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555-605 Level|   Meaning/Logical Predication|   Parallelism|   Pronouns|   Subjunctive|                           
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor propos 07 Dec 2020, 23:24
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Quote:
Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city???s mayor proposed a nearly 17 percent reduction in the amount allocated the previous year to maintain the city???s major cultural institutions and to subsidize hundreds of local arts groups.


(A) proposed a nearly 17 percent reduction in the amount allocated the previous year to maintain the city???s major cultural institutions and to subsidize

(E) was proposing that the amount they were allocating be reduced by nearly 17 percent from the previous year for maintaining the city???s major cultural institutions and for the subsidization
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Request Expert Reply:
Is it wrong to use 'past continuous tense' here in the highlighted part?
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor propos 02 Jan 2021, 08:38
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor proposed a nearly 17 percent reduction in the amount allocated the previous year to maintain the city’s major cultural institutions and to subsidize hundreds of local arts groups.


(A) proposed a nearly 17 percent reduction in the amount allocated the previous year to maintain the city’s major cultural institutions and to subsidize
(correct and concise)
(B) proposed a reduction from the previous year of nearly 17 percent in the amount it was allocating to maintain the city’s major cultural institutions and for subsidizing (tense error; proposed is in the past tense whereas allocating is present continuous. Additionally, what does "it" refer to? )

(C) proposed to reduce, by nearly 17 percent, the amount from the previous year that was allocated for the maintenance of the city’s major cultural institutions and to subsidize ( parallelism error; the maintenance of and to subsidize are not parallel)


(D) has proposed a reduction from the previous year of nearly 17 percent of the amount it was allocating for maintaining the city’s major cultural institutions, and to subsidize (sounds like the amount is being removed from the previous year which doesn't make sense)

(E) was proposing that the amount they were allocating be reduced by nearly 17 percent from the previous year for maintaining the city’s major cultural institutions and for the subsidization (passive voice and same error as d)
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor propos 21 Feb 2021, 18:14
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Failed to catch the modifier in C.

Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor proposed a nearly 17 percent reduction in the amount allocated the previous year to maintain the city’s major cultural institutions and to subsidize hundreds of local arts groups.


(A) proposed a nearly 17 percent reduction in the amount allocated the previous year to maintain the city’s major cultural institutions and to subsidize CORRECT

(B) proposed a reduction from the previous year of nearly 17 percent in the amount it was allocating to maintain the city’s major cultural institutions and for subsidizing X

Meaning issue. The mayor did not propose a reduction FROM THE PREVIOUS YEAR of nearly 17 percent.

(C) proposed to reduce, by nearly 17 percent, the amount from the previous year that was allocated for the maintenance of the city’s major cultural institutions and to subsidize X

The previous year was not allocated for the maintenance of the city's major cultural institutions.

(D) has proposed a reduction from the previous year of nearly 17 percent of the amount it was allocating for maintaining the city’s major cultural institutions, and to subsidize X

Same issue as B)

(E) was proposing that the amount they were allocating be reduced by nearly 17 percent from the previous year for maintaining the city’s major cultural institutions and for the subsidization X

Same issue as B) and D).
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor propos 21 Feb 2021, 19:02
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor proposed a nearly 17 percent reduction in the amount allocated the previous year to maintain the city’s major cultural institutions and to subsidize hundreds of local arts groups.


(A) proposed a nearly 17 percent reduction in the amount allocated the previous year to maintain the city’s major cultural institutions and to subsidize
No remarks

(B) proposed a reduction from the previous year of nearly 17 percent in the amount it was allocating to maintain the city’s major cultural institutions and for subsidizing
parallelism error and pronoun it does not have antecedent

(C) proposed to reduce, by nearly 17 percent, the amount from the previous year that was allocated for the maintenance of the city’s major cultural institutions and to subsidize
meaning error

(D) has proposed a reduction from the previous year of nearly 17 percent of the amount it was allocating for maintaining the city’s major cultural institutions, and to subsidize
Same as B

(E) was proposing that the amount they were allocating be reduced by nearly 17 percent from the previous year for maintaining the city’s major cultural institutions and for the subsidization
mayor is singular
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor propos 21 Apr 2021, 08:31
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GmatNinja wrote: "“City’s” is possessive, and as far as I can tell, a non-possessive pronoun can’t refer back to a possessive antecedent."

Is it correct that this has changed?
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor propos 24 Apr 2021, 07:06
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GmatNinja wrote: "“City’s” is possessive, and as far as I can tell, a non-possessive pronoun can’t refer back to a possessive antecedent."

Is it correct that this has changed?
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Yup, it seems that the GMAT doesn't stick to this "rule" 100% of the time. See this official question for another example in which a pronoun correctly refers back to a possessive antecedent.

In all honesty, I don't think that anything has changed, exactly. We often make the mistake of thinking that the GMAT has some list of absolute rules for sentence correction, and that clearly isn't the case. These sorts of things ("as far as I can tell, a non-possessive pronoun can't refer back to a possessive antecedent") come from our best efforts to spot patterns in official SC questions. Frankly, I made a mistake by implying that this is a rule -- it isn't. It can be legitimately confusing for a non-possessive pronoun to refer to a possessive antecedent (and that's the case in the current thread), but it's not a definite rule.

I also made some edits to my explanation above to make that distinction clearer.

I hope that helps a bit!
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor propos 30 Mar 2022, 13:07
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This is one of my favorite, nasty GMAT parallelism questions. We discussed it in last Wednesday’s verbal chat (Vyshak ’s always-awesome transcript is available here), but it’s worth repeating this one for a QOTD, since it really gets into the meat of what parallelism really is.

Quote:
(A) proposed a nearly 17 percent reduction in the amount allocated the previous year to maintain the city’s major cultural institutions and to subsidize
Something has to be parallel to the phrase “to subsidize”, since that’s what follows the parallelism trigger “and.” We really only have one candidate: “to maintain.”

So we have: “… the city’s mayor proposed a… reduction in the amount allocated the previous year…

    1) to maintain the city’s major cultural institutions
    and 2) to subsidize hundreds of local arts groups

And that makes sense. Let’s keep (A).

Quote:
(B) proposed a reduction from the previous year of nearly 17 percent in the amount it was allocating to maintain the city’s major cultural institutions and for subsidizing
I don’t like the parallelism as much here. The phrase “for subsidizing” follows the parallelism trigger “and”, and I’m not sure what’s parallel to “for subsidizing.” I guess “to maintain”? They’re both prepositional phrases, but the parallelism seems much better in (A).

Plus, we have a pronoun issue. “It” needs to refer to a singular noun, and the closest singular is "year" -- and that doesn't make sense. So what about the next-closest singular noun? Well, that's "reduction" -- and that doesn't make sense, either.

If we keep going, we'll eventually see “city’s", and now we're on murky ground. It it an absolute rule that a non-possessive pronoun ("it") can NEVER refer back to a possessive noun ("city's")? No. (Full disclosure: I've changed my tune on this, and overstated things in this old YouTube webinar on GMAT pronouns -- oops. :? ) The real issue is that the pronoun is awfully confusing: the possessive ("city's") isn't the most obvious place to look, and it's always a long way from the pronoun. The pronoun might not be WRONG, exactly, but it's not awesome.

Notice that (A) avoids the pronoun altogether. That's much nicer. Since (A) gives us a clearly superior alternative, (B) is out.

Quote:
(C) proposed to reduce, by nearly 17 percent, the amount from the previous year that was allocated for the maintenance of the city’s major cultural institutions and to subsidize
This looks parallel, right? “To subsidize” is parallel with “to reduce.” That sounds fine.

But wait: that really doesn’t work. “Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor proposed…

    1) to reduce… the amount from the previous year that was allocated for the maintenance of the city’s major cultural institutions
    and 2) to subsidize hundreds of local arts groups

Nope, that can’t be right. Look at #2 again: “Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor proposed… to subsidize hundreds of local arts groups.” No, s/he probably didn’t. It’s grammatically parallel, but it’s also illogical. As we said in our long-winded Beginner’s Guide to SC, meaning can be pretty darned important. (C) is gone.

Quote:
(D) has proposed a reduction from the previous year of nearly 17 percent of the amount it was allocating for maintaining the city’s major cultural institutions, and to subsidize
(D) has the same pronoun problem as (B). And “to subsidize” isn’t really parallel to anything at all. (D) can be eliminated.

Quote:
(E) was proposing that the amount they were allocating be reduced by nearly 17 percent from the previous year for maintaining the city’s major cultural institutions and for the subsidization
“They” has no antecedent, and “for the subsidization” is awfully messy. (E) is out, and (A) is the last answer standing.
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Hello.Mr.Ninja,

in C why did you choose to make (1) "to reduce....." parallel to (2) "to subsidize...." ?

Isnt doing that what changed the meaning of the sentence...?

I was thinking make (2) "to subsidize" parallel with (1) "for the maintenance" ....

if you do that, then it could work right? since the meaning doesn't change to the mayor actually further subsidizing groups instead of reducing costs.



Also ...The OG book explanation for this problem for answer choice (b) states that "to maintaining the …" CANNOT be parallel with "for subsidizing..."

Why is that? I thought they were both prepositional phrases...?


Lastly, for answer choice (b) why can the 'it' not refer back to the 'mayor'....? wont it make sense then?

Thank you!
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor propos 31 Mar 2022, 22:57
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"To maintain" can't be parallel to "for subsidizing" because they are different kinds of sentence elements. "To maintain" is an infinitive verb, while "for subsidizing" is a modifier (prepositional phrase). For the same reason, we can't do what you propose for C and make "for the maintenance" parallel with "to subsidize."

As for the mayor, people can't be described by "it." "It" can only describe (singular) things, while "they" can describe (plural) people or things. In real English, most of us will also use "they" to refer to a single person of unspecified gender, but as far as we've seen, the GMAT is slow and only uses "they" to refer to plural nouns.
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor propos 01 Apr 2022, 06:56
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Hello GMATNinja, egmat,

Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor proposed a nearly 17 percent reduction in the amount allocated the previous year to maintain the city’s major cultural institutions and to subsidize hundreds of local arts groups.


(D) has proposed a reduction from the previous year of nearly 17 percent of the amount it was allocating for maintaining the city’s major cultural institutions, and to subsidize

Rest of the sentence is in past tense, doesn't make sense to say 'has proposed' --> present tense
Can this be the reason for elimination?

Regards,
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor propos 05 Apr 2022, 07:41
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niyatisuri
Hello GMATNinja, egmat,

Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor proposed a nearly 17 percent reduction in the amount allocated the previous year to maintain the city’s major cultural institutions and to subsidize hundreds of local arts groups.


(D) has proposed a reduction from the previous year of nearly 17 percent of the amount it was allocating for maintaining the city’s major cultural institutions, and to subsidize

Rest of the sentence is in past tense, doesn't make sense to say 'has proposed' --> present tense
Can this be the reason for elimination?

Regards,
Show more
This one's debatable. On one hand, we can use the phrase "has proposed" to refer to a past proposal. For example:

    "Tim has proposed draconian new measures to limit his children's access to gummy bears."

Here, it clearly wouldn't make any sense for Tim to be continuously proposing the new measures from the past into the present. But occasionally the present perfect tense can convey that an action happened in the past, but still has an impact on the present. In other words, Tim may have proposed in the past, but the measures are still in effect. That's okay.

On the other hand, if we have the option of using the simple past, "proposed," why wouldn't we just go with the simpler construction, as long as it makes sense? Personally, that would be my preference.

That said, I wouldn't treat "has proposed" as a concrete error here. Instead, I'd use the "it" with no referent, and the faulty parallelism of "and to subsidize" to get rid of (D).

For more on verb tenses, check out this crusty old video.

I hope that helps!
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor propos 08 Apr 2022, 12:47
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Hello.Mr.Ninja,

in C why did you choose to make (1) "to reduce....." parallel to (2) "to subsidize...." ?

Isnt doing that what changed the meaning of the sentence...?

I was thinking make (2) "to subsidize" parallel with (1) "for the maintenance" ....

if you do that, then it could work right? since the meaning doesn't change to the mayor actually further subsidizing groups instead of reducing costs.



Also ...The OG book explanation for this problem for answer choice (b) states that "to maintaining the …" CANNOT be parallel with "for subsidizing..."

Why is that? I thought they were both prepositional phrases...?


Lastly, for answer choice (b) why can the 'it' not refer back to the 'mayor'....? wont it make sense then?

Thank you!
Show more
Notice how easy it is to follow the parallelism in choice (A): "... reduction in the amount allocated the previous year to maintain the city’s major cultural institutions and to subsidize hundreds of local arts groups."

  • We have two infinitives ("to maintain" an "to subsidize"), and both make perfect sense when tied back to "the amount allocated the previous year."
  • The reader expects the two infinitives ("to maintain" and "to subsidize") to be parallel, and that natural interpretation turns out to be perfectly logical.
  • In other words, the structure of the sentence suggests a perfectly logical meaning -- and that's good, clear writing.

Compare that to (C): "the city’s mayor proposed to reduce... and to subsidize..."

  • Again, the reader expects the two infinitives to be parallel. But the two infinitives here ("to reduce" and "to subsidize") don't make any sense in parallel.
  • So now the reader has to go back to the drawing board. Even if "for the maintenance" could be parallel to "to subsidize," the reader would have to do a lot of work to figure out what's going on -- and that's bad writing.

Regardless, "for the maintenance" and "to subsidize" can't actually be parallel here. Yes, "to" can function as a preposition (i.e. "Tim went to the bank.")... but "subsidize" certainly isn't the object of the preposition here. As explained by Dmitry, "to subsidize" is an infinitive and is not grammatically parallel to the prepositional phrase, "for the maintenance."

As for choice (B), it's a similar story. If you have to do mental gymnastics to make one choice work while another works quite naturally, the latter is probably a better choice. At the very least, the pronoun in (B) is confusing, and (A) avoids that confusion entirely -- so that's one vote for (A) over (B). Also, as described in this post, the parallelism is better in (A).

Your job isn't to look at (B) and ask whether it's 100%, undeniably incorrect based on some rigid set of grammar rules. Instead, your job is to compare the five options and pick the one that creates the best sentence. In this case, that's clearly (A) once you compare them.

I hope that helps a bit!
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor propos 30 Jul 2022, 01:26
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Hi GMATNinja,

Is Option (B) not illogical?

Question Text: Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor proposed a nearly 17 percent reduction in the amount allocated the previous year to maintain the city’s major cultural institutions and to subsidize hundreds of local arts groups.

Option B: proposed a reduction from the previous year of nearly 17 percent in the amount it was allocating to maintain the city’s major cultural institutions and for subsidizing

Here isn't "proposed a reduction from the previous year" incorrect framing?

Thanks.

PS: I also think it is safe to say that you have hijacked the top answer spot for 95% OG Questions.

-Aum
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor propos 03 Jun 2023, 00:02
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I agree that choice A is the best option. I'm struggling to understand why the word "from" isn't required in choice A to clarify the sentence.
I currently read it as "they are reducing the amount proposed last year" instead of the 17% reduction being for the current year.
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor propos 08 Jun 2023, 07:05
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I agree that choice A is the best option. I'm struggling to understand why the word "from" isn't required in choice A to clarify the sentence.

I currently read it as "they are reducing the amount proposed last year" instead of the 17% reduction being for the current year.
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For starters, as long as you agree that (A) is the best option, you've done your job here!

With that said, the distinction you're making isn't really too consequential:

  • There's only one "amount" mentioned in (A): the amount allocated the previous year to maintain {...} and to subsidize {...}.
  • So some amount of money was allocated to maintain some stuff and to subsidize some other stuff. Let's say that the amount was $500 million.
  • When was that money allocated? The year BEFORE the mayor made a proposal (i.e. the "previous year").
  • And what was the proposal? To reduce that amount (the $500 million that was allocated in the previous year) by nearly 17% (down to, say, $415.2 million).

We know that the proposal happened the year AFTER the initial allocation. And any reduction has to come after the mayor makes the proposal. So the timing of the events is clear enough as written.

I hope that helps!
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor propos 30 Jul 2023, 08:34
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GMATNinja

In the explanation given by you above you have mentioned the following

"Is it an absolute rule that a non-possessive pronoun ("it") can NEVER refer back to a possessive noun ("city's")? No. (Full disclosure: I've changed my tune on this, "

So, from this can I say if a non-possessive pronoun such as "it" refers back to a possessive noun, then it is no more considered an error ?

Also can you please provide one official example where a non-possessive pronoun is referring to a possessive noun and it is a correct answer.
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Faced with an estimated $2 billion budget gap, the city’s mayor propos 08 Aug 2023, 08:00
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GMATNinja

In the explanation given by you above you have mentioned the following

"Is it an absolute rule that a non-possessive pronoun ("it") can NEVER refer back to a possessive noun ("city's")? No. (Full disclosure: I've changed my tune on this, "

So, from this can I say if a non-possessive pronoun such as "it" refers back to a possessive noun, then it is no more considered an error ?

Also can you please provide one official example where a non-possessive pronoun is referring to a possessive noun and it is a correct answer.
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This post should answer your question, and there's a link (in the quoted text by Brego) to an official example. Enjoy, and let us know if you have any follow-up questions!
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