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Ahmed31
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Created in 1945 to reduce poverty and stabilize foreign currency 07 Jan 2023, 10:39
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Sash143
Created in 1945 to reduce poverty and stabilize foreign currency markets, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have, according to some critics, continually struggled to meet the expectations of their major shareholders—a group comprising many of the world’s rich nations—but neglected their intended beneficiaries in the developing world.

(C) continually struggled to meet their major shareholders’ expectations—a group comprising many of the world’s rich nations—but neglected that and neglecting
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Hi egmat AjiteshArun

Can you tell that
In choice C . Can the noun modifier modify shareholder or not?
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Created in 1945 to reduce poverty and stabilize foreign currency 09 Jan 2023, 04:09
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Ahmed31

Can you tell that
In choice C . Can the noun modifier modify shareholder or not?
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Hey Ahmed31

Happy to help.

No, the noun modifier "a group comprising many of the world’s rich nations" cannot modify the noun "shareholders" in choice C, simply because the preceding noun is not "shareholders" but "expectations". In fact, there is no noun "shareholders" in choice C. There is only a possessive adjective: shareholders'.

C: Created in 1945 to reduce poverty and stabilize foreign currency markets, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have, according to some critics, continually struggled to meet their major shareholders’ expectations—a group comprising many of the world’s rich nations—but neglected that of their intended beneficiaries in the developing world.

The preceding noun is "their major shareholders' expectations".
  • The main noun in this phrase is "expectations".
  • The word "shareholders' " is in the possessive case. Notice the apostrophe at the end: shareholders'.
    • This means it's not actually a noun.
    • Possessive nouns actually behave as noun modifiers or possessive adjectives.
    • They describe the nouns they are attached to, in this case "expectations".

This is why choice C does not work. Notice that in choice A the immediately preceding noun is in fact "shareholders".

I hope this helps improve your understanding.

Happy learning!

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Created in 1945 to reduce poverty and stabilize foreign currency 16 Feb 2023, 11:39
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Could someone please explain why the use of the verb 'neglected' is correct. Would not 'have neglected' be appropriate as initially it says that they have continually struggled?
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Created in 1945 to reduce poverty and stabilize foreign currency 16 Feb 2023, 23:50
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Could someone please explain why the use of the verb 'neglected' is correct. Would not 'have neglected' be appropriate as initially it says that they have continually struggled?
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By virtue of parallelism, the structure is indeed have neglected.

....have struggled.... but neglected.
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Created in 1945 to reduce poverty and stabilize foreign currency 27 Apr 2023, 21:47
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If we look at the meaning of A ignoring the dashes, it says: "X and Y struggled to meet expectation of A.... but neglected B.". I see two flaws here, (1) "neglected B" does not make sense as X and Y neglected the expectations of B not B themselves", (2) "But" distrots the meaning as there is no contract in "not meeting the expectation of A" and neglecting B".
I understand it does not make sense to challenge GMAT but questions like these are messing up with my concepts. Plz help.
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Created in 1945 to reduce poverty and stabilize foreign currency 27 Apr 2023, 23:26
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sagoel1994
If we look at the meaning of A ignoring the dashes, it says: "X and Y struggled to meet expectation of A.... but neglected B.". I see two flaws here, (1) "neglected B" does not make sense as X and Y neglected the expectations of B not B themselves",
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Why do you think "X and Y have neglected B" doesn't make sense?

Quote:

(2) "But" distrots the meaning as there is no contract in "not meeting the expectation of A" and neglecting B".
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The intended meaning is that X and Y have only limited their role to meeting expectation of A (struggled to meet = endeavored to meet); in the process, X and Y have neglected B. There is a definite contrast here.
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Created in 1945 to reduce poverty and stabilize foreign currency 12 Jul 2023, 06:01
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GMATNinja
Quote:
Hi GMATNinja


"(C) continually struggled to meet their major shareholders’ expectations—a group "
Do you think that there is modifier error also in this... what does "a group" refer to?

Yup, there's a modifier error!

Quote:
continually struggled to meet their major shareholders’ expectations—a group comprising many of the world’s rich nations—but neglected that of

It sounds as though "a group" is referring to the "shareholders' expectations". And if "a group... of the world's rich nations" is describing "shareholders' expectations", that's pretty messed up, on all sorts of levels.

I hope this helps!
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Hi GMATNinja,

You explained that group is referring to shareholders' expectation, which is pretty messed up. But isn't it that ''things those seem to refer to referents derived from possessive forms of nouns'' are acceptable in GMAT SC? Please help me out in this:


continually struggled to meet their major shareholders’ expectations—a group comprising many of the world’s rich nations—but neglected that of
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Created in 1945 to reduce poverty and stabilize foreign currency 19 Jul 2023, 12:27
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ashutosh_73
Hi GMATNinja,

You explained that group is referring to shareholders' expectation, which is pretty messed up. But isn't it that ''things those seem to refer to referents derived from possessive forms of nouns'' are acceptable in GMAT SC? Please help me out in this:

continually struggled to meet their major shareholders’ expectations—a group comprising many of the world’s rich nations—but neglected that of
Show more
The thing to keep in mind is that we aren't trying to come up with a set of ironclad rules about what modifiers can and cannot do. It would be wonderful to blindly apply those rules to individual sentences, but that's not how SC works. Instead, our job is to compare the five options in front of us and identify the best one.

(C) has an even bigger problem (as explained here), and the modifier issue certainly gives us another strong vote against it. Following "shareholders' expectations" with "a group" is, at best, very confusing and certainly lends itself to misinterpretation.

Does that mean it is definitively WRONG and that something similar would NEVER fly on the GMAT? Who knows? The test loves debunking our made-up rules. But what we can say definitively is that the meaning is much clearer in (A) and that (A) is a much better choice -- and that's all that matters.

I hope that helps!
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Created in 1945 to reduce poverty and stabilize foreign currency 29 Oct 2023, 21:19
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Alright, time to roll up my sleeves and get moving on this one:

I know GMATNinja said no need to fret over the ", or - used" which makes a lot of sense but lets see what we can actually do here with the Dash (I am wearing my meaning hat, one of many since I am a hat fanatic)

1) shareholders’ expectations—a group comprising .... Now here, shareholders is an adjective modifying the noun expectations. So referring to expectations as a group comprising ... makes no sense. C and E are out
2) What is the Pronoun referent for "that of" expectations? Well 'that' doesnt work here because of the pronoun-antecedent issue. So B and D are out.

Sash143
Created in 1945 to reduce poverty and stabilize foreign currency markets, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have, according to some critics, continually struggled to meet the expectations of their major shareholders—a group comprising many of the world’s rich nations—but neglected their intended beneficiaries in the developing world.


(A) continually struggled to meet the expectations of their major shareholders—a group comprising many of the world’s rich nations—but neglected [Sounds good, parallelism is maintained and meaning is fine]

(B) continually struggled as they try to meet the expectations of their major shareholders—a group comprising many of the world’s rich nations—while neglecting that of

(C) continually struggled to meet their major shareholders’ expectations—a group comprising many of the world’s rich nations—but neglected that of

(D) had to struggle continually in trying to meet the expectations of their major shareholders—a group comprising many of the world’s rich nations—while neglecting that of

(E) struggled continually in trying to meet their major shareholders’ expectations—a group comprising many of the world’s rich nations—and neglecting
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P.S. I have added some edits bcoz I like to style things a certain way (yeah some OCD there).

Hope the above is helpful :)
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