Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil

E. Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but a population of only four million people, many of whom are members of hill tribes ensconced in the virtually inaccessible mountain valleys of the north.

If we strip it down, it becomes:
Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but a population of only four million people, [many of whom are members of hill tribes ensconced in the virtually inaccessible mountain valleys of the north.]

I am not able to figure out 2nd part of sentence without any verb . Does not it sound incomplete? . Should it not be :
1. Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but has a population of only four million people,

If we take literal meaning it could be weird also as:
2. Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but a population of only four million people - Great Britain that has population of only 4 million people ( as if area that has 4 million people in Great Britain)

Point what i want to emphasize is : GMAT like to have complete and concise meaning without ambiguity. But in option E , it seems something is missing.

Please suggest AndrewN sir.

thanks!

Hello, imSKR. The has of the former part of the sentence carries over to the latter, after the conjunction but. Thus, we understand choice (E) to mean that Laos has a land area comparable to [the land area] of Great Britain but [has] a population of only four million people. Remember that conjunctions, when used without a comma, join two elements in parallel. It is not uncommon to elide or leave out the verb that is understood to apply to the second phrase or clause in the same manner as the first. Watch those conjunctions!

Thank you for calling my attention to the question.

- Andrew

Hi Sir

So if no comma before conjunction then verb would be carried over as you mentioned above.
What if there is comma then usually need to repeat the verb/helping verb? If it is not repeated then it could be an error?

Sorry , I didn't notice such difference before with or without comma before conjunction in correlation with verb carrying forward.
Please confirm.

Thanks!

I marked Choice E as wrong because I thought there needed to be a has after "but". The wording is awkward, but why do you not need a has? Thank you in advance

Hi,
I eliminated C for using 'as' incorrectly(as per my analysis). Can this be a solid reason to eliminate option C? Same goes for option A also!! Is it OK, or am I picking wrong decision point?

Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four million in population, where many are members of hill tribes ensconced in the virtually inaccessible mountain valleys of the north.

(A) about the same as Great Britain but only four million in population, where many
(B) of about the same size as Great Britain is, but in Laos there is a population of only four million, and many
(C) that is about the same size as Great Britain's land area, but in Laos with a population of only four million people, many of them
(D) comparable to the size of Great Britain, but only four million in population, and many
(E) comparable to that of Great Britain but a population of only four million people, many of whom

Hi AndrewN GMATNinja

This question catches my attention once again.

A silly question :

GMATNinja

Hi but when I use the conjunction "BUT" i do not need always the comma before? "x, but y"

many thanks

Hi everyone..

what is wrong with saying "Laos has the same area as Great Britain" ?? here we are comparing Laos and Great Britain...so the 1st bit in option A isn't wrong right?

Another example - "gmat requires the same effort as the GRE"... here i am comparing the gmat to the gre..right?

The reason i am asking all this is that I have read similar constructions/structures quite a few times in online articles/news etc etc, though i agree everything cannot be considered reliable especially when we are talking about the gmat.

Of course the above two sentence can also be written as "The area of Laos is the same as that of Great Britain" and "the effort required for the gmat is the same as that for the gre" ,respectively - in these, we are comparing the area of one place to the area of another and the effort for one exam to the effort for the other, respectively.

GMATNinja AjiteshArun VeritasKarishma GMATNinjaTwo .. hi experts, please help... looking forward to hearing from you guys.. regards,

"Land area" can mean two different things. It can mean the acreage, i.e. the number of acres, as in One MIT study claims that, in some U.S. cities, parking lots cover more than a third of the land area. It can also mean just some territory, not its size, as in Thunderstorms are well-monitored over land areas, where radar can keep an eye on their sometimes- quick development.

B and C mention the size of the land area; thus, they assume the second interpretation above. C then proceeds to use the expression "land area" in the first sense, i.e. size. Thus, C compares the size of one land area with another land area, which seems unnecessarily complicated. Now, B is more logical, yet B changes the meaning of the sentence! We can also say that the United States has a land area of about the same size as the entire Great Britain; for example, the State of Texas would qualify. A suggests that many people in Great Britain are members of hill tribes.

In D the non-idiomatic "but only four million in population" is offset by commas, which suggests that "many are members..." should make sense with the first part of the sentence: "Laos has a land area comparable to the size of Great Britain, and many are members..." Even if we rewrite the sentence to say "Laos has four million citizens, and many are members...", this still doesn't quite sound right because it is not specified, many of whom or of what. It would be better to say "Laos has four million citizens, many of whom are members..."

Basically, we are left with E. Note that "...to that of Great Britain..." makes it clear, in which sense the words "land area" are used. In this context Great Britain has one, the land area, which is a number, rather than a piece of land. The logic of the sentence still escapes me. I understand that Laos is sparsely populated, but why this detail about hill tribes? Is it saying that the mountain valleys are densely populated, thus even further lowering the population density at the accessible part of Laos?