Journalists, question# 13 of 1000SC

[isisalaska]

13. A majority of the international journalists surveyed view nuclear power stations as unsafe at present but that they will, or could, be made sufficiently safe in the future.
(A) that they will, or could,
(B) that they would, or could,
(C) they will be or could
(D) think that they will be or could
(E) think the power stations would or could

Ansewr is D, isn't uambiguos? "they" coudl refer to journalists or power sttations, I am confused :roll:
Thanks!

[aim-wsc]

Ansewr is D, isn't uambiguos? "they" could refer to journalists or power station

NO.
D makes proper ll construction. @''view n think'' also @ ''will be n could''be.

sorry... hv to write short i m back to cell phone browsing

[Stacey Koprince]

The test writers can draw a very fine line with pronoun antecedents. This question isn't from OG and I'd be very careful about SC questions that aren't from the OG - most from good sources are fine, but when they cover an issue that the OG itself can be a little fuzzy on, then you can get into trouble.

The pronoun says "they will or could be made sufficiently safe in the future." This sentence has already referred to the stations as unsafe, so we infer that the later reference to "safe" also refers to the stations.

HOWEVER, I really don't think the official writers would present this particular question.

Technically, we do have two plural nouns in the sentence, journalists and power stations. This doesn't automatically mean they are both possible antecedents. The official test seems to follow a rule that says if both the nouns are in a similar class (eg, if we had had, say, journalists and politicians), then we have to clarify the pronoun, even if the context of the sentence gives us an idea of which group the pronoun is supposed to be referringto, but if they are in an obviously different class and if it doesn't make much sense for the pronoun to refer to one of the classes, then we're okay even if we do have two plural nouns.

In this case, the two nouns are definitely in different classes, but it is also conceivable that someone might want to make journalists safer in the future. (That would, of course, probably be a totally different sentence, but it is conceivable.) The official test doesn't generally tolerate this kind of (very nitpicky) ambiguity.

[gurudev]

Stacey,

If we have to pick any one option out of the given five, then what will be your suggestion.

As i see that in this question, if we take out the they ambiguity, a concept regarding the usage of would , could and will is tested. Also, their cobminations as in, when can will+could be used and when would+could be used.

I guess we should aim at grasping that concept. I am not clear about this(would+could+will) usage. Can you please help me on this....

[Stacey Koprince]

I didn't pick a particular answer last time because I don't think we should be spending our time studying from possibly flawed materials.

Let's strip the sentence to its core:

A majority view stations as unsafe (now) but _____ be made safe (later).

"A majority" is the subject for the first verb; there's another verb but I'm not yet sure what the subject is (part of the answers). There's also a timeframe comparison going on - something now vs. something later.

The origina sentence starts off the answer choice with the word "that."
A majority view stations as unsafe (now) but that ___ be made safe (later).

No - that's not going to work. The majority we're talking about views something one way now and that same majority is also going to be viewing or thinking some contrasting view for the "later" piece. That indicates parallelism. No "that."

Cross off A and B (B also starts with "that").

C starts with "they"; D and E start with "think." Let's try the more common option first: think.

A majority view stations as unsafe (now) but think _____ be made safe (later).

That works - the "but" gives me an idiom structure that requires parallelism: a majority view X but think Y. Both verbs are in the same form. Good.

In C, I'd have
A majority view stations as unsafe (now) but they _____ be made safe (later).

And here I would have a problem - because "they" is the subject of the second half (after the "but") and structurally that should refer to the subject of the first half (a majority). But logically that's not what I want "they" to refer to - see get rid of C.

D and E both start with "think" - that's fine. D follows with "that" while E follows with a noun (stations).

Does a majority think [power stations] or does a majority think [something is true about power stations]? If the former, you don't need the word "that" but if the latter, you do need the word "that." We're thinking something is true about power stations (or will be true, anyway), so E is wrong.

Let's look at the core again:
A majority view stations as unsafe (now) but think that they will be or could be made safe (later).

A majority view stations...
A majority think that [stations]...

stations = the object in both cases. So both structurally and logically, "they" should refer to stations.

Finally - "will be" means you definitely think it will happen in the future, "could be" means it might happen in the future, and "would be" means it might be, but only if something else happens first or some other condition is met - very similar to "could be" actually. ("would" could also mean it's not going to happen - as in, this would happen if some other totally impossible thing happened first... so I guess it's not going to happen.)

The sentence uses the word "or" between the two verbs it chooses, so it's trying to give us two different meanings here - one thing or another. could and would are too close - we need will and one of the others. In this case, "would" isn't a great option because it implies some kind of condition, and we haven't been given any condition. We're just given the generic: it either WILL happen or it MIGHT happen. So "could" is the better option for the part of the sentence that means it "might" happen.

[gurudev]

Thanks Stacey, for your thorough explanation of the question. It really helped.

You really stripped the question to its core

[logitech]

Stacey - this is a great thread to clear our doubts on pronoun errors. Thanks!