use of who/which in a compound subject

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bblast: Legendary Member; Posts: 1077; Joined: Mon Dec 13, 2010 1:44 amFollowed by: 33 members; Thanked: 118 times; GMAT Score:710

by bblast » Sun Jun 12, 2011 3:04 am

For smaller retailers and Web sites,who pay regular mail rates and may ship from only one location,free shipping is not nearly as affordable and often must be added into prices

For smaller retailers and Web sites,which pay regular mail rates and may ship from only one location, free shipping is not nearly as affordable and often must be added into prices

The subject becomes compound having humans as well as web sites, so if I use who, will it be correct here ? Note : Who acts as which - and modifies the noun preceding the comma. So technically this is wrong IMO. But still wanna have opinions.

no prizes for guessing answers here, please discuss.

Original question from grail just in case : i've modified C in the construction above.

36. For smaller retailers and Web sites, which pay regular mail rates and may be
shipping from only one location, free shipping is not nearly as affordable and often
must be added into prices
A. which pay regular mail rates and may be shipping from only one location, free
shipping is not nearly as affordable and often must
B. that pay regular mail rates and may ship from only one location, free shipping
is not nearly as affordable and often must
C. who pay regular mail rates and may ship from only one location, free shipping
is not nearly so affordable and it often must
D. which pays regular mail rates and may ship from only one location, free
shipping is not as nearly affordable and often must
E. which pay regular mail rates and may ship from only one location, free
shipping is not nearly as affordable and often must

E note that gmat will not make u split between B and E,

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Sentence Correction | Sun Jun 12, 2011 3:04 am

Frankenstein: Legendary Member; Posts: 1448; Joined: Tue May 17, 2011 9:55 amFollowed by: 53 members; Location: India; Thanked: 375 times

by Frankenstein » Sun Jun 12, 2011 3:17 am

Hi,
which/who refers to the preceding noun/noun phrase. So,websites cannot be referred by 'who'. So, C is wrong. usage of comma in the non-underlined part itself should tell you that 'that' cannot be used. So, B is out.
No parallelism in A
Subject-verb agreement error in D.
Hence, E

Cheers!

Things are not what they appear to be... nor are they otherwise

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bblast: Legendary Member; Posts: 1077; Joined: Mon Dec 13, 2010 1:44 amFollowed by: 33 members; Thanked: 118 times; GMAT Score:710

by bblast » Sun Jun 12, 2011 3:30 am

frank, my reasoning is the same as urs on this one,

but just that the subject here is "smaller retailers and Web sites". not only the websites.So its creating a doubt in my mind, IMO in such cases which modifies the compound subject and not just the proceeding noun.

{I don't have any argument regarding the question I posted. I am discussing the 2 sentences at the top of this thread. }

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Ozlemg: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 407; Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2011 9:19 amFollowed by: 7 members; Thanked: 25 times

by Ozlemg » Sun Jun 12, 2011 4:12 am

My five cents :

A. which pay regular mail rates and may be shipping from only one location, free
shipping is not nearly as affordable and often must
B. that pay regular mail rates and may ship from only one location, free shipping
is not nearly as affordable and often must
C. who pay regular mail rates and may ship from only one location, free shipping
is not nearly so affordable and it often must --> so is not used as adj.in GMAT. The format should be "so...that"
D. which pays regular mail rates and may ship from only one location, free
shipping is not as nearly affordable and often must
E. which pay regular mail rates and may ship from only one location, free
shipping is not nearly as affordable and often must

The more you suffer before the test, the less you will do so in the test!

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Frankenstein: Legendary Member; Posts: 1448; Joined: Tue May 17, 2011 9:55 amFollowed by: 53 members; Location: India; Thanked: 375 times

by Frankenstein » Sun Jun 12, 2011 4:21 am

bblast wrote:frank, my reasoning is the same as urs on this one,

but just that the subject here is "smaller retailers and Web sites". not only the websites.So its creating a doubt in my mind, IMO in such cases which modifies the compound subject and not just the proceeding noun.

{I don't have any argument regarding the question I posted. I am discussing the 2 sentences at the top of this thread. }

Hi,
'which' cannot refer to people and who can refer to persons only. So, even if we use 'which' after compound subject, 'which' still refers to the logical antecedent(websites) only and not the compound subject.

Cheers!

Things are not what they appear to be... nor are they otherwise

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Jim@Grockit: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 641; Joined: Wed Jul 22, 2009 3:07 pmFollowed by: 45 members; Location: Madison, WI; Thanked: 162 times; GMAT Score:760

by Jim@Grockit » Sun Jun 12, 2011 1:23 pm

Also "smaller retailers" probably does not mean physically diminutive retailers -- it means smaller organizations.

If by some chance you really did get "PEOPLE + THINGS, (who/which)" then you should choose the one that's closer to your relative pronoun as the referent.

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bblast: Legendary Member; Posts: 1077; Joined: Mon Dec 13, 2010 1:44 amFollowed by: 33 members; Thanked: 118 times; GMAT Score:710

by bblast » Sun Jun 12, 2011 8:30 pm

thanks Jim, that is exactly what I was looking for,

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