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At approximately 22 weeks, a fetus becomes fully covered by lanugo, or 23 Feb 2018, 06:25
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why option D is wrong? I think both the which indicates back to D.
a fine, soft hair, which insulates the body until fat deposits accumulate in the wrinkles of the skin, and which often remain....
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At approximately 22 weeks, a fetus becomes fully covered by lanugo, or 23 Feb 2018, 07:00
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If soft hair is mentioned with in comma will it become non essential modifier? On that grounds can we reject answer choice D and E? Will that be a right approach?

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At approximately 22 weeks, a fetus becomes fully covered by lanugo, or 25 Feb 2018, 06:03
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techiesam
why option D is wrong? I think both the which indicates back to D.
a fine, soft hair, which insulates the body until fat deposits accumulate in the wrinkles of the skin, and which often remain....
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At approximately 22 weeks, a fetus becomes fully covered by lanugo, or a fine, soft hair that insulates the body until fat deposits accumulate in the wrinkles of the skin, often remaining until birth.

D. a fine, soft hair, which insulates the body until fat deposits accumulate in the wrinkles of the skin, and which often remain

a soft hair - singular; singular noun requires singular verb but "remain" is not singular. That is why D is wrong.

Hope that helps !!
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At approximately 22 weeks, a fetus becomes fully covered by lanugo, or 25 Feb 2018, 06:06
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If soft hair is mentioned with in comma will it become non essential modifier? On that grounds can we reject answer choice D and E? Will that be a right approach?

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Hi,

No. You reasoning is wrong.

E. fine, soft hair, which insulates the body until an accumulation of fat deposits in the wrinkles of the skin, which often remains
--Here we require a comma before which. The comma here doesn't make the information non-essential. The issue with above option is that second "which" refers back to skin which is wrong.

Option D is wrong because of SV agreement. Please refer to my above post for details.

Hope that helps !!
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At approximately 22 weeks, a fetus becomes fully covered by lanugo, or 13 Sep 2018, 18:17
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Official Explanation


The meaning of the original sentence, as determined by (A), is important here. There is a fine soft hair that insulates the body. Technically, we could have a “which insulates the body” referring back to the lanugo, since the lanugo is the fine, soft hair in question here.

Either is fine, so a good way to attack this question is by eliminating wrong answers. The best way to do so is by focusing on those that change the original meaning of the sentence. For instance, (C) shifts the focus from the lanugo remaining until birth to the wrinkles remaining until birth. (E) does the same thing by stating “….skin, which remain…”

(B) also changes the meaning of the original sentence because “these” is a plural pronoun pointing either to wrinkles of deposits.

Finally, the tricky one: answer (D). Notice, the “which remain”. Remain is consistent in number with a plural noun. However, it is the “hair that remains”.

Answer: (A)

FAQ: Wouldn't "a fine, soft hair" mean there is one single hair?

A: Grammatically, both "fine, soft hair" and "a fine, soft hair" are correct. In either case, the word 'hair' would be used as a collective noun, which means it needs a singular verb. That's how Chris ruled out several of the answer choices.

When the sentence says "a fine, soft hair", it's really saying "a type of fine soft hair". So it's just leaving those words out (which is still fine, grammatically). If we wanted to put those words back in, then the sentence would read like this:

At approximately 22 weeks, a fetus becomes fully covered by lanugo, or a [type of] fine, soft hair that insulates the body until fat deposits accumulate in the wrinkles of the skin, often remaining until birth.
Whether or not to include the article 'a' is just a matter of personal preference. It would still be correctl to leave the article out and say:

At approximately 22 weeks, a fetus becomes fully covered by lanugo, or fine, soft hair that insulates the body until fat deposits accumulate in the wrinkles of the skin, often remaining until birth.
So either of these would be perfectly suitable in English.
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At approximately 22 weeks, a fetus becomes fully covered by lanugo, or 03 Jun 2021, 00:39
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daagh
The meaning is that at 22 weeks, a fine coat of soft hair called lanugo covers the body of the fetus, in order to insulate the body until fat globules develop to absorb the heat. This lanugo slowly disappears as the fetus matures and at birth, some of it might be still be seen in the newborn.

Apart from science, grammar wise, this is an example of how relative pronouns can play havoc with the intended meaning and how an adverbial comma +ing participle can truly reflect . The grammar clue is that all pronouns or compound subjects refer to wrinkles, with plural verbs, while the intended noun lanugo is singular


A) a fine, soft hair that insulates the body until fat deposits accumulate in the wrinkles of the skin, often remaining --- This is the best choice with the adverbial phrase straight away modifying the lanugo
B) fine, soft hair insulating the body until the accumulation of fat deposits in the wrinkles of the skin, and these often remain – in the second part’ these” refer to the wrinkles
C) fine, soft hair that insulates the body until the accumulation of fat deposits in the wrinkles of skin that often remain - that refers to wrinkles - wrong
D) a fine, soft hair, which insulates the body until fat deposits accumulate in the wrinkles of the skin, and which often remain – which refers to the wrinkles – wrong
E) fine, soft hair, which insulates the body until an accumulation of fat deposits in the wrinkles of the skin, which often remains which refers to the skin—wrong.
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daagh
A - is correct with no mistakes

for E though : deposits in the wrinkles of the skin, WHICH often remain,
you wrote : Which refers to skin
But in this case where a prepositional modifiers is used to describe the noun (wrinkles OF skin, moons OF Saturn, queen OF England) shouldn't the WHICH refer to the wrinkle ?

Moreover my general query is regarding the use of which in such cases

GMATNinja, kindly advice.
mikemcgarry, Could you please clarify use of Which in such cases as well (https://gmat.magoosh.com/lessons/617-vi ... -modifiers)
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At approximately 22 weeks, a fetus becomes fully covered by lanugo, or 22 Jun 2023, 07:40
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What is the role of OR in the sentence. Can someone please explain?
I considered lanugo and a hair as two separate entities.
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