aniket16c wrote:
bmwhype2 wrote:
The Official Guide for GMAT Review, 11th Edition, 2005Practice QuestionQuestion No.: SC 35
Page: 642
Federal authorities involved in the investigation have found
the local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and are suspicious of strangers.
(A) the local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and are
(B) local witnesses to be difficult to locate, reticent, and are
(C) that local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and
(D) local witnesses are difficult to locate and reticent, and they are
(E) that local witnesses are difficult to locate and reticent, and they are
Dear experts,
daagh GMATNinjaTwo IanStewart generisI have a really fundamental doubt concerning parallelism:
If we ignore the egregious meaning error in option E and focus only on the parallelism, can "they" refer to local witnesses.
The structure of the sentence will be:
1. Federal authorities involved in the investigation have found that local witnesses are difficult to locate and reticent
2. Federal authorities involved in the investigation have found that they are suspicious of strangers.
So technically if we split the sentence in the above forms shouldn't "they" refer only to authorities?
Here's the full sentence with choice (E):
Quote:
Federal authorities involved in the investigation have found that local witnesses are difficult to locate and reticent, and they are suspicious of strangers.
We have two complete thoughts joined by a ", and":
1) Federal authorities involved in the investigation have found that local witnesses are difficult to locate and reticent.
2) [They] are suspicious of strangers.
Written like this, the second part ("they are suspicious of strangers") does not seem to be something that the federal authorities FOUND. Rather, it's a separate idea entirely.
And the "they" is, at best, unclear. While pronoun ambiguity isn't a good reason to eliminate an answer choice, there's no good interpretation here. If "they" refers to "federal authorities", we end up with an incoherent meaning.
And if "they" refers to the "witnesses" then it seems as though the federal authorities discovered two characteristics of these witnesses - they're "difficult" and "reticent" - and, oh yeah, here's this other thing about witnesses that is totally unrelated and maybe wasn't found by the authorities. It makes far more sense to remove the pronoun entirely, as (C) does, and convey the idea that the authorities have found that witnesses possess all three characteristics described.
The takeaway: we don't ever want to disregard a meaning issue, since grammar issues are, at heart, about clarity and logic.
I hope that answers your question!
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