The appearance of a contagious disease usually occasioned a concerted

Split 1: which vs an effort

the "which" in the underlined part modifies garbage which surely doesn't make sense when you look at the rest of it. Garbage cannot give rise to sanitary reform. It is the effort at removing garbage that gave rise to sanitary reforms. Therefore, A, B and C are out.

Between D and E, the parallel construction in D is broken. An effort which X (gave) and which Y (ranged) is the correct parallel construction and E maintains that.

Although the antecedent of which is garbage , but that part is a modifier to the effort . So shouldn't which relate to the effort?

In this case, the phrase after effort is a prepositional phrase which modifies effort. However, the which after the prepositional phrase would usually modify the prepositional phrase until and unless you can prove that the prepositional phrase could not have been written otherwise.

This is a tricky subject and I remember asking daagh as to what are the exception to the rule of "which modifying the closest noun entity".

I think in this case had the prepositional phrase somehow been within commas as a non-essential modifier modifying "effort", you could have gone ahead with the usage of "which" as is given in first three choices.

Ravi

The first thing to note here is that ‘to clean streets and remove garbage’ is not a critical mission modifier. ‘To’ is an infinitive and therefore ‘to clean and remove ‘are an infinitive phrase. The tricky issue is that that a relative pronoun, might jump over a prepositional phrase but not an infinitive. In addition, the effort could very well be either to clean or to do any such equivalent thing such as to fumigate, etc. Hence, ‘which’ may not structurally jump over the infinitive to refer to ‘the effort’.
Generally, a relative pronoun may not refer to a distant noun if it has to cross over a verb.

During a long flight, some birds may not stop for a breather, which may either feed or breed.
Here the true reference of ‘which’ is the birds but it cannot refer to them because of the intruding verb ‘may not stop’.
Mostly there should be a reason for not considering the noun in front. For example, the relative pronoun ’who’ may not refer to nonhuman beings and ‘which’ may not refer to humans. We might flout the touch rule in such cases. Or there may be gender differences, personage difference, or often SV number agreements issues between the referent and the pronoun.
The final word is that one should use one’s critical reasoning in such issues
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Can someone please explain what's wrong in (D)

Hey Can you please explain why parallel construction in (D) is broken. It seems to take which common.
which (X and Y) --> which [...bla bla bla..] gave [...bla bla bla..] and ranged [...bla bla bla..]

egmat
request a detailed analysis of the question

Between D and E, the parallel construction in D is broken. An effort which X (gave) and which Y (ranged) is the correct parallel construction and E maintains that.[/quote]

Hey Can you please explain why parallel construction in (D) is broken. It seems to take which common.
which (X and Y) --> which [...bla bla bla..] gave [...bla bla bla..] and ranged [...bla bla bla..][/quote]

GMATNinja daagh generis ,
can you please help with this query, even i have the same doubt.

Hey Can you please explain why parallel construction in (D) is broken. It seems to take which common.
which (X and Y) --> which [...bla bla bla..] gave [...bla bla bla..] and ranged [...bla bla bla..][/quote]

GMATNinja daagh generis ,
can you please help with this query, even i have the same doubt.[/quote]

I also selected D

The appearance of a contagious disease usually occasioned a concerted effort to clean streets and remove garbage, which by the early 19th century gave rise to sanitary reform to prevent infectious disease ranging from cleaning streets and removing garbage, to ensuring clean water supplies and effectively removed sewage.


A. which by the early 19th century gave rise to sanitary reform to prevent infectious disease ranging from cleaning streets and removing garbage, to ensuring clean water supplies and effectively removed sewage

B. which by the early 19th century gave rise to sanitary reform to prevent infectious disease, ranging from cleaning streets and removing garbage, to ensuring clean water supplies and effectively removing sewage

C. which by the early 19th century gave rise to sanitary reform to prevent infectious disease ranging from cleaning streets and removing garbage, to ensuring clean water supplies and effectively removes sewage

D. An effort which by the early 19th century gave rise to sanitary reform to prevent infectious disease and ranged from cleaning streets and removing garbage, to ensuring clean water supplies and effective sewage removal

E. An effort which by the early 19th century gave rise to sanitary reform to prevent infectious disease and which ranged from cleaning streets and removing garbage, to ensuring clean water supplies and effective sewage removal

IMO, one may well argue that the relative pronoun ‘which’ could very well be elided in the second place, thus making it parallel with the first part and as good as choice E.
So, let us now see deeper.
(Edited version) D. An effort which by the early 19th century gave rise to sanitary reform to prevent infectious disease and (which) ranged from cleaning streets and removing garbage, to ensuring clean water supplies and effective sewage removal

1. The first ‘which’ refers to the effort.
2. What does the second ‘which’ refer to? Does it refer to the same subject ‘an effort’ or to the nearest noun’ sanitary reform? ’ You know a relative pronoun has its own limitations of antecedence. You can now see the dichotomy of the same relative pronoun referring to two different entities in the same clause.
3. The first part of the appositive modifier is a noun phrase while the part after the conjunction ’and’ is a predicate. This is not structurally parallel.

But the sore point with both E and D is that the relative pronoun ‘which’ is not preceded by a comma, which is a grave error in GMAT I suppose.
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egmat could you please explain the difference between options D & E

I am no expert, but I will try to explain my understanding. Pl let me know whether this works for you.

Assuming that you were able to eliminate A,B, and C, let's dissect D and E with original sentence.

D. The appearance of a contagious disease
usually occasioned a concerted effort to clean streets and remove garbage
an effort which by the early 19th century gave rise to sanitary reform to prevent infectious disease
and ranged from cleaning streets and removing garbage, to ensuring clean water supplies and effective sewage removal
The reason D is wrong is that D could mean wrong parallelism. i.e, the appearance of a contagious disease usually occasioned [..] and ranged from [...]. It could mean that the appearance of a diseased ranged from X to Y. But actually, it is the effort that ranged from X to Y. X and Y refer to another parallel list. (cleaning streets bla bla bla).
You could assume ranged is parallel to gave. In that case the meaning is clear. But the sentence can be read in two different ways. We will look at E now.

E. an effort
which by the early 19th century gave rise to sanitary reform to prevent infectious disease
and which ranged from cleaning streets and removing garbage, to ensuring clean water supplies and effective sewage removal.
Now the parallelism is clear. We are looking at a noun modifier. This modifier refers to the concerted effort.
Now the sentence reads, an effort which gave X and which ranged from Y to Z.

E clears ambiguity that D has. So, E is the answer choice.

IMO in option D, "gave" is parallel to "ranged". This would indicate that the ranging also happened by the early 19th century but the action/ its effects did not continue later. So, this seems to be a meaning issue.
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