For well over a century, visitors to Yellowstone National Park have looked out over protective barriers and saw Old Faithful spewing up large amounts of water, whose regularity could be used to set a clock.

a) saw Old Faithful spewing up large amounts of water, whose regularity could be used to set a - Incorrect parallelism - have looked over....and have saw....is incorrect
b) saw Old Faithful spewing up large amounts of water, whose regularity was used to set a - Incorrect parallelism - have looked over....and have saw....is incorrect
c) saw Old Faithful spewing up large amounts of water, with a regularity that could be used to set a - Incorrect parallelism - have looked over....and have saw....is incorrect
d) seen Old Faithful spewing up large amounts of water, with a regularity that could be used to set a - Incorrect meaning - this comes across as if regularity is a thing that can be used to set a clock
e) seen Old Faithful spewing up large amounts of water, whose regularity could be used to set a - CORRECT

Isn't 'whose' modifying water? And whose always refer to person. This makes 'E' wrong.

Is my reasoning correct?

Posted from my mobile device

himanshurajawat

Whose is the possessive version of the relative pronoun of who. Which and that, the relative pronouns for animals and objects do not have an equivalent so "whose" can be used here as well, such as in "the movie, whose name I can't remember." Whose is appropriate for inanimate objects in all cases except the interrogative case, where "whose" is in the beginning of a sentence. In this case "whose" must refer to a living being.

Hi AcetheGMAT2019,

Thank you for replying.

"Whose is appropriate for inanimate objects in all cases except the interrogative case, where "whose" is in the beginning of a sentence. In this case "whose" must refer to a living being."
Can you provide me with an example for this case?

Posted from my mobile device

Hi himanshurajawat

The one instance in which whose cannot be used for an inanimate object should be mentioned—and that is in the interrogative case. When whose appears in the beginning of a question, such as "Whose keys are these?," it can only function as a pronoun for a person or animal.
If you are asking which container a lid belonged to, you would not say, "Whose lid is this?," because whose in such instances can only refer to a living being. Rather, you would say something like "Which container does this lid belong to?"
You should also pause to ask yourself the important question, "Why am I speaking to containers in the first place?"

Firstly, what comes after and should be parallel to what comes before. have takes the past participle form, not simple past. So, saw is incorrect. A, B, C gone. We are left with D & E.
In E, what is whose referring to? <thinking smiley > That was a genuine question I had because I couldn't understand the sentence at first go. whose is a possessive pronoun. So, it basically tells us who is the owner or doer. whose could potentially refer to water? But eh, that doesn't make much sense!

with a regularity .. on the other hand imparts meaning to the sentence -> water was being spewed with some regularity (uniform intervals). Ok, so, it tells us how the water was being spewed.

So, E is gone. D makes sense. The answer is D IMO.

Cheers
AA

Looking at parallelism "and" is the indicator.

have looked out over protective barriers and have saw...
above statement cannot be true. so A,B and C are gone

out of D and E:
E tells the following:
whose regularity could be used to set a clock.
replacing whose with water's--> we get
water's regularity could be used to set a clock.

Actually, Yellow Stone is a National Park in which there is a geyser called Old faithful. Old Faithful erupts every 35 to 120 minutes for 1.5 to 5 minutes.
Basically, it is the regularity of the geyser(or spewing) that is used to set the clock and not the water itself. so, E dos not make sense.

D it is.

I already typed most of the text and saw anud33p has similar line of thought.

For well over a century, visitors to Yellowstone National Park have looked out over protective barriers and saw Old Faithful spewing up large amounts of water, whose regularity could be used to set a clock.

a) saw Old Faithful spewing up large amounts of water, whose regularity could be used to set a
b) saw Old Faithful spewing up large amounts of water, whose regularity was used to set a
c) saw Old Faithful spewing up large amounts of water, with a regularity that could be used to set a

eliminate A, B, and C - Wrong verb tense used.

d) seen Old Faithful spewing up large amounts of water, with a regularity that could be used to set a
e) seen Old Faithful spewing up large amounts of water, whose regularity could be used to set a

between D and E - D suggests the Old Faithful spews water with something that could be uSed to set a clock.
whereas, E uses the pronoun whose, which may modify people or things (pronoun - who, on the other hand, can only modify people)

Hence, IMO E

Kaplan official solution

Read the Original Sentence Carefully, Looking for Errors:

There are two main problems with the sentence as it is written. First, it uses the wrong conjugation of the verb “to see.” The second problem is that the clause at the end of the sentence begins with "whose," but does not refer to the noun immediately in front of the comma.

Scan and Group the Answer Choices:

Choices (A), (B), and (C) all suffer from the first problem. Choices (A), (B), and (E) all suffer from the second problem.

Eliminate Wrong Answer Choices:

Choices (A) and (B) can be eliminated because both incorrectly use "saw" and also incorrectly use "whose." Any time a clause begins with “who,” “whom,” or “whose,” this clause needs to be as close as possible to the noun that it modifies. In this case, the clause beginning with “whose” appears to modify the noun “water,” but logic tells us this is not the author's intent. The correct answer choice will either relocate the modifying clause or find a different solution to the problem altogether.

Choice (E) can likewise be eliminated for its incorrect placement of the "whose" clause.

Choice (C) can be eliminated for its incorrect use of "saw."

Since only Answer Choice (D) avoids both problems, it is correct.
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