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udaymathapati
Contrary to the scholarly wisdom of the 1950’s and early 1960’s that predicted the processes of modernization and rationalization would gradually undermine it, ethnicity is a worldwide phenomenon of increasing importance.

(A) would gradually undermine it
(B) to be a gradual undermining of it
(C) would be a gradual undermining of ethnicity
(D) to gradually undermine ethnicity
(E) gradually undermining it

Source: GMAC Paper Test, Test Code #55, Section 6, Question 8

Since verb prediected has appeared it should complement with would verb? Is this correct?

https://www.nytimes.com/1985/11/10/books/ties-of-blood-rivers-of-blood.html

CONTRARY to the popular and scholarly wisdom of the 1950's and early 60's that predicted the processes of modernization and rationalization would gradually undermine ethnicity, we have come to realize that what appear to be religious, linguistic and cultural conflicts can be usefully and meaningfully analyzed as ethnic in nature, and that ethnicity is a world-wide phenomenon of continuing, even increasing importance.


How are we rejecting D here? I think D makes complete sense. Need help. Is it because subject is after comma and we need a pronoun so that it could refer to ethnicity? else it looks like adverbial phrase "contrary to scholarly........." would modify ethnicity. IanStewart AndrewN GMATNinja
Hello, pk6969. I think dcummins has done a fine job (in this post) breaking down the sentence into simple parts and examining why (D) is unsound:

dcummins
D really doesn't make much sense..
The scholarly wisdom that predicted x and y to gradually undermine ethnicity

How does that make sense? What's the effect of "scholarly wisdom" on undermining the ethnicity? It's not apparent or clear whatsoever with D
To speak frankly, I cannot think of a valid sentence that would pair a past-tense predicted—without was in front of it—with to.

1) The economist accurately predicted that Candidate X would run for office four years later.
(Would is a past tense of will.)

2) The economist accurately predicted Candidate X to run for office four years later.
(Certain verbs, such as selected or picked, could work in this context, but predicted just operates differently, having taken a separate linguistic path long ago.)

3) Candidate X was [accurately] predicted by the economist to run for office four years later.
(By shifting into a passive construct, the sentence with to is fine.)

I know it can be confusing. I do not generally like to resort to idiomatic usage to select an answer. I think such questions were more prevalent on the paper test than they are today.

- Andrew
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Dear experts, kindly help me with choice D, why it is wrong and why do we need a verb(would) as in option A,
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SALAKSHYA
Dear experts, kindly help me with choice D, why it is wrong and why do we need a verb(would) as in option A,
Hi SALAKSHYA,

Predicted can be used in the passive with a to, but this sentence doesn't do that. Here, predicted is in the active voice. In such situations, we can't use an infinitive (to + the plain form of a verb) after predicted.

1. ... the scholarly wisdom of the 1950’s and early 1960’s that predicted the processes of X and Y to gradually undermine Z...
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SALAKSHYA
Dear experts, kindly help me with choice D, why it is wrong and why do we need a verb(would) as in option A,
Hi SALAKSHYA,

Predicted can be used in the passive with a to, but this sentence doesn't do that. Here, predicted is in the active voice. In such situations, we can't use an infinitive (to + the plain form of a verb) after predicted.

1. ... the scholarly wisdom of the 1950’s and early 1960’s that predicted the processes of X and Y to gradually undermine Z...

Hi AjiteshArun

Could you please explain why predicted to is wrong

Contrary to the scholarly wisdom of the 1950’s and early 1960’s that predicted the processes of modernization and rationalization would gradually undermine it, ethnicity is a worldwide phenomenon of increasing importance.

(A) would gradually undermine it
(D) to gradually undermine ethnicity


My reasoning for D:
no pronoun ambiguity: not a must condition but in A it rfers to what? = scholarly wisdom? or process?
If we see the sentence structure:
Contrary to scholarly wisdown, ethinicity is a xxx
whatever comes after that would modify scholarly wisdown
scholarly wisdow that predicted X and Y to do something , ehtnicity is something else.--> here wisdow predicted to do something
scholarly wisdow that predicted X and Y would so something , ehtnicity is something else.--? here wisdow predicted process would do something
So Shall I mark D wrong only because in D: it seems scholarly wisdow did soemthing but actual meaning is : scholarly wisdow predicted something else would do something


Please confirm.

Thanks!
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Hi AjiteshArun

Could you please explain why predicted to is wrong
Hi mSKR,

I don't think there's a specific reason for this idiomatic call. This is one of those things that we have to memorise.
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Excuse me, but I have to firmly disagree with this sentence as a whole, including the answer choices.

Contrary to the scholarly wisdom of the 1950’s and early 1960’s that predicted the processes of modernization and rationalization would gradually under mine it, ethnicity is a worldwide phenomenon of increasing importance

"it" here clearly refers to ethnicity and it doesn't make sense, therefore it's incorrect. All the answer choices either repeat the same ambigous use of "it" or create redundancy by using "ethnicity" twice ,so to be correct the sentence would have to be rewritten in some other way.

Of course you can say that the only way for this sentence to make sense, given the answer choices provided, is to assume that "it" refers to the following "ethnicity" but come on, in this case the SC becomes subjective to one's interpretation of the meaning, following this logic you can discuss the meaning of virtually any SC question. There have to be objective reasons to consider a choice correct.

Here, the way I see it, the question given is not written in a good way to test SC skills and creates the "wrong" type of difficulty. Instead of testing objective knowledge it tests subjective interpretation of the meaning.

What you guys think? I am I missing some exotic rule here? For a 600+ question there shouldn't be any though.


Also, both "predict" and "would' seem to imply uncertainty and possibility. Use of "predict" makes "would" redundant.
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I consider this question a bit outdated because "predicted" didn't follow by “that”, usually you would want “that” so that there can be an IC afterward. I chose D because it is the only case that avoid using another verb and makes sense at the same time. I didn't know that it is unidiomatic. If the question included "that" after "predicted", it would make a lot more sense.
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I consider this question a bit outdated because "predicted" didn't follow by “that”, usually you would want “that” so that there can be an IC afterward. I chose D because it is the only case that avoid using another verb and makes sense at the same time. I didn't know that it is unidiomatic. If the question included "that" after "predicted", it would make a lot more sense.
Hi frankqxq,

I've heard this "rule" before, that predict needs to be followed by a that on the GMAT. Unfortunately, there is no such rule. The GMAT can absolutely drop that in certain situations, and we shouldn't go in thinking that it, for some reason, won't do that nowadays.
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I consider this question a bit outdated because "predicted" didn't follow by “that”, usually you would want “that” so that there can be an IC afterward.
"usually" yes, but this is not an absolute rule. The good part about this sentence is that "predicted" is in the non-underlined portion and hence, the sentence is not really asking you to "take a call" on whether predicted should or should not be followed by that.

GMAT may not always be this generous though :).

A similar question in which following is the correct answer:

Trans world Entertainment Corporation, which owns the record Town and Saturday Matinee retail chains announced it was closing up to one fourth of its stores because of poor sales.

Again, "announced" is not followed by "that". The tricky part is that the original sentence does have a "that" after announced, but that sentence Ais incorrect for other reasons.
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frankqxq
I consider this question a bit outdated because "predicted" didn't follow by “that”, usually you would want “that” so that there can be an IC afterward. I chose D because it is the only case that avoid using another verb and makes sense at the same time. I didn't know that it is unidiomatic. If the question included "that" after "predicted", it would make a lot more sense.

Hello frankqxq,

We hope this finds you well.

To provide a bit of clarity, here, as others have written, there is no such rule that "predicted" must be followed by "that"; the "that" can be omitted, and "predicted" is used as a descriptor, it can be used with an infinitive verb form ("to + base form of verb") as well.

For example, "The hurricane is predicted to hit land soon".

We hope this helps.
All the best!
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