Rhinoceroses and tourists, logical predication, diction

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Q75. A proposal has been made to trim the horns from rhinoceroses to discourage poachers; the question is whether tourists will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses after their horns are trimmed.

A) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses after their horns are
B) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks to see one once their horns are
C) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks to see rhinoceroses once the animals' horns have been
D) if tourists will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses once the animals' horns are
E) if tourists will continue to visit game parks to see one after the animals' horns have been



my questions are about the objections the OG raises to disqualify wrong answers, specifically:
1) "Their could refer to tourists or rhinoceroses": but I don't actually understand how their could possibly refer to tourists when rhinoceroses satisfies two conditions: a) rhinoceroses is the noun CLOSEST to the pronoun and b) rhinoceroses are understood by readers to have horns, not tourists. An example of that is: tourists visited several historical sights. they are avid travelers.
Are we going to say here that "they" is ambiguous because it could refer to "historical sights"??!
2) "See should be to see": which I find hard to understand since on other occasions, the same OG seems to suggest that "to" does not have to be explicitly mentioned since it's "implied" in parallel structures as the one we have here: to visit....and see ("to before see is implied and doesn't have to be explicitly written"). Again, I don't understand why OG says it's a mistake to not have "to" before the verb see.
3) "the verb following after should be present-perfect to reflect trimming must occur before tourists arrive": my question here is: does "after the horns are trimmed" suggest otherwise? does it suggest that trimming might occur after tourists arrive. While I do understand that "are trimmed" on its own could be ambiguous, I think the word "after" makes it clear that trimming will be finished prior to the tourists' visit!

Thanks everybody for your help in advance!!You can't imagine how much these SC questions are bugging me!!

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by akhpad » Wed Apr 14, 2010 9:22 pm
Here, I can explain that how I arrived at answer.

We need whether. -> D and E out.

Q75. A proposal has been made to trim the horns from rhinoceroses to discourage poachers; the question is whether tourists will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses after their horns are trimmed.

A) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses after their horns are
-> and not required
B) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks to see one once their horns are
C) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks to see rhinoceroses once the animals' horns have been

pronoun "their" is ambiguous.

In option C - there is no ambiguity. Clearly convey the proper meaning.

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by tnaim » Fri Apr 16, 2010 6:01 am
akhp77 wrote:Here, I can explain that how I arrived at answer.

We need whether. -> D and E out.

Q75. A proposal has been made to trim the horns from rhinoceroses to discourage poachers; the question is whether tourists will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses after their horns are trimmed.

A) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses after their horns are
-> and not required
B) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks to see one once their horns are
C) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks to see rhinoceroses once the animals' horns have been

pronoun "their" is ambiguous.

In option C - there is no ambiguity. Clearly convey the proper meaning.
Thank you for trying to help, but your answer didn't help me clarify the confusion I had with the 3 points explained in the post above (why their is ambiguous, why see should be "to see", why "after horns are trimmed" is not indicative of the completion of the activity).

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by grockit_andrea » Fri Apr 16, 2010 6:50 am
Regarding why "their" is ambiguous, you have to remember to take logic out of play on pronoun issues; it doesn't matter what you know the intended meaning to be. If there is, for instance, more than one plural noun that could be an antecedent for the plural pronoun, the pronoun is, on the GMAT, considered ambiguous, even if the intended meaning is utterly clear. Same goes for singular pronouns and antecedents, although here there is a tiny bit more wiggle room, because you do have gender to differentiate. For instance, I think the following sentence would be fine: "Jack and Jill are going on a date, and he is going to pick her up at 5 o'clock." You couldn't get away with that structure if you were using plural pronouns and antecedents.

Anyway, hope this helps.
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by tnaim » Fri Apr 16, 2010 8:17 am
grockit_andrea wrote:Regarding why "their" is ambiguous, you have to remember to take logic out of play on pronoun issues; it doesn't matter what you know the intended meaning to be. If there is, for instance, more than one plural noun that could be an antecedent for the plural pronoun, the pronoun is, on the GMAT, considered ambiguous, even if the intended meaning is utterly clear. Same goes for singular pronouns and antecedents, although here there is a tiny bit more wiggle room, because you do have gender to differentiate. For instance, I think the following sentence would be fine: "Jack and Jill are going on a date, and he is going to pick her up at 5 o'clock." You couldn't get away with that structure if you were using plural pronouns and antecedents.

Anyway, hope this helps.
Thank you Andrea for your help. I'll remember that rule. Though I just wanted to clarify: if there's more than one plural noun that could be an antecedent for the plural pronoun, wouldn't we consider the noun, that agrees with the pronoun in gender and quantity, closest to the pronoun to be the antecedent which would then eliminates the ambiguity?
P.S. any comments on (to visit and see vs to visit and to see) and (after the horns are trimmed)?
THANK YOU again!!

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by grockit_andrea » Fri Apr 16, 2010 2:32 pm
That "closest to the noun" rule applies to modifiers, not pronouns. We consider a modifier to modify the thing to which it's closest, but as far as I know, there's no such rule for pronouns on the GMAT.

Regarding "to visit and see" versus "to visit to see," the "to" could be implied there if this was just a list of actions being taken by the tourists, but it's not. That "to" is meant to show a causal relationship: why are the tourists visiting? To see the rhinos! You could replace the "to see" with (the far too wordy but still technically correct) "for the purpose of seeing," and get the same result. I think your frustration with this one stems from the idea that you're just trying to make two verbs in a list parallel, in which case you're right that the second "to" might not be required. That might be the case if the sentence said "to visit and to see," but it doesn't. The correct version says, "to visit to see," and that's a different usage. Since you're showing cause and effect, you need that second "to".
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by tnaim » Fri Apr 16, 2010 7:22 pm
Thank you Andrea. The picture is much clearer now!
Can I still bug you with requesting an explanation as to why "after the horns are trimmed" does not indicate "trimming occurred before tourists arrive"? :)

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by grockit_andrea » Sat Apr 17, 2010 3:45 am
I don't really have a great explanation for that "after the horns are trimmed" issue, except that since we're dealing with events on a distinct timeline (right now, there's a proposal; later there will be horn-trimming, and then after that, hopefully the tourists will visit), the "have been trimmed" is required. The "have been trimmed," taken with "will visit" from earlier in the sentence, suggest that this may actually be something like the future perfect progressive, which would, technically, be the appropriate verb form here anyway. The following is cut and pasted from the wikipedia entry on future perfect progressive tense:

Future perfect progressive

will/shall +have been+v1 +ing

* Affirmative: He will have been writing
* Negative: He will not have been writing
* Interrogative: Will he have been writing?
* Negative interrogative: Will he not have been writing?

Used for an event that will be in progression at a certain point in the future. "He will have been writing by 8:00 am (and will continue writing further into the future)."


The official explanation you gave doesn't mention future perfect progressive at all, so maybe this explanation is totally off-base. But since this verb form does address the situation in the sentence, and it's more or less consistent with verb usage in the correct answer, I think this might explain it.

Sorry I can't be more help on this one. :(
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by tnaim » Tue Apr 20, 2010 1:37 pm
grockit_andrea wrote:Regarding why "their" is ambiguous, you have to remember to take logic out of play on pronoun issues; it doesn't matter what you know the intended meaning to be. If there is, for instance, more than one plural noun that could be an antecedent for the plural pronoun, the pronoun is, on the GMAT, considered ambiguous, even if the intended meaning is utterly clear. Same goes for singular pronouns and antecedents, although here there is a tiny bit more wiggle room, because you do have gender to differentiate. For instance, I think the following sentence would be fine: "Jack and Jill are going on a date, and he is going to pick her up at 5 o'clock." You couldn't get away with that structure if you were using plural pronouns and antecedents.

Anyway, hope this helps.
Andrea!
Related to the discussion above, would I be able to get your insight on this question (Q6 From OG 12th edition)
In late 1997, the chambers inside the pyramid of the Pharaoh Menkaure at Giza were closed to visitors for cleaning and repair due to moisture exhaled by tourists, which raised its humidity to such levels so that salt from the stone was crystallizing and fungus was growing on the walls.
Options C,D, and E read:
(C) because tourists were exhaling moisture, which
had raised the humidity within them to levels
such that salt from the stone would crystallize
(D) because of moisture that was exhaled by
tourists raising the humidity within them to levels
so high as to make the salt from the stone
crystallize
(E) because moisture exhaled by tourists had raised
the humidity within them to such levels that salt
from the stone was crystallizing.
My question is: Why does the OG say that the pronoun "them" in option E is unambiguous, unlike "them" in options C and D.
Many thanks!!!

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by tnaim » Sun Apr 25, 2010 9:20 am
tnaim wrote:
grockit_andrea wrote:Regarding why "their" is ambiguous, you have to remember to take logic out of play on pronoun issues; it doesn't matter what you know the intended meaning to be. If there is, for instance, more than one plural noun that could be an antecedent for the plural pronoun, the pronoun is, on the GMAT, considered ambiguous, even if the intended meaning is utterly clear. Same goes for singular pronouns and antecedents, although here there is a tiny bit more wiggle room, because you do have gender to differentiate. For instance, I think the following sentence would be fine: "Jack and Jill are going on a date, and he is going to pick her up at 5 o'clock." You couldn't get away with that structure if you were using plural pronouns and antecedents.

Anyway, hope this helps.
Andrea!
Related to the discussion above, would I be able to get your insight on this question (Q6 From OG 12th edition)
In late 1997, the chambers inside the pyramid of the Pharaoh Menkaure at Giza were closed to visitors for cleaning and repair due to moisture exhaled by tourists, which raised its humidity to such levels so that salt from the stone was crystallizing and fungus was growing on the walls.
Options C,D, and E read:
(C) because tourists were exhaling moisture, which
had raised the humidity within them to levels
such that salt from the stone would crystallize
(D) because of moisture that was exhaled by
tourists raising the humidity within them to levels
so high as to make the salt from the stone
crystallize
(E) because moisture exhaled by tourists had raised
the humidity within them to such levels that salt
from the stone was crystallizing.
My question is: Why does the OG say that the pronoun "them" in option E is unambiguous, unlike "them" in options C and D.
Many thanks!!!
I hate to be a bug but was wondering if you had a chance to take a look at the question above Andrea!, thank you!

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by grockit_andrea » Sun Apr 25, 2010 11:10 am
Well, in C, the phrasing makes it sound like "tourists" could be the antecedent for "them." I would have eliminated D for reasons unrelated to pronoun ambiguity; it's too wordy and "because of" isn't idiomatically correct in this context. In E, "exhaled by tourists" modifies "moisture," which makes it unlikely that "them" would refer to "tourists." I don't have the OG in front of me right now, and taking parts of it out of context is tricky, but it seems to me that this is a case where your best bet is to eliminate answers based on identifiable grammar issues (like idiom) and then evaluate what's left.
Just as a quick side-note, I don't always see every forum post, so if you have specific questions for me, it's usually a better bet to send me private message drawing my attention to the forum. Thanks!
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by tnaim » Sun Apr 25, 2010 8:02 pm
grockit_andrea wrote:Well, in C, the phrasing makes it sound like "tourists" could be the antecedent for "them." I would have eliminated D for reasons unrelated to pronoun ambiguity; it's too wordy and "because of" isn't idiomatically correct in this context. In E, "exhaled by tourists" modifies "moisture," which makes it unlikely that "them" would refer to "tourists." I don't have the OG in front of me right now, and taking parts of it out of context is tricky, but it seems to me that this is a case where your best bet is to eliminate answers based on identifiable grammar issues (like idiom) and then evaluate what's left.
Just as a quick side-note, I don't always see every forum post, so if you have specific questions for me, it's usually a better bet to send me private message drawing my attention to the forum. Thanks!
Thank you Andrea!
Would you please be able to elaborate a bit more on how "In E, "exhaled by tourists" modifies "moisture," which makes it unlikely that "them" would refer to "tourists."" and how D is different in that respect "because of moisture that was exhaled by tourists raising". The phrase "that was exhaled by tourists" modifies moisture in D too, right? The purpose of my question is to find is not so much to identify the right answer for that particular multiple choice question but more to be able to identify when a pronoun is ambiguous and when it is not since I seem to be having difficulties in this area.
Thank you once more!

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by grockit_andrea » Fri Apr 30, 2010 9:21 am
The best I can come up with is that in D, you have "moisture that was exhaled by tourists raising..." and it's not clear if "raising" refers to the moisture or the tourists (grammatically clear, I mean; logically it's pretty obvious); if it were referring to "tourists" then "them" could be considered to be referring to the tourists as well. The modifier in D is a little bit removed from "moisture" by the form of the verb that follows it, and by the unnecessarily wordy "that was" as well. In E, you have "moisture exhaled by tourists had raised," and the construction there makes it clear that it was the moisture, not the tourists, that did the raising. (If it were the tourists, "had raised" would have been preceded by "who.") So in D, the phrase "moisture exhaled by tourists had raised..." gives us one real antecedent, not two as D does.

Honestly, I don't know if this is any better than the explanation in the OG. This is the closest I've seen a question come to having an ambiguous pronoun in the correct answer; in my opinion, "them" is acceptable in E only because its usage is even worse in all the other choices. The comparatively straightforward phrasing in E makes "them" less ambiguous, but I can see how it's confusing.
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by xcobrax » Thu Jul 29, 2010 9:45 pm
Why do we not use If instead of whether? aren't we trying to say IF we cut their horns, THEN they may not come

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by tnaim » Fri Jul 30, 2010 6:00 pm
xcobrax wrote:Why do we not use If instead of whether? aren't we trying to say IF we cut their horns, THEN they may not come
mmm I don't think we're saying that IF we cut their horns, then they may not come. We are saying we need to evaluate whether cutting their horns will affect the tourists decision or NOT? we're simply not sure. However, had we used if, it would have meant that we are sure that if we cut the horns, they may not come. it's no longer an evaluation.
Hopefully I made some sense.