While depressed property values

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Amadalia: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 76; Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 3:24 am; Thanked: 3 times

by Amadalia » Fri Mar 21, 2014 9:09 am

Good day
While depressed property values can hurt some large
investors, they are potentially devastating for
homeowners, whose equity-in many cases
representing a life's savings-can plunge or even
disappear.
(A) they are potentially devastating for homeowners,
whose
(B) they can potentially devastate homeowners in
that their
(C) for homeowners they are potentially devastating,
because their
(D) for homeowners, it is potentially devastating in
that their
(E) it can potentially devastate homeowners, whose

OA is A, I have no issue with the OA, I just happen to get the good answer for other reasons than those displayed in the forum and hope to see whether they are logical.
B is wrong because "can potentially" is redundant and indiomatic
C and D have a parallesim issue because we have: while+ subject+verb, we needed another subject+verb in the seconde clause (regardless of the other flaws)
Many thanks in advance

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Sentence Correction | Fri Mar 21, 2014 9:09 am

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ceilidh.erickson: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 2095; Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2012 3:22 pmFollowed by: 247 members; Thanked: 1443 times

by ceilidh.erickson » Fri Mar 21, 2014 12:54 pm

Amadalia wrote: B is wrong because "can potentially" is redundant and indiomatic
C and D have a parallesim issue because we have: while+ subject+verb, we needed another subject+verb in the seconde clause (regardless of the other flaws)
Many thanks in advance

The primary flaws in the wrong answers are with pronoun usage.

B) "they" is referring to depressed property values, while "their" is trying to refer to homeowners. Because they/them/their are all different versions of the same kind of pronoun, we're not allowed to switch nouns that they refer to. Any "it" or "its" in a sentence must refer to the same noun, and any "they", "them", or "their" must refer to the same thing.

You're right that "can potentially" is somewhat redundant, but redundancy is almost never the single issue that makes an answer choice wrong. Look for grammar issues first.

C) You're right about that parallelism. Note that there is also the same pronoun issue with "their" as in B.

D and E) The major issue is that "it" is not referring to any noun in particular.

Ceilidh Erickson
EdM in Mind, Brain, and Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education

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ceilidh.erickson: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 2095; Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2012 3:22 pmFollowed by: 247 members; Thanked: 1443 times

by ceilidh.erickson » Fri Mar 21, 2014 1:03 pm

For more information on switching pronoun references, see:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/over-the-pas ... tml#554150
https://www.beatthegmat.com/heavy-commit ... tml#637472

Ceilidh Erickson
EdM in Mind, Brain, and Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education

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aditya8062: Legendary Member; Posts: 774; Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2012 4:32 amFollowed by: 14 members; Thanked: 46 times

by aditya8062 » Sat Mar 22, 2014 12:29 am

ceilidh.erickson wrote:C) You're right about that parallelism.

kindly clarify me on this issue .
C says :While depressed property values can hurt some large
investors, for homeowners they are potentially devastating,
because their

i feel that parallelism is taken care of here .though it is wrong for other reason that u have already specified . i have bolded the subject and verb in respective clauses .
kindly throw some light
thanks

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Amadalia: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 76; Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 3:24 am; Thanked: 3 times

by Amadalia » Sat Mar 22, 2014 5:28 am

aditya8062 wrote:
i feel that parallelism is taken care of here

No it's not, the parallelism has been broken for the simple reason that:
While depressed property values can hurt some large
investors, for homeowners they are potentially devastating,

look, the first clause is structured as follow: Subject+verb
while the second has : a prepositional phrases (for homeowners)+subject+verb

Hope this helps!!!

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aditya8062: Legendary Member; Posts: 774; Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2012 4:32 amFollowed by: 14 members; Thanked: 46 times

by aditya8062 » Sat Mar 22, 2014 6:25 am

hmm !! well firstly "while",unlike "and" or "but",is not a parallel marker .its a subordinater and fortunately subordinaters do not have such strict rules for parallelism .
for instance this sentence is perfect :Although eradicated in the United States, polio continues elsewhere and could be brought into the country by visitors

surbodinators such as while ,although do not have such strict rules for parallelism

also look at this correct sentence : Although some officials noted that using machines for farming in China costs more than traditional hand cultivation, mechanization of farming in the village of Long Bow doubled the corn yield while cutting costs to half those of the previous year

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aditya8062: Legendary Member; Posts: 774; Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2012 4:32 amFollowed by: 14 members; Thanked: 46 times

by aditya8062 » Sat Mar 22, 2014 6:29 am

Amadalia wrote:
aditya8062 wrote:
i feel that parallelism is taken care of here
No it's not, the parallelism has been broken for the simple reason that:
While depressed property values can hurt some large
investors, for homeowners they are potentially devastating,

look, the first clause is structured as follow: Subject+verb
while the second has : a prepositional phrases (for homeowners)+subject+verb

Hope this helps!!!

secondly if i go by such strict rule for parallelism then it would be almost impossible to write any complex structure .lets see what instructors have to say .i have asked for their valued opinion

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ceilidh.erickson: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 2095; Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2012 3:22 pmFollowed by: 247 members; Thanked: 1443 times

by ceilidh.erickson » Mon Mar 24, 2014 9:51 am

aditya8062 wrote:hmm !! well firstly "while",unlike "and" or "but",is not a parallel marker .its a subordinater and fortunately subordinaters do not have such strict rules for parallelism .
for instance this sentence is perfect :Although eradicated in the United States, polio continues elsewhere and could be brought into the country by visitors

surbodinators such as while ,although do not have such strict rules for parallelism

You're right that subordinators do not have to follow strict rules of parallelism. However, because they provide contrast to the independent clause, they must be structurally comparable. Inserting a "for" in C and D would change the structure, and thus the comparison.

We would have to say either:
While for investors depressed property values can be hurtful, for homeowners they can be...
or:
While depressed property values can hurt investors, they are devastating for homeowners...

Ceilidh Erickson
EdM in Mind, Brain, and Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education

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