Ryunosuke Akutagawa‘s knowledge of the literatures of Europe, China

Hi sayantanc2k

IMO, The only issue with D is meaning issue. "as much as" initiates an illogical comparison.
Anything else wrong with D?

BTW, got it correct - easy C.

Best
RZS

Other than illogical comparison, there is one more issue with using "as much as": "as much as" is used for some measurable quantity - hence "informed style as much as content" is incorrect.

The usage of "as" (as it informed..) is alright - here "as" is used in the sense "because".

Great explanation. I have a quick question about the Both..And Idiom. Shouldn't it be both his literary style and and his . Don't we need a pronoun right after and.

The construction is both his literary style and the content of his fiction. There is no need to put a possessive pronoun after the and because we are looking for two nouns. Whether a possessive pronoun precedes those nouns doesn't really matter.

By the way, there are two possessives after the and: the one formed by the usage of of and the his. So the content of his fiction is still very much talking about his (fiction's) content. If we put it that way, however, we will end up with a slightly awkward construction: both his literary style and his fiction's content.

But, I'm confused on my own explanation. Can you remove my confusion expert?
The confusion is in the following question, which is discussed in Official Guide of GMAC, edition 2016, SC# 49.

Outlining his strategy for nursing the troubled conglomerate back to health, the chief executive's plans were announced on Wednesday for cutting the company's huge debt by selling nearly $12 billion in assets over the next 18 months.
(A) executive's plans were announced on Wednesday for cutting the company's huge debt by selling nearly $12 billion in assets over the next 18 months
(B) executive's plans, which are to cut the company's huge debt by selling nearly $12 billion in assets over the next 18 months, were announced on Wednesday
(C) executive's plans for cutting the company's huge debt by selling nearly $12 billion in assets over the next 18 months were announced on Wednesday
(D) executive announced plans Wednesday to cut the company's huge debt by selling nearly $12 billion in assets over the next 18 months
(E) executive announced plans Wednesday that are to cut the company's huge debt by selling nearly $12 billion in assets over the next 18 months

In this question the correct choice is D. We can easily eliminate choice A, B, and C for the wrong use of antecedent for pronoun 'his'. Here, 'executive's plans' and 'his' can't be the same thing-''executive's plans'' indicates the person's 'plan' and 'his' indicates the 'person himself'.

You might be confusing the possessive case with the objective case. His is the possessive form of he. Here we are talking about his strategy.

He: subject
Him: object
His: possessive

Even if we don't put anything after his we're still looking at a possessive (that book is his).

The first three options are incorrect because the outlining... clause needs executive, not executive's plans.

The name (Ryunosuke Akutagawa) is a noun. Ryunosuke Akutagawa's, however, is a possessive noun. The word his is also a possessive, and it is possible for a possessive (pronoun) to refer to a possessive (noun). Some terrible English "rules" say that he and him can refer only to Ryunosuke Akutagawa and not Ryunosuke Akutagawa's.

If you see Ryunosuke Akutagawa used: he, him, and his are all fine.
If you see Ryunosuke Akutagawa's used: he and him are not fine, but his is fine.

This sentence uses Ryunosuke Akutagawa's and his. His is okay with a possessive noun.

First Glance

The underline is long, so there's a good chance that the question will test Modifier, Parallelism, or Meaning issues.

Issues

(1) Parallelism: X, Y, and Z

There appears to be an X, Y, and Z list overlapping the underline: The literatures of X (Europe), Y (china) and Z (_____). Bingo─Parallelism! X and Y are already parallel. Is Z?

The first two items in the list are geographic locations (Europe and China). The third item should also be a location. That of refers to the word literatures, but the list Europe, China, and the literature of Japan is not parallel. Eliminate answers (A) and (B).

(2) Subject─Verb: were

The main subject of the original sentence is the word knowledge, which is singular. The main verb is were, which is plural.

The subject, knowledge, is not underlined, so the correct answer must contain a singular verb. Scan the answers; answers (A) and (E) both use the plural verb were. Eliminate answers (A) and (E).

Note: Why isn't the subject literatures? That's the trap! The word literatures is part of a prepositional phrase─of the literatures─and a noun within a prepositional phrase can't be the subject of the sentence.

(3) Idiom: both X as well as Y; both X in addition to Y

A vertical comparison of the answers reveals an idiom that's changing from answer to answer:

(A) informing his literary style as much as the content
(B) informing both his literary style as well as the content
(C) informing both his literary style and the content
(D) informed his literary style as much as the content
(E) informing both his literary style in additional to the content

Notice that the X (his literary) and Y (the content) don't change, but the construction of the idiom itself does.

Answer (B) uses the structure both X as well as Y; answer (E) uses both X in additional to Y. When beginning with the word both, the correct idiomatic structure is both X and Y, as in answer (C). Eliminate answers (B) and (E).

(4) Meaning

Answer (D) tosses in a lot of instances of the word as: as a writer, as it informed his literary style as much as the content of his fiction. Some might think that this sounds wordy or awkward. Why?

The sentence is attempting to say that Akutagawa's knowledge informed two things: (1) his style and (2) the content of his work. The structure of answer (D) creates an ambiguous meaning. It might mean that his knowledge informed his style and that his knowledge also informed his content, both to the same extent or level. Alternately, it might mean that his knowledge informed his style and that his content also informed his style.

Consider this shorter example: The barking dog scared the mouse as much as the cat.

Did the barking dog equally scare both the cat and the mouse? Or did both the barking dog and the cat equally scare the mouse? it's not clear. Eliminate answer (D).

The Correct Answer

Answer (C) corrects the original parallelism error by dropping the that of, resulting in a correctly constructed X, Y, and Z list. In addition, this answer corrects the subject─verb error, changing the plural verb were to the singular verb was to match the singular subject knowledge.

Hello,

I have a question here. If we find a list of items, we separate them with a comma(ex: apple, mango, and orange). I don't find a comma before 'and' in the sentence above. Would you please help me out what does a list without a comma before 'and' signify?

Thanks,
Uma

Uma wrote


If you are referring to the comma between style/and, please go through this definition of the serial comma.



If there are two items in a list, the comma may be dropped.

Ryunosuke Akutagawa‘s knowledge of the literatures of Europe, China, and that of Japan were instrumental in his development as a writer, informing his literary style as much as the content of his fiction.

(A) that of Japan were instrumental in his development as a writer, informing his literary style as much as

(B) that of Japan was instrumental in his development as a writer, and it informed his literary style as well as

(C) Japan was instrumental in his development as a writer, informing both his literary style and

(D) Japan was instrumental in his development as a writer, as it informed his literary style as much as

(E) Japan were instrumental in his development as a writer, informing both his literary style in addition to


my doubt is very small.
my POE
1. the usage is X,Y and Z and not X,Y and that of Z (wrong) -- rejected A and B

2. Knowledge is Singular and use of "were" is wrong -- rejected E

3. Between C and D -- D is rejected because of unknown reference of "it".

my question is that in C -- both X and Y should be parallel so
a. is X and Y a noun phrase
b. moreover, shouldnt they start from the same word (eg. both his ..... and his .....

daagh GMATNinja mikemcgarry

1. You're right. In both his literary style and the content of his fiction, we are indeed looking at noun phrases.

Ignore the his literary and the of his fiction:
both his literary style and the content of his fiction

We are left with style and content.

Although style can also be a verb (in which case the meaning is usually "to design something in a particular way"), in this case it is a noun (meaning "a particular way of writing"). This content can only be a noun. There is another content (with a different pronunciation, usually used to mean "satisfied") that can be either an adjective or a verb.

2. Not necessarily. The "main word" is much more important than anything else you might see.

The council approved both your plans and our recommendations.
The council approved both your plans and the recommendations made by the consultants.

GMATNinja

Can you explain why D is wrong?

Sure! (D) is wrong because the meaning is ambiguous. Take another look:


There are two ways to interpret this sentence:

1) Akutagawa's knowledge of various literatures informed his literary style as much as this knowledge informed the content of his fiction.
2) Akutagawa's knowledge of various literatures informed his literary style as much as the content of his fiction informed his literary style.

Compare this option with (C), in which it's crystal-clear that Akutagawa's knowledge informed both his style and his content. On the GMAT, clarity will trump ambiguity every time, so (C) is our answer.

I hope that helps!

GMATNinja : Have a query regarding the phrase "informing..."

Here, it's modifying the subject of the main clause. Usually, modifiers modify the word immediately preceding the comma, or the entire noun phrase preceding the comma. How is this correct that it's modifying the subject of the main sentence?

Darshak

Structurally, D is not a run -on. This thread is abounding in the word 'as'. The first 'as' is a preposition and the second 'as' is a subordinate conjunction turning the whole sentence into a complex sentence. In a complex sentence, if the subordinate appears in the later part is always joined/ separated by a comma and not with a semi-colon. Per se, after punctuating with a semi colon, the second part will continue to be a DC and will be grammatically wrong.
Please see whether there are any other valid reasons in the choice, if you want to reject it.

The phrase "informing..." actually modifies the entire preceding clause.

"Akutagawa‘s knowledge was instrumental, informing both X and Y." The first part of the sentence tells that the knowledge WAS instrumental. The modifier beginning with "informing" tells us more about how, exactly, "Akutagawa's knowledge was instrumental." So the modifier describes the entire clause, and not just the subject.

I hope that helps a bit!