Sentence Correction

k2gopal wrote:I remember one of the posts somewhere in the SC Forum area, where RP aka lunarpower explicitly mentions the merit of the "helping verb" before the noun. Would this qualify as a case? as in the "....than did their parents..." part?

hmm.

the first thing i've got to query here is the source of the problem. if this is an official problem (gmatprep, etc.), then i must say i'm a bit surprised at seeing "did" follow the subject. remember, though: the placement of helping verbs before the subject is a preference; it's not strictly a rule, and i can confidently tell you that it won't be the basis for a problem by itself. in other words, you won't face a problem on which 2 answer choices are both entirely correct, but one places the helping verb before the noun and the other one places the helping verb after the noun.

the main reason i spelled that out so explicitly is that many students don't like the appearance of helping verbs before nouns. the main reason students don't like the appearance of such verbs is because the verbs would never appear that way in spoken language - but, remember, spoken and written language are essentially 2 different languages.

if this problem is official, just mark it down as another example of the small inconsistencies that plague the gmat from time to time.

Another minor issue, in all cases wouldn't the "they references" "they once thought they could." all be ambiguous? or is this a case where the "they" points to the subject of the sentence, and not the closest noun? Is there a clear-cut rule/way with which I can identify when this rule would apply?

Appreciate the help.

this is one of those problems in which all of the choices have technically ambiguous pronouns. if you get a problem like that, your second line of defense is to go for the pronoun that's most grammatically parallel, or, failing that, the pronoun that makes the most sense in context.

there have been a couple of official problems in which every choices contained pronouns that were technically ambiguous. in all of those problems, though, all of the possible antecedents except one (the correct one) were absolutely ridiculous in context.