In many of the world’s regions, increasing pressure on water resources

MyGuruStefan AjiteshArun daagh VeritasKarishma

I am not able to understand what the highlighted part means. Doesn't the question statement consists of two ICs joined by FANBOYS 'So' ?

Also the 'water resources' is a part of a prepositional phrase and how does it connects to/ impacts 'future supplies' in the 2nd IC?

If you can please help me with my above query?

Thanks
Saurabh

You cannot assume any outside knowledge from a sentence correction, so the only possible anteceding referent for "the supply" is the plural "water resources" even if it is part of a descriptor. I believe that should explain both of your questions, since basically as written "the supply" could refer to anything.
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There are three things in the list:
- expanding development,
- changes in climate,
- pollution

All three should be in parallel.

Also, if you use 'both', it needs to come after 'from', right before listing two elements. e.g. ... from both A and B ...
So the use of 'both from' in (A) and (B) is incorrect.

Only (D) has the three elements in parallel:
... from expanding development, changes in climate, and pollution...

Answer (D)
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Hi experts,

Isn't 'future supply.... going forward' redundant in the same sentence and hence we should ignore (A) and (C) for this reason as well ?

Parallelism

From xxxx,yyy to zzzz?

Please advise why the idiom "to" is not used in answer D?

Thanks

PS, An Obvious thing : To improve yourself in SC, REVIEW every mistake in every answer choice after you attempt a problem.

In many of the world’s regions, increasing pressure on water resources has resulted both from expanding development, changes in climate, and from pollution, so that the future supply in some of the more arid areas is a concern going forward.
Another example of parallelism here, the idiom is Both X and Y


A. both from expanding development, changes in climate, and from pollution, so that the future supply in some of the more arid areas is a concern going forward
Both from X,Y and from Z is incorrect.

B. both from expanding development or changes in climate, and pollution, so that future supplies in some of the more arid areas are a concern
Incorrect Y in the Idiom – Both X and Y. Y should start with a preposition.
Both X or Y is unidiomatic.

C. from expanding development, changes in climate, and also from pollution, so that the future supply in some of the more arid areas is a matter of concern going forward
Incorrect Idiom – X and also Y.

D. from expanding development, changes in climate, and pollution, so that future supplies in some of the more arid areas are a concern
Best of All.

E. from expansion of development, changes in climate, and from pollution, so that supplies in some of the more arid areas are a future concern
From X and from Y is unparallel.

Hi Sir, so you are saying the idiom - "from.....to.." the "to" is not necessary? (i.e. We have products ranging from birthday cards to handcrafted jewellery.

OR

the "from expanding development" is a noun phrase?
If Yes, can we form a noun phrase with the word "from"? if i'm not wrong "from" is a preposition, only adjective can modify noun and only adverb/adjective can modify adjective

[quote="AbdurRakib"]In many of the world’s regions, increasing pressure on water resources has resulted both from expanding development, changes in climate, and from pollution, so that the future supply in some of the more arid areas is a concern going forward.


A. both from expanding development, changes in climate, and from pollution, so that the future supply in some of the more arid areas is a concern going forward (both refers only two verbs or noun or phrase eg both A and B)

B. both from expanding development or changes in climate, and pollution, so that future supplies in some of the more arid areas are a concern (both refers only two verbs or noun or phrase eg both A and B)


C. from expanding development, changes in climate, and also from pollution, so that the future supply in some of the more arid areas is a matter of concern going forward ( for the sake of parallelism you either use preposition common for all or use separately for each)

D. from expanding development, changes in climate, and pollution, so that future supplies in some of the more arid areas are a concern

E. from expansion of development, changes in climate, and from pollution, so that supplies in some of the more arid areas are a future concern (same as C)

Errors
both A and B
Parallelism while using A, B, and C
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There are certainly cases when "from... to" make sense. For example:

• "I drove from New York to Boston."
• "The store sells everything from doughnuts to deep-fried candy bars."

But in other cases "from" is used by itself to indicate the source of something. For example:

• "A strong odor emanated from the deep-fried candy bar." - What was the source of the odor? The deep-fried candy bar.
• "Her success resulted from years of hard work." - What was the source of her success? Years of hard work.

That's basically what we have in choice (D): X resulted from Y, where Y is a list of 3 things: 1) expanding development, 2) changes in climate, and 3) pollution.

I hope that helps!
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In many of the world’s regions, increasing pressure on water resources has resulted both from expanding development, changes in climate, and from pollution, so that the future supply in some of the more arid areas is a concern going forward.


Expanding development ,changes in climate, pollution - these three are part of the list - hence usage of Both ....and is incorrect.

A. both from expanding development, changes in climate, and from pollution, so that the future supply in some of the more arid areas is a concern going forward - incorrect

B. both from expanding development or changes in climate, and pollution, so that future supplies in some of the more arid areas are a concern - same error as above

C. from expanding development, changes in climate, [color=#ff0000]and also from[/color] pollution, so that the future supply in some of the more arid areas is a matter of concern going forward

D. from expanding development, changes in climate, and pollution, so that future supplies in some of the more arid areas are a concern - looks good in every aspect

E. from expansion of development, changes in climate, and from pollution, so that supplies in some of the more arid areas are a future concern - future needs to modify supplies not concern - hence wrong

Hi GMATNinja VeritasKarishma

Isn't the question statement and the correct answer choice little awkward in construction?

It seems like there was an deliberate increase in pressure on water resources in order to generate concern regarding water supply in arid areas in future. Actually the three factors, let say X, Y and Z increased pressure on water resources and therefore future supply is now a concern in some areas. I am confused about the use of so that. IMO it would make sense to use therefore / hence / thus in place of so that.

Please correct me if I am wrong and help me crossing 700

Yes, 'so that' shows purpose but it also shows cause and effect relation. What follows 'so that' gives the effect statement.
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Both x and y is correct. But Both x and y for giving several reasons is not correct. A and B are eliminated.

and also from and from are not correct C and E are eliminated.

The correct answer is D.
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Hey AjiteshArun


I have a small confusion. While solving this question, I was thinking along the same lines.

However, after reading your posts, I realized that I had it the other way around.

expansion of what?= development
changes in what? = climate
= pollution
This is how I was thinking when I saw the options.

So is it that the phrase 'of development' is a prepositional phrase that modifies the preceding entity 'expansion' and the phrase 'in climate' is a prepositional phrase that modifies the preceding entity 'climate'?

I approached this question differently. The 'future supply' and 'going forward' seemed like a redundancy. If it is about the future supply, obviously the concern will be only for going forward, not today. Based on this split, I eliminated A and C.

E changes the meaning in a subtle way by saying 'future concern' - It means that this issue may or may not become a concern. It is not a concern that we have to think about today. This is not the original intention of the sentence.

B has unidiomatic combination of both-or-and.

Hence, the answer should be D,

Hi Vegita,

That is absolutely correct (I think you meant to say "the preceding entity 'changes'"). In expansion of development, of development is a prepositional phrase modifying expansion, and in changes in climate, in climate is a prepositional phrase modifying changes.

... resulted from (a) expansion of development, (b) changes in climate, and (c) from pollution...
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Can it be correct to use the construction[ BOTH X or Y AND Z ], meaning two things?
thank you !

In theory, that construction would make sense in a sentence like this one:

"An Old Fashioned cocktail contains both lemon or orange rind and rye whiskey."

• The cocktail contains two things: rind and whiskey.
• The "or" part tells us that we could have either of two different kinds of rind (lemon or orange).

Is this always wrong? Maybe not. But I think we can all agree that it's awfully confusing. You have to read the sentence a few times to be clear about what's happening.

I can't imagine seeing "BOTH X or Y AND Z" in a correct answer choice. Does that mean it's always wrong? Maybe not -- you always want to carefully consider the five unique options in front of you and think about what makes the most sense given the context of the specific question. It's not a great idea to try to boil GMAT SC down to a list of mechanical rules that can be applied blindly.

In this case, the "both X or Y and Z" construction in (B) is very confusing, and (D) is a much better option.

I hope that helps a bit!
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Q1) Why are we allowed to ignore adjective "expanding" but not preposition "from" ?

Q2) if we put preposition "from" before "changes in climate" in choice D would parallelism be correct?
because in D, since "changes in climate" lack a preposition, whereas, preceding and anteceding nouns have a preposition (from) it bugs the parallelism but if we add preposition to "changes in climate" it would fix the parallelism

Q3) in answer D, "expanding development" is a simple gerund (ı guess) however "changes in climate" and "pollution" are action noun. How is it possible that action noun be parallel with an simple gerund?