GyMrAT wrote:
By merging its two publishing divisions, the company will increase their share of the country’s $21 billion book market from 6 percent to 10 percent, a market ranging from obscure textbooks to mass-market paperbacks.
A. their share of the country’s $21 billion book market from 6 percent to 10 percent, a market ranging
B. from 6 percent to 10 percent its share of the $21 billion book market in the country, which ranges
C. to 10 percent from 6 percent in their share of the $21 billion book market in the country, a market ranging
D. in its share, from 6 percent to 10 percent, of the $21 billion book market in the country, which ranges
E. to 10 percent from 6 percent its share of the country’s $21 billion book market, which ranges
Answer E.
Thanks,
GyM
This question tests the concept of pronoun usage.
If the underlined portion begins or ends with a pronoun, one point of elimination is the error of pronouns.
One of the errors of pronouns is Pronoun-antecedent disagreement. The antecedent is the noun that a pronoun refers to. The rule of Pronoun-antecedent agreement is that a singular pronoun refers to a singular antecedent and a plural pronoun refers to a plural antecedent.
In Option A, the pronoun ‘their’ refers to ‘the company in the first part of the sentence. Since ‘the company is a singular noun, the plural pronoun ‘their’ cannot be used to refer to it. So, Option A is incorrect because of pronoun-antecedent disagreement.
Option C is also incorrect for the same reason even though the placement of ‘their’ has been changed.
In Option D, the phrase “increase in its share” is not stylistically correct. “Increase its share” would be a better construction.
The option also has what could be a pronoun error at the end of the underlined portion.
A relative pronoun generally refers to the noun immediately preceding it.
The pronoun ‘which’ seems to refer to the noun ‘country’as the noun has been placed immediately before it. This placement changes the meaning as ‘country’ cannot range from “obscure textbooks to mass-market paperbacks”.
That leaves us with options B and E. Option B has the same pronoun ambiguity as Option D.
Option E makes the meaning clearer by using the relative pronoun ‘which’ to refer to ‘the market’.
Therefore, E is the best option.
Jayanthi Kumar.
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Crackverbal Prep Team
www.crackverbal.com