In the Northern Heights area, Italian and Slavic pride in

Question

In the Northern Heights area,  Italian and Slavic pride in their cultures give rise to a conflict  with the leveling tendency of the Neighborhood Association, which favors unanimity of outlook.

A. Italian and Slavic pride in their cultures give rise to a conflict 
B. the pride of Italians and Slavs in their cultures conflicts
C. the pride of Italians and Slavs in their cultures give rise to conflict 
D. the cultural pride of Italians and of Slavs gives rise to conflict 
E. the cultural pride of the Italians and Slavs in their culture conflicts

i know the correct answer but could not understand why its

MichaelS · Accepted Answer

None of these answers is quite GMAT style, but here's my take:

Although the MGMAT approach rightly emphasizes working from splits (differences among the answer choices), sometimes a feature of the original sentence signals a grammatical issue. For instance, parallel markers such as  and  signal an issue with parallelism, and the good test taker picks that up even before she sees the answer choices. The pronouns  it ,  its ,  they ,  them , and  their  are another sort of signal; when the sentence includes one of these pronouns, you will probably find a problem with pronoun reference.

To what should the pronoun  their  refer?  Italians and Slavs . But In A we find the adjectives  Italian  and  Slavic , rather than the noun  Italians and Slavs . Eliminate A.

Let's look at the splits next. What is an obvious difference among the answer choices? Well, there's  culture /  cultural . I'm not eager to start with that split, because it looks to signal an issue with concision, and I want to consider grammar and meaning before considering concision.

I don't see any better options, though, so let's start with  culture / cultural . I would eliminate only E here, because it uses both, and so is redundant. I think that  cultural pride  and  pride in their culture  are precisely the same thing. I mildly prefer the adjective  cultural  to the noun  culture , but I don't think either is really awkward, so I need to look for some other issue. (By the way, a noun/adjective choice could be a choice between two very different meanings; stubborn pride is not pride in their stubbornness. I just don't think that there's any real difference in the present example.)

Among the remaining answers B, C, and D there is a split between  pride  and  the pride . The  the  is necessary here, so eliminate C.

Finally, between B and D, B misuses the verb  conflicts .  Conflicts  isn't transitive, it doesn't take an object. You can conflict  with  something, but you can't conflict something directly. Eliminate B.

That leaves D, which according to your note is not the official answer. Could you have misread the answer key? Could you have mistranscribed the question? If that really is the OA, does Magoosh provide an explanation consistent with that OA, or might it just be a typo?

Salsanousi · Answer

Here is my take on the question:

A- Italian and Slavic  pride  in their cultures  give  rise to a conflict  (The subject Pride is singular and does NOT agree with the verb give) 
B- the  pride  of Italians and Slavs in their cultures  conflicts   (Pride agrees with conflicts ) 
C- the  pride  of Italians and Slavs in their cultures  give  rise to conflict  (The exact same reason as answer choice A) 
D- the cultural pride  of  Italians and  of  Slavs gives rise to conflict  (Redundant use of "the preposition of") 
E- the  cultural  pride of  the  Italians and Slavs in their  culture  conflicts  (Redundant use of the word cultural/culture as well as using the word "the" Italians making it sound like a specific group of Italians rather than Italians in general)

I hope the above clarifies everything. Good luck!

dexerash · Answer

I also marked D here..but OA says B :S

bschooladmit · Answer

Good one Michael !! I got confused between b & c. Rejected blindly b because cultures conflicts (sub is pride

) should pay more attention! Posted from my mobile device

thevenus · Answer

i chose (c) but how can it end with "the" because later in continuation the sentence is starting with "with"(after the underline). i guess that was a typo

guialain · Answer

General perception is that the question is not well presented.
the Layout is really uncomfortable.

Additionnally, Option B seems to have a typo. "the" at the end.
This changes the game.

broall · Answer

Corrected typo in choice B. According to resource I searched, OA is B.

arvind910619 · Answer

The subject of the sentence should be Pride which is very awkwardly placed in A also the subject is singular so we need a singular verb.

B is correct choice concise and we do need gives rise to convey the intended meaning .

C has incorrect SVA gives rise to conflicts with is unidiomatic and wordy .

D repeats the error of A and C combined.

E has redundancy error.

jain9ashish · Answer

Posted from my mobile device

kunalsinghNS · Answer

mikemcgarry

can you provide some explanation to this question and also in option B "their" refers to what ?

pra1785 · Answer

What is wrong with the option D here? I was between B and D and chose D over B

rekhabishop · Answer

the answer should be D.

carcass   pushpitkc  please correct the answer.

nailin16 · Answer

A is wrong coz of the faulty usage of term - italian and slavis..it sud be noun and not adjective

C out coz of sub verb error..it sud be - pride..gives rise
Among B,D and E we will prefer B 
Because pride in culture is preferred over cultural pride- avoid collapsing a prepositional phrase if it doesnt use 'of'
Eg soldeirs from voston is not same as boston soldiers.
Refer Manhattan SC book pg215.

And conflicts is preferred over gives rise to a conflict.
So OA B

Posted from my mobile device

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear kunalsinghNS , I'm happy to respond. :-)

The short answer, my friend, is that " their " is blatantly wrong and this question is of abysmally low quality. This is complicated. When Magoosh first began as a tiny startup, long before I was involved, the folks then needed practice questions, so they bought some from some remote content producers. Most of the verbal questions they bought were not so good and some, such as this one, were positively atrocious. My good friend Chris Lele was hired in mid 2011 and I was hired at the end of 2011 and we started to create high quality content. As we added more good content, we could phase out the earlier poor quality questions. This question was retired long ago--no current Magoosh student would ever see this question. Unfortunately, it was still a live question in 2012, when markazee saw it and posted it. Thus, the Magoosh tag on this question needs an asterisk: yes, at one time, this was a Magoosh question, but it was removed from the Magoosh product about five years ago, and there is absolutely no way that we would call this a good question now. We in no way are willing to defend it: it is pathetic beyond hope. BTW, it's much easier to write high quality math question and much harder to write high quality verbal questions. Most of the math questions that Magoosh purchased before I was hired are excellent, and many of them are still part of our live product. By contrast, not a single verbal question from that period remains in our product today. Similarly, I would say that probably about 95% of the math questions posted here on GC are very good, but fewer than half of the verbal questions are anything close to the GMAT's standards. Here's a high quality SC question that I wrote: The income categories Does all this make sense? Mike :-)

kunalsinghNS · Answer

Thank You very much  mikemcgarry

Mo2men · Answer

Dear Mike, I hope you are well.

I have 2 questions: 1- Regardless of the low-quality question, why 'their' is wrong? Could 'their' refer to both 'Italian and Slavs' in same time? or should it refer to one of them? 2- Choice D stimulates my thinking about certain construction (not is this question itself). the cultural pride of Italians and of Slavs gives rise to conflict. Should it be singular or plural verb? I think it is plural verb because the ellipses in the sentence as follows: the cultural pride of Italians and of Slavs give rise to conflict. I'm looking forward to your explanation Thanks in advance

Mahmud6 · Answer

Is the OA correct? According to @MichaelS, B can not be a correct answer.

abrakadabra21 · Answer

In the Northern Heights area, Italian and Slavic pride in their cultures give rise to a conflict with the leveling tendency of the Neighborhood Association, which favors unanimity of outlook.

A. Italian and Slavic pride in their cultures give rise to a conflict 
B. the pride of Italians and Slavs in their cultures conflicts
C. the pride of Italians and Slavs in their cultures give rise to conflict 
D. the cultural pride of Italians and of Slavs gives rise to conflict 
E. the cultural pride of the Italians and Slavs in their culture conflicts

PRIDE gives rise to conflict. subject is singular. should be GIVES. A,C ruled out. 
culture pride of Italian and OF Slavs => no need of second OF
in E, cultural---culture redundant.

so B

keepmovingfw27 · Answer

In the Northern Heights area,  Italian and Slavic pride in their cultures give rise to a conflict  with the leveling tendency of the Neighborhood Association, which favors unanimity of outlook.

A. Italian and Slavic pride in their cultures give rise to a conflict 
-> their: no antecedent noun 
B. the pride of Italians and Slavs in their cultures conflicts
- correct
C. the pride of Italians and Slavs in their cultures give rise to conflict 
- lacking of "a" after conflict
D. the cultural pride of Italians and of Slavs gives rise to conflict 
- changed meaning
E. the cultural pride of the Italians and Slavs in their culture conflicts
- changed meaning

i know the correct answer but could not understand why its

In the Northern Heights area, Italian and Slavic pride in

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In the Northern Heights area, Italian and Slavic pride in

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