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by gauravgundal » Mon Aug 16, 2010 5:00 pm
The below mentioned question has been modified .

Sam Ford's travels are documented in his book,My Journey, which took him over seventeen years.

a. travels are documented in his book,My Journey, which took him over seventeen years.

b. travels are documented in his book,My Journey, which took over seventeen years to travel.

c. travels, which took him over seventeen years to complete, are documented in his book,My Journey,

d. travels are documented in his book,My Journey, which took him over seventeen years.

e. travels are documented in his book,My Journey, which took him over seventeen years.

Can 'him' (object pronoun) in answer choice C refers to 'Sam Ford's' (possessive noun) ?

In manhattan book,it is mentioned that Possessive noun can serve as antecedents only to possessive nouns, not to object pronoun.

Experts please guide me.
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by Tani » Mon Aug 16, 2010 7:41 pm
The questions is what took 17 years. the travel or the book. If the travel took seventeen years, the only alternative that conveys that is C.

Him is objective, not possessive. It took Sam 17 years to complete his travel. "Took", used idiomatically here, takes an object.

Compare "It took me an hour to do my homework." Not "It took I an hour to do my homework."
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by paes » Mon Aug 16, 2010 10:28 pm
Dear Tani.

Can you put more light on C.

I couldn't get the above explanation completely.
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by Tani » Tue Aug 17, 2010 6:40 am
"Him" is the direct object of the verb "took". It is not possessive. The possessive would be "his".

The sentence is saying that "it" (the travel, not the book) took Sam 17 years.




All the other options suggest that the book took 17 years, not the travel.
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by paes » Tue Aug 17, 2010 7:37 am
Tani Wolff - Kaplan wrote:"Him" is the direct object of the verb "took". It is not possessive. The possessive would be "his".

The sentence is saying that "it" (the travel, not the book) took Sam 17 years.




All the other options suggest that the book took 17 years, not the travel.
Dear Tani,

Yes, I also agree that 'him' is direct object.
But according to Manhattan explanation (same question has asked by the initial post also ) :
we can't use 'he' or 'him' for Ford's travel. [Ford's is in possessive form, we can't use subject/object form for Ford ]
We can use only 'his' to refer to Ford's [ ie only possessive case ]
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by Tani » Tue Aug 17, 2010 7:43 am
I read the sentence as saying the travel took "him" - i.e. Ford - 17 years. The travel didn't take the travel 17 years.
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by gauravgundal » Tue Aug 17, 2010 4:16 pm
Yup Tani,
I agree with you that him is a object pronoun,but my question is how does him object pronoun refer back to possessive noun ,which in this case is Sam Ford's.

Regards,
Gaurav
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by Tani » Tue Aug 17, 2010 6:54 pm
It is understaood that him refers to Sam, not to Sam's travels or Sam's books.
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by lunarpower » Fri Sep 10, 2010 5:30 am
gaurav is actually right on this one.

gmac has indeed propounded a "rule" stating that possessive nouns, such as "sam ford's", can't be the antecedents of any non-possessive pronoun.
interestingly enough, gmac has softened its position on this issue from the 1st edition verbal OG supplement to the 2nd edition.
* in the 1st edition, this is actually stated as a hard rule -- see the answer explanation to problem 86.
* in the 2nd edition, all evidence of gmac's belief that this is a real rule has evaporated -- see the answer explanation to problem 81 (the same problem -- note the massive differences).

despite this softening, though, it's clear that gmac does go to great lengths to obey this "rule".
for instance, check out OG11 #70. in this case, we're looking at the non-underlined part of the sentence, but the same thing is going on -- gmac actually elects to follow this "rule" at the cost of writing the world's worst, most awkward sentence.
i.e., any half-decent writer would switch "his" for "louis agassiz's", and "louis agassiz" for "him" -- but, because gmac believes in the validity of the above rule, it can't do that, and is forced to write the awkward, awful sentence found as #70.
take note.

more details in this rant:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/thermometer- ... tml#260416
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by niksworth » Fri Sep 10, 2010 6:38 am
Now, since we know that GMAC does go to great lengths to obey this rule, would this mean that all options are incorrect? (Actually D and E are absolutely identical. So we have a black hole here)

A/B/D/E - All suffer from modifier issues
A/C/D/E - use of objective pronoun

Will the best sentence be the following ?
Sam Ford's travels, which took over seventeen years to complete, are documented in his book, My Journey.
scio me nihil scire
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by lunarpower » Mon Sep 13, 2010 2:09 pm
niksworth wrote:Now, since we know that GMAC does go to great lengths to obey this rule, would this mean that all options are incorrect? (Actually D and E are absolutely identical. So we have a black hole here)

A/B/D/E - All suffer from modifier issues
A/C/D/E - use of objective pronoun

Will the best sentence be the following ?
Sam Ford's travels, which took over seventeen years to complete, are documented in his book, My Journey.
that sentence would be correct.

the original poster said that "The below mentioned question has been modified", so i'm not surprised by the existence of issues like these. it would be helpful for the original poster to post (or at least make a reference to) the question that he/she modified to produce this one.
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