A proposal has been made to trim the horns from rhinoceroses to discou

(A) has a couple of subtle little problems. For starters, I don’t think the phrase “…will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses…” is quite right in this case. Grammatically, it’s fine: “visit” and “see” are parallel verbs. Trouble is, that suggests that the two actions are somehow equally weighted, and not necessarily related: tourists visit game parks, and tourists see rhinos, but maybe not at the same time.

So the phrasing in (A) isn't WRONG, exactly, but it’s not ideal: the intent of the sentence is to question whether tourists will continue to visit game parks TO SEE rhinos. And we have that option in some of the other answer choices.

You could also argue that the pronoun “their” is potentially ambiguous. It could refer to the rhinos or the tourists or the poachers, and only the rhinos would make sense, since tourists and poachers rarely trim their own horns. And again, pronoun ambiguity isn’t an absolute rule (more on that in this video), but we’ll have better options in a moment.

If you wanted to be conservative, you could keep (A), but the problems in (A) will be fixed in another answer choice.


(B) includes the phrase “visit game parks to see [a rhino]…”, and that makes more sense than the parallel structure we saw in (A).

Trouble is, now the pronouns are worse. You could argue that “one” is a little bit ambiguous because it’s so far from “rhinoceroses”, but I can live with that – I don’t think it’s unclear, even if it isn’t awesome. But the “their” is definitely an issue: the nearest plurals are “game parks” and “tourists”, and neither of those are likely to have their horns trimmed. “Their” logically needs to refer to “rhinoceroses”, but that word is a long way from the pronoun now. That’s not cool.

So (B) is out.


(C) fixes all of the problems and imperfections of (A) and (B). We have “…continue to visit game parks to see rhinoceroses…”, and that’s better than the parallel version in (A). The pronoun has been completely removed, so now we have “once the animals’ horns have been trimmed” – and that’s clear as a bell.

Let’s keep (C).


(D) has the same parallelism problem as (A): “visit game parks and see rhinos” makes less sense than “visit game parks TO see rhinos.” See the explanation for (A) for more on this issue.

The GMAT also tends to frown on the use of “if” in situations like these. The GMAT seems to think that “if” can only be used for “if/then” (conditional) statements, but NOT for situations like this sentence, when the intent is just to indicate that two different alternatives are possible (e.g., visiting vs. not visiting game parks). I think that’s a silly thing for the GMAT to test, but who cares what I think?

The shorter version: if you’re given a choice between “if” and “whether” on the GMAT, then you’ll almost certainly want to choose “whether.”

So (D) is out.


The only major problem in (E) is the use of “if.” See (D) for more on that issue.

So (E) is gone, and we’re left with (C).

Hello GMATNinja
Thanks for the detailed explanation. However, I have a query regarding pronoun ambiguity. You mentioned in option A that "their" could refer to rhinos or tourists or poachers and eventually eliminated tourists and poachers saying that only rhinos make sense since rhinos have horns.
So, I wanted to know when do we say that there's pronoun ambiguity? Is it when there are more than 1 contenders (nouns) for a pronoun and all or some of them make sense
OR
Can we say that there's pronoun ambiguity even if there are multiple nouns but only 1 of them is contender because only this 1 contender makes sense (like in this option A)?

Hi there,

There is absolutely no problem and certainly no exception in this official question.

Please note that "her" is a Possessive Pronoun. Henec, it can very well refer to another Noun Entity in Poessessive form. This is the reason why all the answer choices use "her" because it clearly refers to the Noun Entity "Bona Dea's" that is in possessive case. In fact, Possessive Pronouns can also refer to non-possessive Noun entity in a sentence. For example:

Dia brought her dog to the exhibition. --> Here, "her" correctly refers to "Dia", a non-possessive Noun Entity.

OG13 Q#109 would have been incorrect if it had used the Pronoun "she" to refer to "Bona Dea's" because a non-possessive pronoun CANNOT refer to a Noun in Possessive Form.

Let's take a look at another official sentence where this usage is correct:

In her later poems, Phyllis Wheatley's blending of solar imagery, Judeo-Christian thought and figures, and images borrowed from ancient classicism suggests her range and depth of influences, not the least of which is her African heritage.

In this one, "her" refers to "Phyllis Whetley's", a Possesive Noun Entity. In fact, one of the answer choices uses the pronoun "she" and stands incorrect because "she", a non-possesive pronoun, CANNOT refer to possessive noun entity.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
SJ

Therefore "Incompatibility of the case between pronoun and noun is not an absolute rule" on GMAT.

As pointed out by GMAT NINJA that in option A intent is missing i.e "will visit park TO see rhino" makes more sense.
My question is whether "will continue" cannot be common for both "To visit" & "To see" i.e will continue to visit game parks and continue to see rhino ?

Hi Experts,

Can we reject Option B, as "one" is singular and it is referring to a plural noun "rhinoceroses".

Thanks

Thanks

As pointed out by GMAT NINJA that in option A intent is missing i.e "will visit park TO see rhino" makes more sense.
My question is whether "will continue" cannot be common for both "To visit" & "To see" i.e will continue to visit game parks and continue to see rhino ?
I evaluated this way.
In option C I thought that "and" is missing.

Hi Experts,

Can we reject Option B, as "one" is singular and it is referring to a plural noun "rhinoceroses".

Thanks

Thanks