.

IMO B

B for me.

doesn't whose need to refer to people? similiar to who?

Who should refer to people. Whose can refer to people as well as non-people objects. Refer Og-12 #102.

Hi,

In Ans E, the official explanation says that the relative pronoun "that" introduces unnecessary wordiness. I thought the only error of this answer is "those of".

If I removed "those of" but kept "that", would that also be a correct answer? I am just trying to confirm that "that" should not really cause any problem here but of course I may be wrong.

Ans E:
that have balances that fall below those of

patrick0885 wrote:Hi,

In Ans E, the official explanation says that the relative pronoun "that" introduces unnecessary wordiness.

E: THAT many banks have services charges on accounts THAT have balances THAT fall below a set minimum.
Here, the succession of that-clauses -- three in a row -- makes the sentence to follow.
The repetition of have is also worrisome (banks HAVE charges on accounts that HAVE balances).

In options D and E "that have balances" here "that" is referring to plural "interest-bearing and non-interest-bearing accounts" is also a error so we can eliminate these options.