Sold over the counter at the turn of the century, the

In D : "they were selling them...." here "they" wrongly refers to the government which is incorrect.

E for me.

IMO E.

One thing to note - the first part of the sentence is in passive voice but the second part is in active voice. I have not seen such sentence contruction in OG. Though this construction is grammatically correct, I believe GMAT prefers sentences in active voice.

Where is this question from ?

i think it should be E ,the source is princeton

Agree it should be E... what is OA

How option d is wrong and option e right? The pronoun 'they' in (d) refers to government while 'they' in option (e) refers to cocaine.
Since we know that in this type of question, we need to change the phrase to clause so as to have its own subject, and the subject in the dependent clause should point out to the subject of the independent clause.And the subject of the independent clause is 'the government'.

Please help me out with the correct approach to eliminate the options here.

Reread the the question and notice how the government prohibit"s". This makes using they to replace government wrong.

IMO

A,B and C incorrect modifier
D pronoun error : they were selling them
So E is correct

Can you please explain me in terms of clauses... this could clear my doubt further on clauses


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Doesn't "Although they were sold over the counter at the turn of the century" modify "the government" in option E? Experts please help. Thanks!

That's something that we have to be careful about when we don't have a subject in the dependent clause after the although (the subject is not explicitly included).

Although sold..., the government... ← This is incorrect, as it implies that the government is sold.

When we do include a subject, then the earlier advice doesn't apply.

Although it was not the most important thing in his life, the test taker nevertheless studied hard for the GMAT. ← This one is fine. The it refers to the GMAT.

If we use a pronoun that makes sense with the subject of the independent clause then we have a major problem.

Although they are not very accurate, applicants nevertheless must take standardized tests. ← We would really not want to mark this option, as it seems to be telling us that test takers are not very accurate. That's not the intended meaning.

In option E, we know the government is singular (prohibits), so the they at the beginning of the sentence is not a major problem.

I think in addition to what Ajitesh mentioned, you can also consider the following:

- Present Participle (+ing) when used as a modifier modifies the subject.
- Past Participle (in this case, sold) when used as a modifier modifies the object.

In the sentence above, in the independent clause, we can clearly see that the government is f(subject) and cocaine is f(object). Therefore, it unambiguously modifies cocaine and not government.

Can't vouch for the universality of the rule but I think this holds. Hope this helps.

a,b and c refer to goverment
option d - they is ambigous
Hence option E. They can only refer to derivatives no other referent for they

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They were sold refers to cocaine
So E is correct

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