Sentence Correction

paes wrote:IMO B

A, E : 'them' wrong for army
D " parallelism missing

between B and C

I THINK 'it' is must, so B wins.

A similar sentence from MgMat

the building was demolished to avoid it from falling down accidentally.

here 'it' is must to refer to the building because building is an innate object.

that sentence is from MGMAT?
if so, could you kindly point out where?

i am quite certain that we would not have included a sentence like that in our materials.
there is no such thing as "avoid X from..." (an error that would be apparent at once to any native speaker of english, though perhaps not obvious to foreign speakers).

again, please cite the source where you got this sentence. i'm 100% sure that it's not ours (and if it is, then i'll flag it and get it out of our materials ASAP).

thanks.

first, i can't help but inquire about the capitalization in your posts -- why the two capital M's in "MgMat"?

paes wrote:Ron@,

I found following example from MgMat SC-4 Page : 251

Wrong : the building was demolished to avoid falling down accidentally.
Right : the building was demolished to KEEP it from falling down accidentally.

if you follow a clause immediately with an infinitive, then the infinitive is automatically attributed to the subject -- i.e., the subject is assumed to be the agent of whatever action is happening in the infinitive.
for instance:
my friend's wife started a new diet to prepare for the figure competition.
since there are no other pronouns here, there's an automatic attribution of the infinitive ("to prepare") to the subject ("my friend's wife"); i.e., the implication is that my friend's wife is the one who is preparing for the figure competition.

in the above sentence, the building is clearly not trying to "keep from falling down"; other people are trying to keep it (= the building) from falling down. therefore, you need to insert the pronoun.

those examples were inspired by this problem --
https://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/arc ... 10133.html
-- which, if i recall correctly, was also in the OG verbal supplement (though perhaps not the most current edition).

niksworth wrote:Between B and C,

Stripping the sentence to its bare bones,
B) The army of terra-cotta warriors... is more than 2,000 years old and took 700,000 artisans more than 36 years to complete it.
C) The army of terra-cotta warriors... is more than 2,000 years old and took 700,000 artisans more than 36 years to complete.

it in B is absolutely unnecessary because what took more than 36 years to complete is perfectly clear from the parallel structure.

C is right.

it would have been necessary if the sentence were something like the following -
The army of terra-cotta warriors... is more than 2,000 years old and archeologists estimate that it took 700,000 artisans more than 36 years to complete.

Notice that parallel structure is absent in the above sentence. So use of it is essential. (as the subject of the clause following that)

all true. but it's deeper than that.
the "it" in option (b) isn't just "unnecessary"; it's wrong. very wrong.
here's why:

look at the following two sentences:
this book is hard to read.
this book took me two months to read.
in these sentences, the book is the OBJECT of the infinitive "to read".

now look at this:
it took my brother a month to read this book.
in this sentence, my brother is the SUBJECT/AGENT of the infinitive, while the object (the book) follows the infinitive.

if you include the "it" at the end, as in choice (b), then you have the latter of these configurations. the problem is that we want the army of terracotta warriors to be the object -- since that's what is "completed" in the sentence -- and so we want the first type of construction, without the "it".

paes wrote:Ron@

thanks to make the rule clear.

I generally typed MgMat without realizing that the right usage is mgmat or MGMAT.
Probably, when I write MgMat, I think it as
Mg : Manhattan
Mat : GMAT

Anyway, If it is a name conflict or some other issue, I will take care of this.

oh haha, no -- no name conflict.
i just didn't understand the origin of the capitalization, and was curious about it. (to be honest, i still don't understand, since there is no "g" in manhattan -- it's weird to see only the second letter of "gmat" capitalized. like writing "fIsh" or "eLephant".)

crackinggmat wrote:i understand all of ur points on this topic but this last discussion on why IT is wrong is hard for me to understand...can u pls explain more on this using the main question .

thanks a lot

you'll have to help me out here by saying *what* you didn't understand; else, i would basically just wind up giving the same explanation again.

in brief:
this book is hard to read --> correct
this book is hard to read it --> incorrect
(c) is like the first one; (b) is like the second one.