At the annual stockholders meeting, investors heard a presentation on

Hi dcummins - Why do you consider "the declining sales" as a complex gerund ?

Declining per my understanding is NOT a noun but Declining is an adjective

Sales is the noun in the phrase " the declining sales"

Thus i think we have 2 contcrete nouns
-- threat
and
-- sales

Thoughts ?

Hi VeritasKarishma - In option A - the idiom sales for is definitely wrong

But, my question is on the parallelism in option A.

Are the X and Y markers (in underline below) in option A, really not parallel (either in terms of grammar or in terms of meaning, not parallel ?)

I read option A as

......threat from X and the declining sales of Y

Can we really eliminate option A by saying -- threat from X and declining sales of Y are NOT parallel ?

I think both of the sentences are parallel

......threat from X and the declining sales of Y
vs.
......threat from X and the decline in sales of Y

"threat" and "decline" are better matched as nouns. Hence, when you have an option which gives you those two, it will be preferable.

Thanks VeritasKarishma - just so i understand

By itself - Would you consider option A NOT parallel or you would not be comfortable saying that ?

I think i have read action nouns can only be parallel to other action nouns
OR
action nouns can be parallel to complex gerunds.

In A : Threat is an action noun whereas sales of Y is a concrete noun. This mis-match is why A is not parallel ?

option B -- Threat and decline in sales are both action nouns

option A) ......threat from X and the declining sales of Y
vs.
option B) ......threat from X and the decline in sales of Y

jabhatta2 - I will only consider comparisons, not stand alone cases because they are irrelevant. Even if I make 10 so called "errors" in one sentence, you might be able to understand it accurately and that is the sole purpose of language. Hence, with time and geography and as per context, what is an error and what is not keeps changing. So I will only look for the best option.

We begin with "threat", an abstract noun on one side and "declining", a modifier on the other. I am unhappy with it. A "decline" is also an abstract noun and it fits perfectly. Hence, I ignore declining sales.

Hi,

Can someone explain the 'these' in C for me?

I know that demonstrative pronoun must be followed by a noun.
but 'these' can be referred to 'the challenges' no?

do you need 'challenges' following 'these'?

eg.
a. Included among (I know this is wrong) these...
vs
b. Included among these 'challenges'....

if we were to ignore the included among, is a wrong and b is correct?

imksloh

The problem with "these" is not that it doesn't clearly refer to "challenges." It clearly does. If there were a question of the intended meaning, then sure, adding "challenges" would help, and we see that kind of split all the time in SC. But here, the problem is in the modifier structure. You can see this by cutting out "these" entirely: "There was a presentation on the challenges, included the threat." We can't use "included" here; we would need "including" if we wanted to write the modifier this way. In that case, though, we'd be saying that the challenges include the threat. If we said "including among these," we'd be saying "the challenges include among the challenges the threat," and that makes no sense.
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Hi DmitryFarber

Many thanks for the explanation.
Yeah I understand that the included among is weong. Hence I said if we ignore the included among and just look at the pronoun ‘these’.

My question here would be many people seem to cross off the answer just based on the incorrect use of ‘these’. and they mention ‘these’ needs to be followed by a noun.

Demonstrative adjective yes. but what about demonstrative pronoun. does it need to be followed by a noun? for example, this question.

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Hello imksloh,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, demonstrative pronouns do not have to be followed by a noun; they can stand alone.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team
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imksloh

So yeah, we don't need "challenges" after "these," although we do sometimes need that kind of clarification. But it's wrong to use "these" at all in this context, so it's hard to say that either choice you offered would be correct.
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Don't we need verb in the ''among phrase'' such as ''among them were the threat.....''. I found that the lack of verb makes that sentence incomplete.

Also what does it mean ''facing the company'' in nonunderlined portions, shouldn't it be ''faced by company''?

Thank You
Vighnesh

Hello VIGHNESHKAMATH,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your queries, the use of an active verb or participle is not needed in the "among them" phrase; the use of a verb is implied in this case.

Further, ''facing the company'' broadly means the same thing as "faced by the company", except the use of the present participle ("verb+ing" - "facing" in this sentence) implies that the action took place over a period of time.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team
_________________

How is among these and among them different from each other.

ExpertGlobal may kindly guide.

(A) including among them the threat from a rival???s multibillion-dollar patent-infringement suit and the declining sales for

is there really a problem in the preposition used above. Meaning wise I find no ambiguity

Also, in choice D] '' among them the threat of......'' feels like an incomplete statement. As if a verb is missing i.e '' among them ARE the threat of..''

How do I explain myself that this is right choice!

Hello himanshu0123,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, ''among them the threat of......'' does not require a verb because it is a modifying phrase acting on "challenges facing the company".

Further, the use of "threat from" vs "threat of" introduces a subtle change in meaning; "threat from a...patent-infringement suit" refers to the potential harm that the suit may cause, and "threat of a...patent-infringement suit" refers to the possibility that the suit will occur.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team
_________________

The phrase "including among them" is redundant. If something is included, it's among the things it's included with, right?

And I feel your pain with (D).

I could write "Tim has many phobias, including a fear of rubber spiders and a fear of small children." And I could write "Tim has many phobias, among them a fear of rubber spiders and a fear of small children."

In both sentences, the part after the comma is modifying the "phobias," giving examples. This type of construction is fine -- you don't a need verb within the prepositional phrase.

Generally, if it feels like something is missing, but the logic of the sentence seems to work, hang on to the answer choice and see if you can find more definitive issues in other options.

I hope that clears things up!
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egmat
So are you trying to say including should be modifying the noun entity "numerous challenges" but here it modifies the noun entity "the company"?

In answer choice C, contrary to the explanation, the use of (comma) + “included” does seem problematic. This kind of construction leads to an invalid “run on”-type of sentence structure.

ex: *“The winners received various prizes, included among these a gift certificate and free tickets to next year’s game.”

What follows this comma is not a proper modifier structure, even if we were to insert the referenced noun.

ex: *“The winners received various prizes, included among these prizes a gift certificate and free tickets to next year’s game.”

A fragment is attached to an independent clause with just a (comma).

What follows the comma would need to be given a finite verb and connected to the sentence as another independent clause. (With a semicolon or a comma + coordinating conjunction)

Otherwise, “included” would need to be changed to “includING”.

To say that “included properly modifies the preceding noun” and that this part is “correct” seems problematic.

Further, the use of a (comma) + “which” modifier in B does NOT convey the same meaning as a different version of B that includes (comma) + “including”.

B: Investors were told about challenges facing the company, which include X and Y.

Modified B: Investors were told about challenges facing the company, including X and Y.

In the 1st (B), the use of the (comma) + “which” implies that the challenges are just X and Y.

As a nonessential noun modifier, we are saying that the investors were told about challenges. And by the way, these challenges include X and Y (and that’s it).

However, in modified B, the use of (comma) + “including” does not convey this meaning.

The Preposition “including”, following a (comma), conveys the meaning that there is a group of things, and among these things are X and Y.

X and Y are two such examples that are part of this group of things, and there may or may not be more.

So unlike the other version, the conveyed meaning is that there could be more challenges than just X and Y.




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Stated much more eloquently by daagh



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