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Clarification on SV agreement - Group "police"

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Clarification on SV agreement - Group "police"

by karthikpandian19 » Thu May 10, 2012 12:48 am
Some people are of the opinion that << the police is incapable of curbing crime successfully because they have limited power. >>

(A) the police is incapable of curbing crime successfully because they have limited power.

(B) because the police have limited power, they are incapable of curbing crime successfully.

(C) the police are incapable of curbing crime successfully because they have limited power.

(D) the police, because it has limited power, is incapable of curbing crime successfully.

(E) having limited power, the police is incapable of curbing crime successfully.
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by Jim@StratusPrep » Thu May 10, 2012 8:14 am
You would use "are" with police. Yes it appears to be a collective noun, but in fact it is plural.

This leaves you with B and C.

C is more to the point putting the focus of the sentence in front.
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by karthikpandian19 » Thu May 10, 2012 5:32 pm
OA is C
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by abhi.iitb » Fri May 11, 2012 8:26 am
Hi,

But why "Police" is considered plural when similar group such as "army" is considered singular noun...Please help me to understand this difference.
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by karthikpandian19 » Fri May 11, 2012 3:40 pm
Some GMAT expert please answer this question.......
abhi.iitb wrote:Hi,

But why "Police" is considered plural when similar group such as "army" is considered singular noun...Please help me to understand this difference.
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by heymayank08 » Fri May 11, 2012 8:33 pm
yeah even i hada chosen option D
based on the same reasoning that police is singular as army is
pls explain
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by GMATGuruNY » Sat May 12, 2012 3:08 pm
I received a PM asking me to comment.

While virtually all collectives nouns (the group, the team, the army, etc.) are considered singular, one exception is the police, which is considered PLURAL and can take only a plural verb:

The police ARE outside.
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by krishna239455 » Sat May 12, 2012 11:10 pm
I have a doubt:

In option C: why not the pronoun "they" refer to both Police (since its plural noun) and some people, making this sentence an example of Ambiguos antecedent.

Dont say that its not logical for some people to have limited power
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by ihatemaths » Sun May 13, 2012 4:53 am
hi still not clear with why people eliminated B to C. i chose B :)
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by sam2304 » Sun May 13, 2012 5:00 am
IMO C.

As far as i have seen police, people and cattle are some of the collective nouns which take plural form.
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by Bill@VeritasPrep » Sun May 13, 2012 6:56 am
krishna239455 wrote:I have a doubt:

In option C: why not the pronoun "they" refer to both Police (since its plural noun) and some people, making this sentence an example of Ambiguos antecedent.

Dont say that its not logical for some people to have limited power
Why not? That's why it's not ambiguous.

the police are incapable of curbing crime successfully because they have limited power

The pronoun "they" is in a clause describing why "the police" are incapable of curbing crime successfully.

I'm not sure how B is any clearer; it also uses the pronoun "they."



By the way, everyone, I think this is from Crack-GMAT, and I haven't been impressed with many of their SC questions.
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by GMATGuruNY » Sun May 13, 2012 9:04 am
ihatemaths wrote:hi still not clear with why people eliminated B to C. i chose B :)
B: Some people are of the opinion that because the police have limited power, they are incapable of curbing crime successfully.

Because it is inserted into the middle of another clause (that they are incapable of curbing crime successfully), the adverbial clause because the police have limited power -- which has its own subject and verb -- should be not only followed by but also PRECEDED BY a comma:

Some people are of the opinion that, because the police have limited power, they are incapable of curbing crime successfully.

A modifier set off by commas should be NON-ESSENTIAL: we should be able to remove the modifier without changing the basic meaning of the sentence.

Omitting the modifier, we get:
Some people are of the opinion that they are incapable of curbing crime successfully.
With the non-essential modifier omitted, the core of the sentence implies that they refers to people.
Thus, the grammatical construction in B creates confusion.

C: Some people are of the opinion that the police are incapable of curbing crime successfully because they have limited power.

Here, it is clear that because they have limited power modifies the PRECEDING clause that the police are incapable of curbing crime. Thus, a reader knows that they refers to people.
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by bubbliiiiiiii » Tue May 15, 2012 4:02 am
GMATGuruNY wrote: Here, it is clear that because they have limited power modifies the PRECEDING clause that the police are incapable of curbing crime. Thus, a reader knows that they refers to people.
I think there is a typo in the statement above. In the closing part, they should refer to police not to people?
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