MG1105
Hi
GMATNinja ,
GMATNinja2 Can you help on why the usage of who is incorrect in Option A. Who can refer to Oneida as well as the league.
Is pronoun ambiguity the only issue here? Or am I missing anything else as well.
Good question. I think you're right that the "who" modifier is the biggest issue in (A), but I'd go further than calling it ambiguous. On first read, it sounds as though "who" is referring to the "Five-Nation Iroquois League." But that doesn't make any sense, as that would mean that the entire league sided with the colonists, when the whole point of the sentence is that the other members of the league
didn't side with the colonists - it was just the Oneida.
Sure, if you reread the sentence you can figure out that "who" must be referring to the "Oneida," but, as others have noted, now we have the problem of "who" referring to the name of a tribe rather than, say, a person named Oneida. Definitively wrong? Maybe not, but at the very least, it's confusing.
But compare this with C:
Quote:
(C): The Oneida alone among the five-nation Iroquois League sided with the colonists...
Now it's crystal clear. No tribe other than the Oneida sided with the colonists. No confusing or illogical modifiers. Most importantly, this is definitively better than (A).
I hope that helps!