GMAT CLUB OLYMPICS: In a recent neurological study of the intraparieta

Hello, everyone. The crux of this question is its expressed meaning, with a healthy dose of phrase stacking or phrase-clause combining to boot.


Question: Can a relative clause "reach" back over a prepositional phrase to modify an earlier noun in the sentence? The answer is yes, and the reason is that sometimes it makes more sense to write the sentence that way. For those of you who may argue that an intraparietal sulcus cannot have participants, ask yourselves whether the alternative is any better:

In a recent study that had blind and sighted participants both of the intraparietal sulcus...

To my eye, the placement of both, combined with the prepositional phrase, muddles the picture, making it appear as though those same participants are engaging in something (perhaps an event?) known as the intraparietal sulcus. Of course, such an interpretation is nonsensical, but such a line of thought is easy to fall into when first reading the sentence. Which of the two iterations of the sentence is better, clearer? For my part, I think the original is easier to follow. Knowing what the study is about before encountering information on its participants just works better in this case. Someone else may have a different view, but the point is that grammar alone does not favor one sentence over the other.

Whichever side you take on this particular concern, you should think it strange to see both at the end of the description of participants. Although such usage is more common in certain dialects of English, it is not standard practice. On the GMAT™, I would expect to see a sentence that said, I bought both apples and oranges, not (a correct) one that said, I bought apples and oranges both. After all that discussion above, it comes down to a single word, really, as the reason we should see off this answer choice.


Similar to our previous discussion on relative clauses, here, it is worth pointing out that -ing modifiers can also "reach" over a prepositional phrase to modify an earlier noun. (Again, feel free to transpose the two elements to test for readability.) I cannot say that I see anything wholly incorrect in this answer choice. Do we need two instances of of to present a clear picture? Maybe not. But I would hang on to this one until a better option might come along.


Hmm, now we have to confront this both. Before, we argued that it would better be placed ahead of the participants being described, but now, with the word placed at the head, we get a confusing dual interpretation:

1) blind and sighted participants both participated in the study

2) participants who were both blind and sighted participated in the study

Blindness and sightedness should be thought of as mutually exclusive in this context, but the meaning is not clear at first glance, and when you have to pause to sort matters out, there is probably a better way to express the idea. Keep searching.


I have noticed a lot of trepidation in the community surrounding the with prepositional phrase. True, it is overused on the GMAT™, often incorporated into incorrect answer choices. But on the surface, what is wrong with saying a study with participants? Nothing at all. (Would you balk at a sentence that started, In a study with five participants...?) By dropping the problematic both, the sentence offers a clearer picture of who participated in the study. There may be a few naysayers who harbor doubts that the original sentence—with both—conveys the intended meaning. But only the non-underlined portion of the original sentence can be taken at face value. All the other pieces are negotiable. We have examined both from right to left, and it simply does not work in the sentence we are dealing with. This is the best option we have seen—neither debatable in its expressed meaning nor as stilted as (B)—with just one more to go.


We have switched back to a clause, just as we saw in the original sentence, but the confusing dual interpretation we encountered in (C) is still present. It is just as problematic now as it was then. By now, I hope you can get behind a different answer.

I know I did not discuss all the ins and outs of with above. The reason is that I like to adapt my understanding of a concept or tendency to the question at hand, to the context of a given sentence. If you want a more definitive take on the matter, here you go, the Cambridge Dictionary entry on the word. It is a source I trust and often link to in my posts. Happy reading.

- Andrew