Reporting that one of their more crippling malfunctions has been the

The splits are easy and clear to lead us unto the right answer swiftly. However, the meaning in this passage is somewhat important in the context of its current priority and there is sly pitfall built in it. What does really the pronoun their or its stand for? It cannot be the maintenance systems because; the maintenance systems are not reported to be defunct. So, their is out.

The passage makes it very clear that the cooling system is totally malfunctioning because it has completely stopped. So the more crippling malfunction is the stoppage rather than the cooling system. It also makes sense to think that the supervision squad cannot be referred here since it cannot have such crippling problems.
This leads us to derive that the collider has several problems and among them, the failure of the cooling system is one of the more crippling ones. So logically and reasonably its should refer to the collider rather than any other, be it the singular system or the squad or the plural maintenance systems
Meaning is a tricky pitch; it can skid people easily

Of course meaning is important for SC, never more than in the last couple of years, but let the question and its answers tell you where to spend your time and energy. Understand the sentence, but don't begin either with a diagram of the sentence or with an explicit paraphrase.

Here, start with the split between its and their. I take the antecedent to be the Large Hadron Collider, which is singular. Even the best version of this sentence will turn out to be very awkward, and I can certainly see a structural case that the antecedent is the engineering squad, though exactly what that would mean I can't imagine. And it doesn't matter. Three of the alleged antecedents--the...squad, the...system, and the...Collider--are singular. Eliminate A and B.

(If you're really concerned that perhaps the antecedent is the very last word in the sentence, systems, then you had better take the time and trouble to think explicitly about meaning. Does it make sense to say that the squad requested funding for better systems because those better systems had a certain crippling malfunction? No.)

You could next go to the split between has been and is, or the split between sudden and suddenly. I'll start with sudden/suddenly. Since the word modifies the noun failure, we need to use the adjective sudden, rather than the adverb suddenly. Eliminate E.

That leaves the verb tense issue. When given a split among verb tenses, choose the tense that makes the order of events clear. The past perfect had been makes clear that the malfunction was a failure before the squad requested funding, that it, malfunctions had been is an earlier past event, while the squad requested is a later past event. Choose D.

As promised, even the best sentence turned out to be pretty awkward.

OK, I want to clear up a couple of misconceptions in some otherwise excellent answers. These are not important to the present question, but the authors of these misconceptions gave such good analyses that I want to offer a couple of friendly amendments.

First, Shraddha, of the wonderful visual organizers, the sentence does not say that the system is malfunctioning, it says that the (sudden and unexpected) failure of the system has been one (of the more crippling) malfunction. This might seem to be logic-chopping, but it's not. I gather that you suppose that the pronoun its[i]/their[/i] will refer to the subject of its clause, so you need to be precise about grammar, not just meaning. Further, there is no reason to suppose in this case that the pronoun refers to the subject of its clause.

Second, ChrisLele, I wonder whether it's strictly true that "When we have a participle phrase (as we do here, beginning with 'reporting...'), the its/their must refer to the noun that comes immediately after the comma." That is a good style guideline, but by no means does it render all English sentences correctly. Consider the sentence, "Overcome by its charming GUI, Ralph decided to purchase the Mac rather than a less expensive PC." Clearly its refers to the Mac. Might the rule you cite work for the GMAT? That's largely an empirical question, and once I haven't investigated. It doesn't work for the sentence we're all concerned about in this thread, though I gather that this is not an actual GMAT SC.

Your next claim, ChrisLele, is not quite right even for the GMAT. You write, "In this case, the participle phrase is modifying the noun 'the engineering squad', which is singular." In fact, if a sentence begins with a participial phrase followed by a comma, the participial phrase does not modify the noun that follows. It usually modifies the entire subsequent clause by attributing action to the subject of that clause, the very noun following the comma. If we're trying to decide whether a participial is well-placed, this distinction between noun modifier and adverbial modifier is unimportant: the modifier has to touch the noun it modifies or the noun to which it attributes action. If we're concerned about meaning, though, there may be a real difference between using a participial phrase to modify a noun and using a participial phrase to modify a clause. Consider these two sentences:

(1) The man standing behind Alex played bass for Big Star.
(2) Standing behind Alex, the man played bass for Big Star.

In (1), the participial phrase standing behind Alex modifies the man. The man is standing behind Alex as the sentence is uttered. In (2), the participial phrase standing behind Alex modifies the entire clause, and tells us how the man played bass for Big Star.

(edited to answer smartyman 's question)

smartyman asks a very interesting question: Does the use of the past participle had been mean that it was no longer a problem by the time the funding was requested? No. The past participle can be used EITHER for an earlier past action/event that is complete before the later past action/event OR for an earlier past action/event that is still ongoing (or whose effects are still ongoing) at the time of the later past action/event.

Juan had suffered migraines for years before he asked his doctor about them, suggests that Juan still suffered migraines when he asked his doctor. You could also use a funny construction, had been+continuous verb, to communicate the same idea, Juan had been sufering migraines for years before he asked his doctor about them. I find the latter sentence awkward, and it really doesn't work with the continuous verb being. The problem had been being...? That's awful.

I am confused as had been means the problem is no longer present, so why request for funding? Please help to explain. Thanks.

smartyman asks a very interesting question: Does the use of the past participle had been mean that it was no longer a problem by the time the funding was requested? No. The past participle can be used EITHER for an earlier past action/event that is complete before the later past action/event OR for an earlier past action/event that is still ongoing (or whose effects are still ongoing) at the time of the later past action/event.

Juan had suffered migraines for years before he asked his doctor about them, suggests that Juan still suffered migraines when he asked his doctor. You could also use a funny construction, had been+continuous verb, to communicate the same idea, Juan had been suffering migraines for years before he asked his doctor about them. I find the latter sentence awkward, and it really doesn't work with the continuous verb being. The problem had been being...? That's awful.

(I'm going to add this to the end of my answer above, since that answer is further up and more visible. Sorry for the repeat. I'll remove this quick reply later, but I want smartyman to see that there's been a reply.)

unfortunately you are asking a wrong question . the initial modifier in this sentence has to refer to the subject of the main clause .so "their" by default must refer to "the engineering squad" ,which is wrong because "their" cannot refer to "the engineering squad" .you need "its" .

i picked up D . best out of worst but i am still wary about this question.

the best answer would have been: Reporting that one of its most crippling malfunctions had been the sudden and unexpected failure of the liquid helium cooling system, the engineering squad supervising the Large Hadron Collider requested additional funding to develop better maintenance systems.

"more" here gives a wrong intended meaning ,after all a question arises "more" than what? ---->not a good question,presuming that you have copied the question correctly !!

I can see why "most" would seem to make more sense here, but this use of "more" is actually quite common (and correct). Think of it as an idiom. If I were going to rewrite this sentence without regard to the answer choices, what I'd ditch would be the pronoun. It's just there to test us, but it is awkward and confusing in all 5 versions.

Anyway, D is definitely the answer here. "Its" refers to the Large Hadron Collider. It can't be the squad, because we don't use the word "malfunction" to talk about people, especially when the malfunction clearly occurred in a machine. "Its" can't refer to "cooling system," because the sentence tells us that the cooling system malfunction was one of several things that occurred in a larger object/system (the collider). We can't use "their" to connect to "systems" at the end, either. I suppose the easiest explanation is just that there is too much material between pronoun and antecedent, but there's also some additional confusion because in real life we might use the word "their" to refer to the people on the squad. That won't fly on the GMAT, but it adds confusion to an already confused sentence.

Once we settle on "its" to stand in for the collider, we can get to D. The malfunction isn't happening now, so C is out, and "suddenly" is an adverb, and therefore not parallel with "unexpected," so E is out.

Good day Dmitry
regarding this "more", i get a feeling, while reading, that the sentence might be talking of some comparison but then as i proceed further i find none . do u really feel that gmac will leave this "more" without "than"? in fact in one of the post of RON, i read that he eliminated one answer choice on this basis. please tell me if this were GMAC question and there was a split between "more" and "most" then which one would have been better?

thanks

A real GMAT problem wouldn't split between more & most here, because neither would be definitively correct. Again, this is an expression, and I can't say for sure that it would appear on an actual GMAT question (they might not choose to test this), but it is certainly correct usage.

Below are a few collected uses of this from various sources. Note that in all of them, the "than" is implied--whatever we're talking about is "more" of something than others in the same group.

"One of her more unusual roles was as Kaa the python in a 1994 BBC Radio adaptation of The Jungle Book."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eartha_Kitt

It was one of my more brilliant ideas, and between you and me, that's saying something."
--Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

"He replied by asking me a question instead, one of his more annoying habits."
--from Mortal Arts by Anna Lee Huber

Now if you can understand this next sentence, you don't need any more help from me!

“I should like to suggest that this convention-dependence is precisely what gives the ‘coordination’ of syntax with semiotic-semantics in computers one of its more useful features, and that we should not expect syntax—or, more exactly, functional role and syntactic interpretability-in-principle—to be ‘coordinated’ with non-semiotic-semantic properties in the same sort of way.”
--from Symbols, Computation, and Intentionality by Steven Horst

KNEWTON OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

The antecedent for the plural pronoun their is the singular the engineering squad, so this sentence displays a pronoun-antecedent agreement error. A pronoun can come before its antecedent if the pronoun is inside of a describing phrase set off by a comma at the beginning of the sentence; the noun described by the phrase and the antecedent for the pronoun must be the first noun after the comma. Collective nouns, like squad, which refer to a group that acts as a unit, are singular. The pronoun their is incorrect here.

Additionally, the verb tenses used in the sentence as it is written create an illogical sequence of events; in the past, the squad requested additional funding, so what prompted this request must have been an event that took place before before the request was made. However, a malfunction that has been the failure... uses the present perfect (has + participle), which describes an event that began in the past and may continue. An event that may continue does not describe something that came before another event that began and ended in the past.

Choice D changes their to its and has been to had been, fixing both errors. The singular it correctly refers to the singular collective noun engineering squad. The past perfect (had + participle) is always used to describe an event in the far past that came before an event that took place before another event in the more recent past. Before the team requested additional funding..., a crippling malfunction had been the failure.

Choice B retains the plural their and the incorrect has been..., failing to fix either error.

Choice C changes their to its but retains a verb tense error. The present is does not describe an action that took place before the request was made.

Choice E fixes both original errors but changes the adjective sudden to the incorrectly used adverb, suddenly. Adverbs cannot modify nouns; the failure, a noun, must be described as sudden and unexpected.

The correct answer is D.

Older post but I had a question regarding answer C. I slightly overthought this problem but if the issue is ongoing wouldn't a present tense verb be acceptable? In my mind, if the issue continues to happen "had been" doesn't capture that the issue might still be occurring. I guess this is totally predicated on an assumption but I see the answer as an unclear divide between C and D. I'd appreciate an explanation of where I am going wrong.

Thanks for the help!

Hi Alextus93,

You may want to try the official question that this question is based on.

Reporting happened in the past; sudden and unexpected failure of the liquid helium cooling system obviously happened before the reporting. Hence, this earlier event (sudden and unexpected failure of the liquid helium cooling system) needs to be expressed in past perfect.

This is in fact, the most classical usage of past perfect: when two events (reporting and failure in this case) happened in the past, the earlier of the two events (failure in this case) is expressed as past perfect.

A similar but perhaps easier to understand sentence:

Reporting that many people had defied lock-down orders, the Prime Minister expressed disappointment at such incidents.

You can watch our video on Past Perfect.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses Past perfect tense, its application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.

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