Jane and John are very concerned about their five-year-old

Question

Jane and John are very concerned about their five-year-old twins,  so they will be flying to Vermont, where the summer house is located, next Sunday .

The Answer Choices:
A) so they will be flying to Vermont, where the summer house is located, next Sunday
B) so they will be flying to Vermont, where their summer house is located, next Sunday
C) so they will be flying them to Vermont, where the summer house is located, next Sunday
D) so they will be flying to Vermont, where the summer houses is located, next Sunday
E) so they will be flying them to Vermont, where the summer house is located, on Sunday.

daagh · Answer

Since logically the five-year old twins can't be flying their parents, it is the parents who must be flying their children. So the pronoun ‘ they ’ must refer to Jane and John.

Secondly the object pronoun ' them ' referring to the children is essential to make it clear that the parents are themselves not flying. These norms leave choices C and E.

E is wrong because of the use of the prepositional phrase ' on Sunday ', which may tend to mean that the summer home is located on Sundays. Not a big issue but still C is more forthright.

hussi9 · Answer

Consider this scenario

Jane and John will fly to Vermont where their five-year-old twins are already present.

In this case option A is correct...

Also I am not convinced that "next sunday" can come at the end of sentence.

gurpreetsingh · Answer

if it is clear that 'they' refers to parents , then how C is better than A?

A seems to be fine.

MHIKER · Answer

They is referring to parents because 5 years old twins cannot fly themselves or their parents.

daagh · Answer

The object pronoun ‘them’ is essential to imply that the children are essentially traveling, mostly with the parents. A may tend to mean that the parents alone are traveling. Why will they travel alone? Are the going to attend a summer school on parenting?

To assume that the children might be already there is imaginativeness at its height.

SC’s one concern is effective expression through logical predication. I think as per this norm,  A , though may be grammatically correct, is still inferior to C

I agree that end of the sentence is not the right place for the phrase  ‘next Sunday’ . It should go along with traveling. But all the choices falter on this; so let us ignore it.

hussi9 · Answer

I dont think this is universal knowledge....

brandy96 · Answer

'flying them', isn't it should be 'flying with them' to have option C as correct. I went with A, as it looks reasonable unless we had to assume something.

hussi9 · Answer

There is are 2 scenario , it is ambiguous
Whats the source ?

smodak · Answer

Sorry. I do not want to reveal the source (for personal reasons). The instructor said that C is the correct answer while I thought A was better than C. So, I posted it here and BTG forums to see what everyone thinks.

Here is my comment

Here is the instructors explanation.

AimingHarvard · Answer

Ans C- Why?

1. Pronoun must be unambiguous
2. Every pronoun has only one possible antecedent
3. Pronouns shows the tendency to refer to nouns in the same case. Ex above: a pronoun "them" which is in object position is presumed to refer to the object of the prallel clause "twins"

Hope this helps!

gurpreetsingh · Answer

the question is- why not A?

C changes the meaning, and the change in meaning is only permitted if something is wrong with the original sentence.

Warlock007 · Answer

dear daagh "where the summer house is located " is just modifying 'vermont' then how can you ignore E out of list

Jane and John are very concerned about their five-year-old

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