"Reporting that one of their more crippling malfunctions has been the sudden and unexpected failure of the liquid helium cooling system" should modify engineering squad. So usage of their is wrong and only its can be used.
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OA is D.
It is the collider that has crippling malfunction issues not the squad

Past perfect tense: Something happened before something else in the past.
"had been" is correct as the failure existed before the team requested funding.
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Had been is correct because their is a reference to the past ....
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@ChrisLele
isnt more crippling mafunctions modifing Large hadron collider rather than engineering squad. Removing prounoun altogether lets see the sentence
i)Reporting that one of the Large Hadron Collider's more 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.


ii)Reporting that one of the engineering squad's more 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.

I think i) makes more sense

Hi All,

Reporting that one of their more crippling malfunctions has 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.



In order to ascertain the antecedent for “their”, it is imperative to understand the logical meaning of the sentence. The engineering squad supervising the Large Hadron Collider requested additional funding to develop better maintenance systems. Why did they make this request? They did so because they reported a crippling malfunction. What is this crippling malfunction? This crippling malfunction is the sudden and unexpected failure of the liquid helium cooling system. So what is malfunctioning? The liquid helium cooling system is malfunctioning.



Since “system” is in singular, plural “their” must be changed into singular “its” so that the pronoun can agree in number with its antecedent. Also, the squad “requested” additional funds. This means that this action of requesting took place in the past. This means that malfunction took place even before that. Hence use of present perfect tense “has been” is incorrect.

POE

Choice A: Incorrect for reasons mentioned above.

Choice B: their more crippling malfunctions has been the suddenly. Incorrect. This choice repeats all the errors of choice A. In addition, it uses adverb “suddenly” to refer to noun “failure”.

Choice C: its more crippling malfunctions is the sudden. Incorrect. Use of simple present tense “is” is not correct.

Choice D: its more crippling malfunctions had been the sudden. Correct. This choice corrects both the errors present in the original sentence.

Choice E: its more crippling malfunctions had been the suddenly. Incorrect. Use of adverb “suddenly” to refer to noun “failure” is incorrect.



1. Pronouns must agree in number with their noun antecedents.
2. Adverbs can only refer to verbs.
3. Use correct verb tense to convey the logical meaning of the sentence.

Hope this helps.

Thanks.
Shraddha
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How can the engineering squad has more crippling functions. It has to be the liquid helium cooling systems.

Reporting that one of their more crippling malfunctions has 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.

a) their more crippling malfunctions has been the sudden
b) their more crippling malfunctions has been the suddenly
c) its more crippling malfunctions is the sudden
d) its more crippling malfunctions had been the sudden
e) its more crippling malfunctions had been the suddenly

The meaning of the sentence is,

1. The engineering squad requested for money.
2. Some kinds of malfunctions were reported by the engineering squad.

Now, a easier split is sudden & suddenly(adverb). Sudden(adjective) has to be right because it is modifying failure, a noun. B, E are gone.

The second split is their & its.
I can't explain too well, but I think the antecedent should refer to the one closest or the one making the most sense.

Even if you still are confused about their & its split, there is had / has been split. 'Had been' conveys the meaning better because the system was malfunctioned at some point and the squad requested for money.

D wins.

Please correct me if wrong.
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Great detailed Explanation... Thanks Shraddha
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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. Don't begin either with a diagram of the sentence or with an explicit account of its meaning.

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.
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