A proposal has been made to trim the horns from rhinoceroses to discourage poachers; the question is whether tourists will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses after their horns are trimmed.


(A) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses after their horns are

(B) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks to see one once their horns are

(C) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks to see rhinoceroses once the animals’ horns have been

(D) if tourists will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses once the animals’ horns are

(E) if tourists will continue to visit game parks to see one after the animals’ horns have been

(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).
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I answered it in another way: The question to me is much rather whether "tourists come to the park and see rhinoceroses" or whether "tourists come to the park to see rhinoceroses". I think this answer (C) conveys the message much better and resolves the pronoun problem (their) as well.
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A proposal has been made to trim the horns from rhinoceroses to discourage poachers; the question is whether tourists will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses after their horns are trimmed.

A) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses after their horns are
B) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks to see one once their horns are
C) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks to see rhinoceroses once the animals' horns have been
D) if tourists will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses once the animals' horns are
E) if tourists will continue to visit game parks to see one after the animals' horns have been

OA C

All:
I know that D and E can be rejected because of usage of "if"

Among A, B and C, B and A are rejected for lack of antecedents. I am not looking for the correct answer. I want to understand why "horns have been" is a correct usage. In other words, via is present perfect better than present tense ("are trimmed")


Any help is appreciated.

I disagree with gmat1220 with his reasoning here; sorry no-offense. AFAIK here IF is WRONG! There is no question of whether>if. That might be true in general, but I think here IF is just blatantly wrong.

As far as I understood, if is ONLY used for condition and CAN'T be used for QUESTIONS!

Experts, please let me know if you disagree with me.



Thanks for the reasoning. This clarifies the same doubt I had.

The methodical steps to this issue may be:
1. This is question of deciding on a dilemma. Hence the conditional ‘if’ is irrelevant; dump D and E.
2. “To see” denotes the purpose of a visit and better than ‘and see’. Hence A is out.
3. To see “one” after “their” horns: the subject - pronoun number mismatch is too glaring.
4. C is the remainder
IMO, the difference in the use of present perfect or present tense is rather too thin. Both are acceptable in formal writing I suppose. As in this case: - I wonder whether I can enjoy bones once my teeth are broken - is as good as - I wonder whether I can enjoy bones once my teeth have been broken - nothing much to choose from. But this is just my feeling.
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You're right about the horns part. However, the ambiguity here is not whether the reference is to horns but whose horns. Are the tourists or the rhinoceroses having horns removed?

It seems obvious given what we know about tourists and rhinos generally, but it's not clear from the structure of the sentence.
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Hi there,

Usually, when a pronoun begins a clause, it refers to the subject of the previous clause. In this context, the subject of the previous clause is "tourists". So, even though the logical antecedent of the pronoun "they" can't be "tourists", it's better to replace the pronoun with the noun that it should refer to.

As we point out in our SC1 live session, pronoun ambiguity is sometimes considered an error on the GMAT, but sometimes an ambiguous pronoun can be in the correct answer. So, we encourage you not to use pronoun ambiguity as the only criterion to eliminate an answer choice.

In this question, there is also another way to eliminate option A. Note the difference between "visit... and see" and "visit... to see". The intended meaning of the sentence is that tourists visit the zoo in order to see the rhinos. This meaning is correctly stated by using "to" rather than "and". The part before the semicolon also makes it clear that the sentence is concerned only with rhinos, and that any other reason that tourists may visit the zoo is not part of the intended meaning of the sentence. So, "visit... to see" is correct.

I hope this helps to resolve your doubt.

Regards,
Meghna
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Hi Ashish,

Time markers such as "before" and "after" should be used to substitute actions only when the past perfect tense is used. This rule does not apply to the present perfect tense, since this tense doesn't need two actions. The present perfect tense refers to an action that started in the past and has continued into the present. It can stand on its own without reference to any other action.

"If" should be used in "if-then" contexts: i.e., the conditional use. E.g. 'If X happens, Y will happen'. 'Whether' is used when there is a choice between two things. E.g. It is unclear whether the company will increase production. Meaning: the company may increase production, or it may not.

I hope this helps!

Regards,
Meghna
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Dear @dipsy001,

Thank you for posting this question. I believe you can arrive at the answer on your own. Just pay close attention to the original sentence.

A proposal has been made to trim the horns from rhinoceroses to discourage poachers; the question is whether tourists will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses after their horns are trimmed.

Is the original sentence saying that the tourists will see 1 rhino or many rhinos in general?

Now look at your understanding of choice E (which by the way is correct!!). Do you think the two match?

Thus without getting into the grammatical nuances, you can eliminate choice E on the account of meaning shift from the original sentence

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Payal
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