Although their breeding ground is shrinking as rising temperatures mel

I vote for A. It may not seem as a very good choice to most of you, but I will still go ahead and say that, its is incorrect here.

The breeding ground belongs to penguins. Not colony's breeding ground.

So their represents penguins and , sentence as such is trying to say that although penguins' breeding ground is sinking, the colony is burgeoning

Posted from my mobile device

I had this same view, however I agree and disagree to you both.

So their represents penguins and , sentence as such is trying to say that although penguins' breeding ground is sinking, the colony is burgeoning


If this is true then sentence is talking about two different things penguins colony and its breeding area. So do we need a contrast word like "Although" ?

Or

If its is saying that colony's breeding area is shrinking and that colony's itself is bulging, then we may need a contrast word.

I think question is slightly ambiguous,

Can someone clarify, whether their can refer to penguins correctly ? or it cannot due any grammatical rule ?

generis , Thank you! It is totally inspired from GMATNinja

P.S: Even though you edited the comment, the email sent out for the mention helped me trace this. Haha!

Hero

A pronoun in an introductory modifier phase will modify the noun placed immediately after the comma. If there is a logically appropriate word that can act as the eligible subject in terms of various parameters such as S-V agreement, pronoun agreement etc, then the communication is acceptable. Otherwise, it is not.

The plural pronoun in A definitely should point to a plural subject after the comma to be legal. Because what we have is singular namely, the colony, the choice is fundamentally wrong as far as structure is concerned.

We may call it a rule, custom, style, or norm but that is beside the point.

Although their breeding ground is shrinking as rising temperatures melt the sea ice, the colony of emperor penguins is burgeoning likely because of the depletion of the local seal population.

(A) Although their breeding ground is shrinking as rising temperatures melt the

(B) Despite their breeding ground shrinking as temperatures rise and melt the

(C) Although its breeding ground is shrinking as rising temperatures melt the

(D) Their breeding ground shrinking as rising temperatures melt the

(E) While its breeding ground is shrinking as rising temperatures are melting the[/quote]

Hi generis

In choice C if we replace its with Colony we get Although colony's breeding ground is shrinking as rising temperatures melt the sea ice, the colony of emperor penguins is burgeoning likely because of the depletion of the local seal population.

This doesn't seem to make much sense to me

Can you please help with the meaning here?

Hi gmat1393 , do you mean
Although the colony's breeding ground is shrinking rising temperatures melt the sea ice, the colony of emperor penguins is burgeoning . . .

Could you be specific about which part does not make sense? (I could make three guesses, but I don't know which of the three it is.)

Colony's breeding ground...can you please stress on this part? shouldn't this be emperor penguins breeding ground?

TheNightKing , I edited the comment out because when I reviewed the topic thread, I swear, my eyes saw this name: TheNightkini

I thought, "OMG, wrong person, I'd better get rid of that comment. [And: Someone is making a play on a two-piece swim suit?" ]


GMATNinja is excellent inspiration. Smart choice!

gmat1393 , I would have to research more than I have researched already to answer this question definitively.

Short answer: Yes, ITS [breeding ground] can refer to colony. I do not have a problem with the meaning. In English we understand that a "colony" of animals or people is itself something of a living organism. In other words, although I like penguins' breeding ground better, I also accept the colony's breeding ground.

True, a "colony" is a collective noun and does not itself breed.
But in English a collective group of animals or people is not treated as literally as "group" is being treated in some places on this thread.

English does not separate the members of the colony from the colony itself as rigidly as is done in a couple of instances on this thread—in one case, I see only flat assertion without explanation or evidence.
Unless you happen to be R. W. Burchfield or Bryan Garner, merely announcing that the breeding grounds must belong to the penguins does not make it so.

In English, for example, we can speak of
-- a caribou herd's calving (birthing) areas, or the calving grounds of the caribou herd;
-- a Native American tribe's burial grounds;
-- a herd's territory; and
-- a colony's territory.

In fact, in the same newspaper or journal article, you will read both "the tribe's burial grounds" and "the burial grounds of the Mohegans." The tribe is a tribe of Mohegans.

I looked through one official guide and two official verbal review guides. No question was on point.
(Did anyone who had questions about meaning look through the guides?)

I searched newspapers and science journals for terms I remembered having read.

The phrases and terminology below are consistent with what I am trying to explain.

A herd, colony, or tribe is not always semantically separable from the members of that group. In that semantic sense, these kinds of groups are much more organic than, say, a bouquet of flowers or a range of mountains.

The colony's breeding ground has analogs in these phrases and this terminology:

• the [caribou] herd . . . calves, singular.
(A singular herd -> calves)

In fact, "the herd concentrates ITS calving on [a] coastal plain."
(Similar to ITS breeding ground.)

In herds with relatively large calving areas—such as the Central Arctic herd—females have more room to avoid industrial sites. The Porcupine herd, however, often calves on a slice of the Arctic refuge’s coastal plain that narrows to 14 kilometers in places,

The Porcupine caribou herd often concentratesits calving on the Arctic refuge’s coastal plain

Science Magazine, HERE (accessed 9/12/19)

• the calving grounds of the [caribou] herd
(= the herd's calving grounds = ITS calving grounds = ITS birthing ground = ITS breeding ground.)

See HERE (accessed 9/12/19)

• ant colony's territory, HERE

• herd's territory
The [caribou] herd’s territory covers 44,400 square miles . . .
The Smithsonian Magazine, HERE

• [African water buffalo] herd's territory
The pattern was clear: the closer a herd's territory to Crocodile Bridge, the higher the incidence of tuberculosis -- up to 85 percent in some herds.
Or see The New York Times, HERE

• a tribe's burial grounds
-- A tribe of Native Americans or indigenous North Americans can have burial grounds.
-- The tribe is not buried. The tribe does not perish. The people in the tribe who have passed are buried.
-- birthing, breeding, and burial are adjectives of the same kind. They refer to phases in the cycle of life.
(The adjectives are parallel. We would not use "burying" grounds because a dedicated noun form exists: burial. The words "breeding" and "birthing" do not have a dedicated noun form. There is no such thing as "breedial" or "birthial.")

The Mohegans say otherwise, insisting that the Connecticut Historical Society has in its possession not only burial arrowheads but also a bag . . . woven of porcupine quills and obtained during a grave robbing in 1842 by an archeologist at what was then the tribe's 16-acre burial grounds in Norwich.
The New York Times[, here

It seems to me that it is fine to say the colony's breeding grounds.

• Takeaways
-- This question is unofficial. Take it with a grain of salt. (And yes, I published it, because without questions such as this one, there would be no SC Butler).
-- I would not get too exercised about meaning in a non-official sentence. I would follow the clear error.
-- I see no problem with the meaning, but I am happy to stand corrected if someone wants to find me an official question.
-- Whatever precedes breeding ground in the "although" clause refers to the subject of the main clause.
The subject of the main clause is colony. Colony, singular, takes the verb IS, singular.
The object of a preposition is never the subject of a sentence.
That is, penguins is not the subject of the sentence. The correct pronoun is ITS.
-- Noun/pronoun disagreement is absolute error. You all can do what you want, but I would mark (C). Meaning is not mechanical.

hero_with_1000_faces and gmat1393 , I hope that analysis addresses some or all of your concerns.

Your ninja looks slightly angrier than ours.

Glad we could inspire you, TheNightKing! I love it.

and the legend himself has replied. Thank you sir! I am just one of those types who cannot remember every grammar rule in the world. So I totally believe in your approach of knowing the basics well and being literal.

Haha. Yeah. Your ninja is more calm types. lol

P.S: Looking forward to attend the next YouTube live session with you. (If you know what I mean)

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