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Pronoun Ambiguity!!

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Pronoun Ambiguity!!

by vivekvijayan » Thu Nov 20, 2014 6:31 pm
While high oil prices may be problematic for some trucking companies, they may be disastrous for airlines, whose operations - already losing money - could be plunged into bankruptcy.

(A) they may be disastrous for airlines, whose
(B) they may potentially cause disaster for airlines in that their
(C) for airlines they may be disastrous, because their
(D) for airlines, it may be disastrous in that their
(E) it may potentially cause disaster for airlines, whose

OA A

My Doubt is in the OA can't they refer to both high prices and companies...... How can we say that in the correct option "they refers to companies". ?
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by [email protected] » Thu Nov 20, 2014 7:07 pm
Hi vivekvijayan,

You bring up an interesting point, but you still have to maintain parallelism.

The first part of the sentence gives us...

"...high oil prices may be problematic for some trucking companies..."

To be parallel, the second part of the sentences SHOULD give us...

"...high oil prices may be disastrous for airlines...."

From a "style" standpoint though, using the phrase "high oil prices" a second time would be redundant, so the pronoun "they" is an appropriate substitute. Since none of the other answers provides a better option, I'd go with A. On Test Day, on certain questions, you'll come to find that you don't "like" any of the 5 answer choices, but one of them is still going to be considered correct. If and when that occurs, try finding a rule that you can "anchor" an answer to - here, it's parallelism.

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by EducationAisle » Thu Nov 20, 2014 11:03 pm
vivekvijayan wrote: My Doubt is in the OA can't they refer to both high prices and companies...... How can we say that in the correct option "they refers to companies". ?
Yes, you could view this as pronoun ambiguity, but a couple of things:

i) Pronoun ambiguity is acceptable on GMAT. So, don't use this as a criterion to eliminate answer choices.

ii) Structurally, they is referring to high oil prices (since both are subjects of their respective clauses).

For test takers, it's important to understand the difference between an orphan pronoun (pronoun with no antecedents) and ambiguous pronoun (pronoun with multiple antecedents).

Orphan pronoun is always incorrect, while ambiguous pronoun is acceptable.

By the way, what's the source of this question? Seems to be a rip-off of the following GMATPrep question:

While depressed property values can hurt some large investors, they are potentially devastating for homeowners, whose equity -in many cases representing a life's savings-can plunge or even disappear.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses Pronoun usage, its application and examples in significant detail. If someone is interested, PM me your email-id, I can mail you the corresponding section.
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by GMATGuruNY » Fri Nov 21, 2014 3:14 am
vivekvijayan wrote: My Doubt is in the OA can't they refer to both high prices and companies...... How can we say that in the correct option "they refers to companies". ?
The default referent for a subject pronoun is the PRECEDING SUBJECT.
A: While high oil prices may be problematic for some trucking companies, they may be disastrous for airlines.
Here, the default referent for they (subject pronoun) is the preceding subject (high oil prices).
Thus, we cannot cite pronoun ambiguity as a reason to eliminate A.
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