sleepynut wrote:
Hi experts,
Please share your thoughts with this question.
IMHO,there is a problem with pronoun "who".Which noun it modifies?Is it "group" or "boys".Should it be the latter as we have plural possessive pronoun "their"?
Thanks
Hey! First of all, I think this is a bad question and is not from the GMAT guys. From my knowledge, who immediately attaches itself to the word before the comma so it may modify group. however, in this case I think it's more logical to say it attached to boys - meaning wise. Despite what who modifies, the error here is not what who is supposed to attach itself to as 'resort' is in the plural form and not singular. Therefore, the usage debate should be thrown out.
Now let look at the word whose. 'Whose' functions as a possessive relative pronoun... this means you can simply replace whose with either group's or boys'. Once you replace the relative pronoun, you would realize that the sentence is fragmented and it doesn't make sense to just say
Golding’s most famous novel concerns little boys (S + V = independent clause)
, once a well–behaved and civilized group, whose = boys' resort to murder and savagery during their brief time on a tropical island without adult supervision. (S only = fragment)
boys' resort (noun)... where the heck is the verb?
Quote:
Golding’s most famous novel concerns little boys, once a well–behaved and civilized group, whose resort to murder and savagery during their brief time on a tropical island without adult supervision.
A) once a well–behaved and civilized group, whose
should not be whose as it would make the sentence fragmented... aka there are no verbs
B) once well–behaved and civilized, who then
the lack of a and group changes the meaning of the appositive clause
C) once a well–behaved and civilized group, who
- seems the most correct
D) once well–civilized and well-behaved, whose
same error as in A) + B)
E) behaved and civilized, who
same error as in B)
The lessons from this question are 1) stick to the original meaning (eliminating BCE) and 2) stick to the basic sentence construction of S + V = independent clause.
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