GMAT Ninja SC Expert - Ask Me Anything about GMAT SC and Grammar

Hi! GMATNinja

I have already watched one of your videos and I have a doubt regarding MEANING.

Today's technology allows manufacturers to make small cars more fuel-efficient now than at any time in their production history.

(A) small cars more fuel-efficient now than at any time in their
(B) small cars that are more fuel-efficient than they were at any time in their
(C) small cars that are more fuel-efficient than those at any other time in
(D) more fuel-efficient small cars than those at any other time in their
(E) more fuel-efficient small cars now than at any time in

In the video you finally has chosen C because it lacks the final "their" and hence it has more sense. My problem is that I was able to see that difference in meaning but I have chosen A as I have thought that the abscense of "their" slightly changes the intended meaning.

So, do you have any tip to know when do we have to be faithful to the initial intended meaning of choice A or, on the contrary, choose the answer that has more sense, like C in this case.

Thanks for your help!

Sure! Take another look at (D): "due to the economy's continued strength, analysts..."

The phrase "due to _____" always modifies a noun. So this construction suggests that the analysts are due to the economy's strength! That doesn't make any sense.

"Because" on the other hand, can modify an action or a whole clause. Here's (A) again:

"...because of the economy's continued strength, analysts have been predicting for weeks that the target will be raised again..."

Now the analysts have been predicting something because of the economy's strength. Perfectly logical.

I hope that helps!

A prepositional phrase can be either a noun modifier or a verb modifier, but not both at the same time. (You could write a sentence, theoretically, in which it wasn't clear what role the modifier was playing, but that's an ambiguity problem, not an instance of a modifier doing more than one thing.)

In the example you gave, "She placed the cat on the couch," "on the couch" seems to be describing where the cat was placed (adverbial modifier), rather than differentiating this cat from other cats that were not on the couch (noun modifier). It would be really confusing if "on the couch" just modified the noun "cat": if the cat she placed was the one on the couch, rather than the one in the kitchen, we'd still be left not knowing where she placed the cat. So this one makes sense as adverbial modifier.

However, if I write, "She aimed her water pistol at the cat on the couch," now "on the couch" seems to be describing the cat. She aimed at the cat on the couch as opposed to the one clinging to the ceiling. "On the couch" is a noun modifier here.

But, if I wrote something like, "She fed the cat on the couch," now we have that ambiguity problem, as either interpretation makes sense. Perhaps she was doing the feeding on the couch. Or maybe it was the cat on the couch she was feeding, rather than the cat in the kitchen. Without context, there's no way to know what the author intended. This isn't definitively wrong, but it's problematic in the context of GMAT SC.

I hope that helps!

Good question! Generally speaking, the relevant time period will be the one designated in the clause that the verb appears in. For example:

"This morning Tim promised his wife that he would feed his children three nutritious meals today, but by early evening, it was clear that he had fed them nothing but a handful of Cheetos dipped in ketchup."

"Early evening" designates the time period. Because Tim fed his kids Cheetos before the early evening, and the early evening was in the past, "had fed" is correct here. The fact that there's another time period mentioned in a different clause is irrelevant.

Same deal here:

"By 1920, over-fishing and the proliferation of milldams and culverts...had reduced landings to less than four million pounds."

"By 1920" is an adverbial modifier specifying the time period for the action. Because the action, "reduced" happened before 1920, which is also in the past, it's appropriate to write "had reduced" here.

Takeaway: Don't overthink past perfect usage. If you see "had", all you're asking is yourself is whether the action in question took place before something else in the past. If it did, "had" is acceptable.

I hope that helps!

(D) has a meaning problem. "The damage of their natural resources," makes it sound as though the natural resources are causing the damage, or worse, are the damage themselves! That doesn't make sense. It's far more logical to write that the damage is happening to the natural resources. This is what we find in (A), which is the correct answer.

I hope that helps!

Sure! Take another look at the relevant portion of (D):

"The Color Purple, which was published in 1982 and which, winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, brought her the widest acclaim..."

Notice that we have two clauses modifying "The Color Purple": 1) which was published in 1982 and 2) which brought her the widest acclaim. But there's no main verb for the "Color Purple" itself! (It's confusing because a long VERB-ing modifier comes in between the second "which" and "brought." This is intentional. The GMAT can be mean.)

Because this part of the sentence lacks a main verb, it's a sentence fragment. And that's a huge problem, because now the sentence doesn't have an independent clause at all. So (D) is very wrong.

I hope that helps!

Good question! Often, when "as" is used to compared two actions, one of the actions will be implied. For example:

Tim claims that he could run as fast as Usain Bolt [runs], but simply chooses not to.

Notice that Tim is comparing how fast he runs with how fast Usain bolt runs, but the second action didn't have to be stated explicitly. We could write, "Tim runs as fast as Usain Bolt," or "Tim runs as fast as Usain Bolt does." Either is fine, because the meaning is clear.

Same thing in the Manhattan example:

"As in the previous case, the judge took an early break."

"In the previous case" is a prepositional phrase that seems to be modifying an unstated action, so the gist of the sentence is: "As [he had] in the previous case, the judge took an early break." Effectively, we're comparing what the judge had done in the previous case to what he did afterwards.

This kind of construction does show up occasionally on the GMAT, but don't drive yourself crazy looking for unstated actions. Instead, just ask yourself if what the sentence seems to convey is clear and logical compared to the alternatives.

I hope that helps!

I'm not sure that I'm interpreting your question correctly, but I'll give this a shot anyway!

If we add a bit more to your example, we might have the following:

"Hundreds of complete libraries of books on primate physiology were destroyed by gorilla attacks last month."

All of those phrases beginning with "of" are just modifiers, so they can't be the grammatical subject of the sentence. In this case, "hundreds" is the grammatical subject, and that's obviously plural -- so we would use the plural verb "were".

I'm not sure if this took care of the doubts, but I hope this helps somebody out there!

GMATNinja

Looks like you are on a roll today

It is so good to see you posting your helpful replies to so many questions across the forum!

Haha, thank you, TheNightKing! Fall is peak GMAT season, and life has been utter mayhem, especially with that crazy series of nine live videos I did in less than a month. So in a lot of cases, I'm just catching up on things I should have answered months ago.

I've particularly neglected this thread, sadly. If anybody is wondering: if I haven't answered your question yet, it's not because I've forgotten! I'm still here sometimes, I swear.

Hey GMATNinja,
I am not really sure how the "rather than" is used. There are two questions with seemingly contradictory official answers. The first question is this:

Although Governor Sam Houston was averse to abolition, he adamantly opposed Texas's insurrection and secession from the Union; as a result, he decided to resign from office instead of pledging allegiance to the Confederacy, the legality of which he refused to recognize.

A) Union; as a result, he decided to resign from office instead of pledging allegiance to the Confederacy, the legality of which he refused to recognize
B) Union; as a result, he decided to resign from office rather than to pledge allegiance to the Confederacy, the legality of which he refused to recognize
C) Union; and, as a result, deciding to resign from office instead of pledging allegiance to the Confederacy, which he refused to recognize as legal
D) Union; as a result, he decided to resign from office rather than pledge allegiance to the Confederacy, the legality of which he refused to recognize
E) Union, however he decided to resign from office instead of pledging allegiance to the Confederacy, the legality of which he refused to recognize

The answer provided for this question is (D).
One of the top rated comments on gmatclub mentions that "to" can't appear after a "rather than" and that we use always the bare infinitive after the "rather than;" the "to" after "rather than" is dropped.


There is a similar question I'd solved in the past wherein the "to -- " form followed the "rather than" and it was the correct choice there. So either that question is wrong or there's some more nuance to the rule.
It's this Kaplan question (I can't post the link here coz apparently you need a number of posts to be able to post links):

During and immediately after the California gold rush, the way for a merchant to generate the most profit was to move a limited amount of scarce goods to San Francisco as quickly as possible, rather than to carry larger loads more slowly, determining the design of the clipper ship.

A) to carry larger loads more slowly, determining
B) to carry larger loads more slowly, a situation that determined
C) carry larger loads more slowly, which determined
D) slowly carry larger loads which determined
E) carrying larger loads more slowly, and this was a situation in determining

Here, (B) is the right option even though we have "rather than" preceding "to carry."


What's going on here?

I don't think you'll like my answer much, but those two questions have one very important thing in common: they're both non-official questions. More a decade ago, GMAC said that it was spending up to $3000 developing each GMAT question, and it's likely that the cost is much higher now. Even the very best test-prep companies can't possibly compete with that, and non-official verbal questions are often very deeply flawed. So I wouldn't lose much sleep over these.

But should you worry about anything with the phrase "rather than"? I really don't think there are any rules that you need to know about that particular phrase. It's always going to indicate a contrast of some sort, as long as you can think through the logic of that contrast, you should be fine on the GMAT. And I wouldn't waste any more of your precious study time on it.

I hope this helps!

As always, I try to stick with official GMAT questions on this particular thread, so I'll pass on addressing these two questions. But I do highly, highly recommend reading some of Atul Gawande's books -- he's a really interesting fellow.

Yeah, this is a sticky issue, just because there really aren't any firm rules for whether you need to repeat a certain phrase when you have a comparison such as this one.

Check out this post, this post, and this post for more on the issue of when it's OK to omit words. I wish that I could give you foolproof formulas for this sort of thing, but in a lot of cases, you just have to ask yourself whether the omission creates an unclear or illogical meaning in some way.

I wouldn't worry too much about this particular question, though -- a lot of the SC questions tagged as "1000 Series" are pretty dubious, and I don't think they're necessarily from an official source.

I hope this helps a bit!

I'm not 100% sure that this question is really from an official source -- the "1000 Series" questions are pretty dodgy.

But for whatever it's worth: in (C), we have "Diderot’s factual Encyclopedia and his friend Voltaire’s fictional Candide..." I'm assuming that your doubt is about the pronoun "his"? There's no problem there at all: "his" clearly refers back to "Diderot's", so that gives us "Diderot's factual Encyclopedia and Diderot's friend Voltaire’s fictional Candide..." Granted, that's a mouthful since there are two possessive nouns in the same phrase, but there's nothing wrong with it: Diderot had a friend named Voltaire, and that guy wrote a work of fiction called Candide.

(I think somebody made me read Candide in high school. I have absolutely zero memory of it. )

So there's nothing to worry about, but let me know if I'm misinterpreting your question. I hope this helps!

Nope, this is a sentence fragment. "Rushing" is a noun here (also known as a gerund if you like grammar jargon), and it seems to be the subject of the sentence. Trouble is, the subject "rushing" never actually performs any action at all.

For this to be correct, the sentence would need a verb. For example:

"Rushing the field during a football game is embarrassing if you happen to be wearing a leopard-print bikini."

Now the sentence is OK. Even if the image is slightly disturbing.

For more on the various forms of "-ing" words, check out this article.

I hope this helps!

Ah, I think I see the confusion!

There's a persistent myth that answer choice (A) is somehow special, because we want to preserve the intended meaning of that original sentence. That's not correct at all. You're trying to find the answer choice that (1) is free of grammar and usage errors, and (2) has the most LOGICAL meaning.

If answer choice (C) is error-free and conveys a more reasonable meaning than answer choice (A), then (C) is your answer -- and there's no reason to be "faithful" to (A) at all.

I hope this helps a bit!

Here's the full sentence again, with (B) inserted into it:
The word "that" appears twice in the sentence, but I assume that you're concerned about the phrase in bold above? In that particular phrase, the portion beginning with "that" describes the argument -- not the emotions.

In other words, the sentence is telling us that recent studies support a certain argument. What's the argument? The argument is that emotions are social phenomena that are inseparable from bodily response. (The second phrase beginning with "that" -- "that are inseparable from bodily response" -- just describes the social phenomena.)

I hope this helps!