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655-705 Level|   Subjunctive|      
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thangvietnam
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Despite forceful legal pleas for the restitution of expropriated cultu 06 Jan 2021, 00:54
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priyankur_saha@ml.com
Despite forceful legal pleas for the restitution of expropriated cultural artifacts to the place of their origin, the British Museum continues to rebuff the Greek authorities requesting that it should return the Parthenon marbles removed from the Acro by Lord Elgin in 1806.


(A) requesting that it should

(B) requesting them to

(C) and its request to

(D) who request that it

(E) who request them to
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this is similar to a question in og 10, an old one.

in choice C, "rebuff greece authorities and its request" is partly wrong. "rebuff its request" is right. "rebuff authorities" is wrong because meaning is not complete. in spoken english we say " i refuse you" . in fact " i refuse you" is ellipsis of " I refuse your request". in writen english, " i refuse you" is wrong.

"them" in choice e and B is wrong.

in English english and traditional grammars, persons say " I request that you should learn english". this sentence is considered redundant because "request" contain the meaning of "should". so, American english and gmat english omit "should". choice A is gone. choice D is left
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Despite forceful legal pleas for the restitution of expropriated cultu 17 Jul 2022, 07:45
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ChrisLele
This question hinges on two things:

1) Who is doing the requesting?
2) What is the idiomatic form of 'requesting'


The answer to 1) is the Greek authorities - they want the British Museum return the Elgin marbles. So we need an answer choice that clearly shows this relationship. Based on this information let's eliminate.

A) requesting that

This answer suggests that the British are doing the requesting. Notice that the subject of the main clause is 'British museum.' The verb phrase "continue to rebuff" refers to British Museum. So when you place the gerund 'requesting' it refers back to British Museum, which is clearly wrong.

B) requesting them

This answer choice makes a similar error with the use of 'requesting.' Also, British Museum, the one who should return the Elgin marbles, is a singular entity and thus requires 'it' not 'them.'

C) its request

Here we are implying that the British museum is doing the requesting

For point 2) we want the construction, "request that..." This is an example of the subjunctive voice, which is a person/thing is desiring something. Typically words in this tense, such as request, require the use of 'that.'

With this knowledge, we can clearly get rid of (E) who request them to.

Notice that (E) also use 'them' when it should be using 'it'.

Therefore the answer is (D) who request that it. Note that the 'who' clearly modifies Greek authorities (remember the touch rule).

Hope that helped :)
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Hi, though I got this question right, I am trying to understand if "requesting" in choice A can really refer to the Museum or does it actually refers correctly to the authorities. My understanding is, a "verb-ing" modifier without a "," (comma) always refers to the immediate preceding noun. If that is true, the modifier "requesting" should really refer to the authorities. If not, I need to learn more. :)

Would appreciate an expert advice, thanks.

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MaitS
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Despite forceful legal pleas for the restitution of expropriated cultu 20 Aug 2023, 05:16
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Hi, In the option B,
Ing-modifier can modify the immediate previous noun I suppose, in which case this option could make sense too!
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ParamjitDasGMAT
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Despite forceful legal pleas for the restitution of expropriated cultu 20 Aug 2023, 11:12
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MaithilyS
Hi, In the option B,
Ing-modifier can modify the immediate previous noun I suppose, in which case this option could make sense too!
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Hi, I am happy to help.

This doesn't appear to be a very good question -- even in Option (D), the OA, there should be a comma prior to the 'who' to make it non-essential to the noun being modified; the noun 'the Greek authorities' has already been defined in the sentence. So, none of the options really seems to work. Please note that this is very different from the Official Question from which this question was created -- in the official question, we need to essentially modify/restrict/define the noun 'irate consumers' to make it clear to the reader which set of irate consumers we are talking about.

With this out of the way, 'requesting' is not quite correct in Option (B); 'Requesting' would expand most naturally to 'who were requesting', and referring to a particular, ongoing action at a past point in time isn't quite correct.

Hope this clarifies.

Regards,
Param
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