Sentence Correction

Very interesting. Is "lost to" unidiomatic?

I've heard the phrase "I've lost a relative to cancer/diabetes/ etc..." or "Team A lost [the game/mathc] to Team B"

Anybody can confirm this?

fltingley wrote:Having lost his sight to sustained eyestrain, John Milton nevertheless composed Paradise Lost, considered by many to be the greatest English epic.

I think the key to this sentence is finding the best companion with "nevertheless"...

1. ... = unidiomatic. You don't lose your eyesight TO something, but rather because/by/etc.

2. With his sight lost to sustained eyestrain = "with" does not jive with "nevertheless"

3. Blinded by sustained eyestrain = jives with nevertheless and is short and concise.

4. Having been blinded by excessive eyestrain = works with "nevertheless" but is wordy and awkward

5. Blinded with sustained eyestrain = you're not blinded "with" eyestrain. This is both unidiomatic and could imply that JM was blinded ALONGSIDE eyestrain. Eliminate.

I say C.

thailandvc wrote:Having forfeited her severance package in order to keep the rights to her intellectual property, it was believed by the employee that she had won a moral victory.

B)She believed that she had won a moral victory
C)The employee believed that she had won a moral victory
D)Wrong answer
E) Wrong answer

B or C? According to Kaplan, C is correct because "the employee" was used/modified in the original sentence. What? "she believed" is shorter and sweeter and not confusing.

Althoguh if you really stretch it, it could argued that the second she can refer to another person. But that is really stretching it. If you apply this same level of pickyness to their other questions you will actually get it wrong. I feel that there is a lack of consistency in Kaplan questions when dealing with "clarity and concision."

Thailandvc, hi!

Here's the problem with B: '"She" has no antecedent. That means that even though "She" is probably "the employee" given discussion of a severance package, "She" could also be "the professor" or "the researcher" or "Sue" or "Jane." GMAT requires that every pronoun have one and exactly one noun that unambiguously defines it.

Also, I'm sorry that you felt the things were 'picky' in our answer explanations. We aren't trying to get you to look for every single error in every wrong answer choice! Rather, our goal was to point out that in a majority of cases, there are two or three things wrong with any given wrong answer--and therefore, that you can often use pickiness find the correct answer even if you've missed the major grammar error.

KapTeacherEli wrote:

thailandvc wrote:Having forfeited her severance package in order to keep the rights to her intellectual property, it was believed by the employee that she had won a moral victory.

B)She believed that she had won a moral victory
C)The employee believed that she had won a moral victory
D)Wrong answer
E) Wrong answer

B or C? According to Kaplan, C is correct because "the employee" was used/modified in the original sentence. What? "she believed" is shorter and sweeter and not confusing.

Althoguh if you really stretch it, it could argued that the second she can refer to another person. But that is really stretching it. If you apply this same level of pickyness to their other questions you will actually get it wrong. I feel that there is a lack of consistency in Kaplan questions when dealing with "clarity and concision."

Thailandvc, hi!

Here's the problem with B: '"She" has no antecedent. That means that even though "She" is probably "the employee" given discussion of a severance package, "She" could also be "the professor" or "the researcher" or "Sue" or "Jane." GMAT requires that every pronoun have one and exactly one noun that unambiguously defines it.

Also, I'm sorry that you felt the things were 'picky' in our answer explanations. We aren't trying to get you to look for every single error in every wrong answer choice! Rather, our goal was to point out that in a majority of cases, there are two or three things wrong with any given wrong answer--and therefore, that you can often use pickiness find the correct answer even if you've missed the major grammar error.

I agree with you. That was not the best example of what I said but I still feel that Kaplan's SC and OG SC are different very different. I don't know what they are; I don't have my notes in front of me.

There are actually quite a few examples including problems from OG where the right answer with "it" does not refer to anything. Aome are in Sahil's notes in the "expletive it" section.

Also, can't you argue that "the employee" changes the meaning of the sentence? "She" refers to the person who forfeited her severance. How do you know that person was an employee? That person could have been a consultant to the company who had to forfeit her discovery. "She" was chosen because the writer of the sentence did not know or didn't think that the exact role of "she" is important. "She" retains the appropriate vagueness.

I liken this to inequalities problem where you can't divide by a negative variable because you don't know if it is negative or positive.

Your thoughts....? I just have never seen an OG problem where you can be that conflicted between 2 answers. Usually, one is clearly better.

Employee doesn't 'change' the meaning of the sentence--it defines it!

I think part of the confusion here comes from the 'ante' in 'antecedent,' which means 'before.' In the large majority of cases, the word that defines a pronoun comes before that pronoun. However, here "employee" defines the first "she" even though it comes afterwards.

If we don't have the word "employee" then different people could read the sentence differently. One might argue "She" in B is logically an employee, but another might argue "she" is a manager or "she" is a contract-worker or "she" is Chicken-Boo in disguise! And with choice B, who is to say which one of those is correct?

In other words, you want "appropriate vagueness," and in the real world, you may well be entirely right. But this isn't the real world, it's the GMAT. For this specific test, "appropriate vagueness" is a contradiction in terms. According to the Test-Makers, any vagueness is inherently an error.

Hope this helps!