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605-655 Level|   Meaning/Logical Predication|   Verb Tense/Form|                  
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GMATNinja
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A 1972 agreement between Canada and the United States reduced 18 Jun 2022, 10:01
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hadimadi
GMATNinja,

Hello Sir,

what if we said:

Until today, a 1972 agreement reduces (reduced? has been reducing?) the amount of phosphates municipalities are allowed to dump.

If I take the great example you gave with the war, I would go with ends:

Until today, the treaty ends (ended and has been ending sound strange here) the war.

So would it be better to use reduces in my example because we focus on the effect more now than in the original question?

Thanks
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Nah. The phrase "until today" implies that some action began in the past, but stopped today. If the action is no longer occurring, we don't want the present tense. Maybe you could write, "The 1972 treaty that put an end to hostilities allows children to meander the streets today without fear." In this case, the old treaty is still allowing kids to wander without fear, so the present tense makes sense.

But there's no end to the number of hypotheticals we could come up with, some calling for one tense, some calling for another. The goal is to learn to use context clues to think through the logic of what you're given, not to anticipate every scenario you might see.

I hope that clears things up!
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A 1972 agreement between Canada and the United States reduced 04 Jul 2022, 13:12
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I have a question on a slightly different topic. If we look at this question here

As per the solution to the above question,

'phosphate amount that' - here "that" modifies the amount (correct!)

But,
'amount of phosphates that' - here "that" modifies phosphates. (wrong)

Hence I crossed out A,D,E, and chose B. Please can someone throw some light on this?

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A 1972 agreement between Canada and the United States reduced 04 Jul 2022, 14:54
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Navaneethcs
I have a question on a slightly different topic. If we look at this question here

As per the solution to the above question,

'phosphate amount that' - here "that" modifies the amount (correct!)

But,
'amount of phosphates that' - here "that" modifies phosphates. (wrong)

Hence I crossed out A,D,E, and chose B. Please can someone throw some light on this?

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Don't bother about the "the reduction..." question. "That" has very versatile usage and can modify preceding noun / noun phrase or even faraway noun. Almost all question on GMAT will follow this rule.


If you really wanna split hair on this one, then here you go.

Think of these sentences:

ST1: The fourth car from left that is red in color is mine.

Vs.

ST2: The fourth car that is red in color from left is mine.

Here there's a subtle difference but a big meaning ambiguity.

In st1: there could be 10 cars of different color, each positioned from 1-10. Now let's say red cars occupy even position viz 2 4 6 8 10. As per st1, the red color would be the car standing at position 8. Think about it and you will get the real essence about restrictive nature of that

In St2: as per this sentence, the car positioned at no. 4 will be the one. Apart from positioning difference, this car will be painted in red from left and could be yellow, black, limegreen , etc from right side."That" becomes much more restrictive for positioning In St2 compared with St1.

Try to see the tagged question from this angle.Option B has no grammatical mistake, it's as same as option E, except the punch / thrust of restrictiveness by the placement of that makes it a better choice. This question could be an example of rhetorical questions that come in GMAT.

Again I am not sure GMAT will ever ask ask to spot such nuances. Doesn't seem to be an offical question ?

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A 1972 agreement between Canada and the United States reduced 16 Jun 2023, 07:15
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I was stuck between options A & D, but eventually chose A because the "are" in option D made it a bit wierd for me. Instead of "are", I expected "were".
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A 1972 agreement between Canada and the United States reduced 10 Jul 2023, 13:06
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This is a sentence in manhattan prep verbal correction:
By 1945, the United States had been at war for several years.
This is very similar to A 1972 agreement between Canada and the United States reduced the amount of phosphates that municipalities had been allowed to dump into the Great Lakes.
Both have a time marker and both describe events that had been going on until the time marker.
Can someone explain and if the first sentence is correct, why not the second?
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A 1972 agreement between Canada and the United States reduced 11 May 2025, 17:48
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In this problem would the present perfect has reduced be most appropriate. The agreement and the reduction started in the past and continues to the present?
I know "has reduced" is not an option, but that is what I thought.
GMATNinja
This one is a cruel classic that forces you to think really, really carefully about the connection between verb tenses and the intended meaning of the sentence. We covered this one at the end of our webinar on GMAT verb tenses, so head over there if you prefer your explanations in video form.

Quote:
(A) reduced the amount of phosphates that municipalities had been allowed to dump
(A) is awfully tempting. The agreement happened in the past (1972), so it’s reasonable enough to use “reduced” here.

But what about the use of past perfect tense (“had been allowed to dump”)? Whenever you see the past perfect tense, it has to describe an action that is completed in the past, but BEFORE some other “time marker” in the past – usually another action in simple past tense. And we do have another action in simple past here: “reduced the amount of phosphates.” Superficially, this looks good.

But those verb tenses don’t actually make sense! Literally, (A) is saying that the 1972 agreement “reduced the amount of phosphates that municipalities had been allowed to dump” – meaning that the 1972 agreement changed the amount that municipalities had been allowed to dump BEFORE the agreement went into place. And that makes no sense: how could a 1972 agreement reach even further into the past to change municipalities' behavior?

It’s subtle. And cruel and difficult. And if you wanted to be conservative on your first pass through the answer choices, you certainly could hang onto (A). But as you’ll see in a moment, we definitely have a better option.

Quote:
(B) reduced the phosphate amount that municipalities had been dumping
(B) is an even worse version of (A). How can the 1972 agreement reach back into the even-more-distant past to change the amount that “municipalities had been dumping”? Plus, there’s no good reason to use the progressive tense here, and the phrase “phosphate amount” strikes me as being awfully weird.

But the logic of the sequence of actions is the real problem, just as it is in (A). So (B) is out, too.

Quote:
(C) reduces the phosphate amount municipalities have been allowed to dump
There are all sorts of little problems with this one. First, I don’t think it’s ideal to say that the 1972 agreement “reduces” the phosphate amount. The agreement reduced that amount when it took effect in the past – so it’s hard to argue that the present tense would work here.

Second, the phrase “phosphate amount” still strikes me as weird. I’m not certain that it’s 100% wrong, and I wouldn’t eliminate (C) solely because of it. But “the amount of phosphates” is clearly better.

Finally, I don’t understand why we would use the present perfect “have been allowed to dump” in this sentence, particularly since it’s accompanied by the present tense “reduces.” “Have been allowed” suggests that the action started in the past and continues in the present. So the sentence is literally saying that municipalities “have been allowed” to dump a certain amount beginning in the past, but only because of a 1972 agreement... which “reduces” that amount only in the present? That doesn’t make sense.

So (C) is out.

Quote:
(D) reduced the amount of phosphates that municipalities are allowed to dump
I know: this one doesn’t sound great. Why are we mixing the past tense with the present tense in this particular case? Superficially, it just doesn’t seem right.

But keep in mind that the simple present tense in English just describes a general characteristic. If we say “Mike surfs like a champion”, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Mike is surfing right now; it just means that he has the general characteristic of surfing like a champion.

So in this case, “the amount of phosphates that municipalities are allowed to dump” is completely fine: it’s a general statement of how much the municipalities can dump. And back in the past – specifically in 1972 – the agreement reduced that amount to its current levels. So the past tense “reduced” makes sense, and so does the present tense “are allowed.”

It might make us squirm a bit, but we have no reason to eliminate (D).

Quote:
(E) reduces the amount of phosphates allowed for dumping by municipalities
Again, “reduces” doesn’t make a lot of sense here, for the same reasons as we mentioned in answer choice (C). Plus, what the heck is going on with the phrase “allowed for dumping by municipalities”? This is a weird passive construction, and it’s far less clear than “municipalities are allowed to dump.”

So (E) is out, and (D) is the best we can do.
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