Political Passengers..

[TheMatrix85]

The first political passengers on modern railroad cars were a president, a senator, and a governor that had been traveling to Washington, D.C. together on the Liberty Express in 1907.



The first political passengers on modern railroad cars were a president, a senator, and a governor that had been traveling

The first political passengers on modern railroad cars were a president, a senator, and a governor, who traveled

A president, a senator, and a governor were the first political passengers on modern railroad cars who traveled

A president, a senator, and a governor who were the first political passengers on modern railroad cars to travel

A president, a senator, and a governor were the first political passengers on modern railroad cars traveling

Explain SVP?

[engg.manik]

As per me "C" is the right answer.

A president, a senator, and a governor were the first political passengers on modern railroad cars who traveled

[TheMatrix85]

no.....the reason stated is :-This choice makes it seem that these people were the first passengers on railroad cars who traveled to D.C., rather than just the first passengers on railroad cars.

OA is B. BUT i dont know how??

[mruzeful]

As far as I know a 'which' after a 'comma' refers to immediate preceding noun.

But doesn't 'who' after a 'comma' refer to immediate preceding noun?

Please explain - an important one to know

[tom4lax]

Hmm, I also selected C as the answer. I knocked off B due to the usage of ",who".

[enniguy]

The event is in the past. So past tense expected. Only B and C uses past tenses (were parallel to traveled) amongst all the options.

In C the usage, "cars who traveled" is wrong. Hence, B.

By the way, if D did not have the who after Governor, it would have been right in my opinion.

[crackgmat007]

IMO B

Eliminated C coz 'who' seemed to refer cars incorrectly.

The prep phrase 'in...cars' modifies passengers (noun). However, this prep phrase has a noun 'cars'. Not sure if who can refer to passengers in this case.

Experts, pls clarify. Which noun does who refer to in the below 2 cases - is it car or passengers?:

1. The first political passengers on modern railroad cars who traveled

2. The first political passengers on modern railroad cars, who traveled

Pls clarify if the rule will be the same for 'which'.

[enniguy]

Not an expert but this is what I think:
1. The first political passengers on modern railroad cars who traveled

Although cars cannot be referred to by "who". It's a bad construction without clearly mentioning that it's the passengers and not cars "who traveled".

2. The first political passengers on modern railroad cars, who traveled

Here who refers to passengers. Because passengers is the primary noun. "on railroad cars" is the prepositional phrase to which "who" does not refer to.

Hope it helps. Also you may have to send PMs to Experts for replies. They may not have time to look into all the posts (There are too many of us asking them questions all the time )

[xcusemeplz2009]

IMO B

the sentence is inteded to mean that a president ,a senator and a governor were the first among all pasangers who boarded the railroad cars which was going to WDC which is clear in B

however c is claiming that a president , a senator and a gorvernor were the first among the passangers who boarded the railroad cars to travel upto wdc.

this is the differnce i was able to make .

[Stacey Koprince]

Received a PM asking me to comment on the "who" issue. No source is cited for this problem, so I can't say much about the problem unless / until someone cites a source. But I can discuss the "who" issue generally.

So, first, between "who" and "which," we always use "who" for people (not "which").

Similarly, we should also use "who" instead of "that" for people.

Next, if you have a "no comma who" setup, that indicates an essential modifier. A "comma who" setup indicates a non-essential modifier.

An essential modifier = if we removed this information, the basic meaning would change or become unclear.

A non-essential modifier = extra info, but we would still understand the basic meaning of the core sentence without this info.

eg:
There are two girls over there. The girl who has brown hair is Sally. (here, the modifier is essential because, if we removed it - "The girl is Sally" - the meaning would become unclear. Which girl is Sally?)

There is one girl over there. The girl, who has brown hair, is named Sally. (here, the modifier is non-essential. You still know who I'm talking about if I don't include the info about the brown hair.)

Whether you have an essential or a non-essential modifier, the basic rules don't change. You still have a noun modifier that should be modifying the closest preceding main noun. A "main noun" is either the noun immediately preceding the start of the modifier or a noun earlier than that as long as the intervening words are part of a necessary description of that main noun. So, in the latter case, you can't just have any old prepositional phrase that you want. It's got to be something that's essential to the meaning, description, or classification of the main noun. (And if you have two choices, one that has some intervening "essential description" text vs. one that moves that meaning elsewhere and puts the main noun directly before the modifier - and all other things are equal between the two - then you choose the one that avoids the intervening text. It's preferable, when possible, to have the main noun touching the noun modifier.

[TheMatrix85]

Hi stacey,

Thanks for the explanation.
I encountered this question in the Knewton GMAT online free test.
so could you please explain the solution in detail..

[Stacey Koprince]

Sure.

A is wrong because it uses "that" instead of "who" for people.

B changes "that" to ", who" - that's good for two reasons. "who" appropriately refers to people, and the "comma who" set-up gives us a noun modifier. Here's the core sentence structure:

The passengers were X, Y, and Z.

The "comma who" part is extra information, not part of the core, and is correctly constructed relative to the rest of the core sentence. So B looks pretty good so far.

"who" appears to refer to "cars" in choice C. That's no good. Also, the absence of the comma before "who" makes the modifier an essential modifier, so the sentence is saying not just that they were the first political passengers on modern railroads, but that they were the first political passengers to travel to Wash DC together. That makes it sound like there were other political passengers who traveled together on modern railroad before that - just not to Wash DC.

D is a sentence fragment: <Some people> who were the first to travel to DC... where's the main verb? The only verb is part of the "who" modifying clause.

E has a similar problem to D. It *might* work if we inserted a comma - although I still find that construction awkward. I also don't like the fact that this one appears to hinge somewhat on a comma. I don't think a real test question would do that.

B is the best one.

[TheMatrix85]

Stacey, thank you so much for the detailed analysis .It clarified my doubts on the usage of 'who'.

[mruzeful]

Many Thanks Stacie.