i received a private message about this thread.
vk_vinayak wrote:Lucky, there wasn't an additional answer choice similar to D but containing 'Of'!
@Experts, what exactly is the difference between:
His sighting ghosts is attributed to hysteria.
AND
His sighting of ghosts is attributed to hysteria.
And when do we prefer one to another?
ok ... make sure you get this first:
THIS DIFFERENCE WILL NOT BE TESTED ON THE EXAM. FOR THE PURPOSES OF THE EXAM, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT IT.
--
this is a very "writerly" difference, waaaayyy beyond the scope of anything that is going to be tested on the gmat. however, because (a) i'm a writer and (b) i like talking about things that aren't the same all the time, i will go ahead and give you a discussion.
basically, this is the difference:
1/
possessive + VERBing + object
--> used to discuss the
notion that this actually happened, not the way in which it happened.
vs.
2/
possessive + VERBing + of + object
--> used to discuss
HOW it happened, rather than the simple fact that it did.
e.g.
Your playing that song was a disgrace.
--> this means that
the the fact that you played the song in the first place was disgraceful. i.e., even if you played the song with absolute technical perfection, it's still a disgrace that you played it at all.
vs.
Your playing of that song was a disgrace.
--> this means that you really screwed up the song. your decision to play the song itself wasn't disgraceful, but your awful technique was.
another example:
Your singing the national anthem made me cry with emotion.
--> i cried just because it was the national anthem itself; i.e., i cried because of what the anthem stands for, not because of how you sang it.
Your singing of the national anthem made me cry with emotion.
--> i cried because of how you sang it. (... with such feeling, or whatever.)
--
also note that, if there's a dedicated noun form of the verb (like "treatment" instead of "treating", etc.), then that's the form that will appear in #2, but NOT in #1.
e.g.
The doctor's treating foreign patients was controversial.
--> you still use -ING here
--> this sentence means that it was controversial for the doctor to treat these patients at all, regardless of how he/she actually treated them.
The doctor's treatment of foreign patients was controversial.
--> here, you use the dedicated noun form "treatment"
--> this sentence means that
the way in which the doctor treated the patients was controversial.
--
again,
you don't have to know any of the above, but i enjoy the occasional discussion of "writerly" stuff.
also -- i've noticed that, if the title of the thread is "good problem from [source]" -- like the thread cited above -- then it is exponentially more likely that we are actually dealing with a
bad problem. specifically, a problem that tests Things You Simply Don't Have To Know.
