abhinavkant3 wrote:
goalsnr wrote:
According to some economists, Japan is in danger of plunging into a depression that, with double-digit unemployment, could severely strain a society that regards lifetime employment as a virtual right of citizenship.
(A) that, with double-digit unemployment, could severely strain
(B) that, because of double-digit unemployment, could be a severe strain for
(C) with double-digit unemployment, and it could severely strain
(D) with double-digit unemployment and could be a severe strain
(E) with double-digit unemployment and could severely strain
Why C is wrong?
According to some economists, Japan is in danger of plunging into a depression
with double-digit unemployment, and it could severely strain a society that regards lifetime employment as a virtual right of citizenship.
Two independent clause and be joined with 'AND' (FANBOYS).
Japan is in danger of plunging into a depression with double-digit unemployment.
AND
it(unemployment) could severely strain a society that regards lifetime employment as a virtual right of citizenship.
GMATNinja(C) might not have a glaring concrete error, but it does have a couple of problematic elements.
First, the use of "and" to connect two independent clauses is certainly grammatical, but it's not quite logical. Boiled way down, here's what (C) looks like:
Quote:
Japan is in danger of plunging into a depression...and it could severely strain a society.
Typically, when we have a pronoun, such as "it," as the subject of a clause, the referent will be the subject of the previous clause.
Here, because "Japan" is the subject of the first clause, it kind of sounds as though it's Japan that's straining its own society! If you reread, you can probably figure out that the author means that the "depression" is straining the society, but the initial confusion certainly isn't ideal.
Also, using two independent clauses makes it seem as though the ideas in those clauses aren't logically connected. There's the fact that Japan is experiencing a depression. And then there's the unrelated fact that a depression is straining the society.
This isn't WRONG, necessarily, but it seems far more logical to show that the ideas are connected by using the second part of the sentence to modify the first, describing what
kind of depression Japan is dealing with, namely one "
that could strain society." This is the construction we have in (A).
Combine the above issues with the problematic usage of "with," as we describe in
this post, and you've got enough reasons to prefer (A) over (C), even if there's no definitive grammatical error in (C).
I hope that helps!