who/whose

[veenu08]

Robinson is a botanist whose dream is to reestablish an authentic pre-human piece of Hawaii, a place now awash with introduced species of plants and animals.

A. who has the dream to reestablish an authentic pre-human piece of Hawaii,
B. whose dream it is to reestablish an authentic pre-human piece of Hawaii,
C. who it is his dream to reestablish an authentic pre-human piece of Hawaii,
D. that is dreaming to reestablish an authentic pre-human piece of Hawaii,
E. whose dream is to reestablish an authentic pre-human piece of Hawaii

[spoiler]OA E
Why not A[/spoiler]

[theCodeToGMAT]

Robinson is a botanist whose dream is to reestablish an authentic pre-human piece of Hawaii, a place now awash with introduced species of plants and animals.

A. who has the dream to reestablish an authentic pre-human piece of Hawaii,
INCORRECT; here "who" seems to describe botanist and not Robinson..

E. whose dream is to reestablish an authentic pre-human piece of Hawaii
we use "whose" for possessive reference.. hence, is correctly describing Robinson.

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Hi veenu08,

The technical explanation for answers A vs. E might come across as long-winded, so I'll do my best to keep it simple.

In answer A, the word "who" is a pronoun that represents the subject "Robinson." In this sentence, it comes across as redundant since we already know that Robinson is the subject. It would be the same as writing "Robinson is a Botanist and he has a dream...."; the sentence doesn't require a pronoun to be correct, so the pronoun probably shouldn't be there.

In answer E, the word "whose" is a possessive pronoun that links "dream" to "Robinson" (so we know it's Robinson's dream, without having to write "and he has a dream"). From a "style" standpoint, it's preferable to eliminate redundancies and this answer does so.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich