Liverpool has slowly emerged from its post-industrial

I would go with 'B'
Population is countable, the very fact that the sentence reads 500,000 shows that it is countable.
So between 'B' & 'E'. 'B' looks better

E...

a) In the original sentence.. and more.... does not makes sense.
-- Here is my best guess

Liverpool has slowly emerged from its post-industrial decline as a newly thriving city with a population of over five hundred thousand and more investors interested in large urban renewal projects than would have been thought possible twenty years ago.

The underlined is not connected with initial part of the sentence..Liverpool...... and is not the suitable conjunction...
with would be a suitable conjunction.


Also the over does not make sense...has to be more....

-- more is more approriate than over..

can anybody explain it better ?

Ill go with A, though I was realier drawn towards E.

Tough to choose between C & E. I will go with E on this.

OA is A

Gayathri,
What is the source of this problem?. Are you sure there is no comma in front of and more?. Thanks

Praveen, its PR online and no there is no comma in front of "and more".

I picked E as well, but PR says that E ruins "more...than" comparison. Usage of greater is incorrect in C & D. In B the second "of more" implies "population of more investors" which is incorrect.

Gayathri,

I am having hard time trying to understand this question. I guess it depends how you interpret this sentence. E means there are X numbers of people and among X there are Y number of people who are investors. Here we know X > Y.

A is trying to say city has X numbers of people & Y numbers of investors. Here we don't know the relation between X & Y.

Here is where I am having difficulty.
"Liverpool has slowly emerged from its post-industrial decline as a newly thriving city with a population of over five hundred thousand"
is an independent clause. "more investors interested in large urban renewal projects than would have been thought possible twenty years ago" is another independent clause. Hence you need coordinating conjunction and with a comma as in ",and".

I guess we we should discuss more on this issue with grammer experts.
Would it be possible for you to send this to people at PR and ask for better explanation?. Thanks

Praveen, unfortunately I was not able to find any way to contact the folks at PR through their website. I dont think they provide such access unless you are enrolled in their course...

We may have to wait for forum grammar experts to comment on this.

I also think in this statement we need to also look at the context besides grammar. If you look at the context, A does seem to make more sense. It says that the population is growing and there are more investors who are interested in investing in projects which will further lead to its expansion.

Hi Praveen and Gayathri,

Im no grammer expert here. But this is what I think the stem means-

at first even I interpreted this question as- the population is more than 500,000 and the investors are also growing in number. However, this thinking is WRONG.

The first part of the sentence talks about Liverpool from an economical point of view. Hence, we are only concerned with the population of investors here and not the general population.

Liverpool has slowly emerged from its post-industrial decline as a newly thriving city with a population of over five hundred thousand and more investors interested in large urban renewal projects than would have been thought possible twenty years ago.

The entire part in blue refers to investors only. It means that more than 500,000 investors emerged after the decline who were interested in various projects. The key here is to remember that since the stem talks about the economy of Liverpool, we have to think about the population as the population of investors only and not the general public.


I think C/D are totally out because of 'greater' usage.

In B- 'of more' is very very awkward. Try to remove the two parts joined by 'and' and analyze. they wont make sense.

Can anybody explain more about A..I know we have discussed here a lot..

Ruhi,
In your explanation,I beg to differ that blue is referring to investors.

Following is the blue section which you had pointed out to be referring to investors.
a population of over five hundred thousand more investors

green ---- refers to Liverpool's population implies Liverpool's economic significance by growing population.
blue ----- refers to investors (everything following this part refers investors).


What sentence is saying.....
-- Liverpool is growing with population over 500,000 AND
-- attracting more investors as compared to older times.

I could not understand A....but A can be reached by process of elimination.

B C D ---- can be eliminated because of incorrect usage of more and greater.

E - does not make sense because it does not comply with more....than.....

only choice that make sense is A.

Ruhi,
I agree with you if I read like you did it probably would make some sense. But, I still don't know what is wrong with the way I interpreted. Don't you think question is kind of ambiguous?. I wonder what concept the Author was trying to test here?. The thing that I am worried about is, if somebody twist this question in some other way, I would probably get it wrong again.

WEll, this question depends upon the way you READ and INTERPRET It. Im sure even Ill get it wrong if I get it in the test