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Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not 03 Apr 2022, 03:50
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egmat
Pronoun can only refer to a noun or another pronoun.
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egmat

Pronouns can also be used as placeholders right ?
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Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not 03 Apr 2022, 06:42
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egmat
Pronoun can only refer to a noun or another pronoun.

egmat

Pronouns can also be used as placeholders right ?
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Hello Namangupta1997,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, pronouns can, indeed, be used as placeholders to refer to "that"/"who"/"whether" clauses.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
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Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not 03 Jun 2022, 19:50
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ritula
Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he also won the loyalty of its citizens: the invading Danes were well aware of this weakness and used it to their advantage in 893.


(A) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he

Wrong because this sentence doesn't have a subject for "did not mean that he"

(B) The fact that King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he had

CORRECT

(C) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he

Wrong because what is "it" referring to?

(D) The fact that King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean that he

Same as (C) and also no verb for sentence "the fact that.."

(E) Just because King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he
Show more

Same as (C)
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Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not 22 Aug 2022, 00:15
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in C] can't ???it??? referring to the entire preceding clause.

Typically I have seen such thing happen earlier.

Please guide for some examples where such an error was pointed in OG question
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Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not 22 Aug 2022, 06:00
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himanshu0123
in C] can't ???it??? referring to the entire preceding clause.

Typically I have seen such thing happen earlier.

Please guide for some examples where such an error was pointed in OG question
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Hello himanshu0123,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, your observation here is correct; the pronoun error seen in Option C is actually that "it" is used both as a placeholder pronoun and to refer to the noun “this weakness”; please remember, a pronoun can only have one referent in a sentence.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
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Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not 24 Aug 2022, 11:41
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himanshu0123
in C] can't ???it??? referring to the entire preceding clause.

Typically I have seen such thing happen earlier.
Show more



There are a few highly specific types of sentence constructions in which it doesn't have to stand for anything at all. In all of these, it appears as a placeholder at the beginning of the sentence construction.

e.g.,
It is difficult to earn a perfect score on the GMAT or GRE.
(equivalent to "To earn a perfect score on the GMAT or GRE is difficult")

It is astonishing that everybody showed up on time.
(equivalent to "That everybody showed up on time is astonishing")



In every other instance, it must stand for a NOUN. It's called a proNOUN because this is its job.
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Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not 27 Aug 2022, 11:11
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RonTargetTestPrep

So, you mean that in option C] the usage of 'IT did not mean....' is wrong because 'it' is not used as a placeholder and has no referent.


RonTargetTestPrep
himanshu0123
in C] can't ???it??? referring to the entire preceding clause.

Typically I have seen such thing happen earlier.



There are a few highly specific types of sentence constructions in which it doesn't have to stand for anything at all. In all of these, it appears as a placeholder at the beginning of the sentence construction.

e.g.,
It is difficult to earn a perfect score on the GMAT or GRE.
(equivalent to "To earn a perfect score on the GMAT or GRE is difficult")

It is astonishing that everybody showed up on time.
(equivalent to "That everybody showed up on time is astonishing")



In every other instance, it must stand for a NOUN. It's called a proNOUN because this is its job.
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Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not 28 Aug 2022, 05:50
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RonTargetTestPrep

So, you mean that in option C] the usage of 'IT did not mean....' is wrong because 'it' is not used as a placeholder and has no referent.


RonTargetTestPrep
himanshu0123
in C] can't ???it??? referring to the entire preceding clause.

Typically I have seen such thing happen earlier.



There are a few highly specific types of sentence constructions in which it doesn't have to stand for anything at all. In all of these, it appears as a placeholder at the beginning of the sentence construction.

e.g.,
It is difficult to earn a perfect score on the GMAT or GRE.
(equivalent to "To earn a perfect score on the GMAT or GRE is difficult")

It is astonishing that everybody showed up on time.
(equivalent to "That everybody showed up on time is astonishing")



In every other instance, it must stand for a NOUN. It's called a proNOUN because this is its job.
Show more

Hello himanshu0123,

We hope this finds you well.

To provide an alternative explanation, in the sentence formed by Option C "it" DOES serve as a placeholder pronoun, but it also refers to the noun “this weakness”, in the second clause; remember, a pronoun and its derivatives can only have one referent in a given sentence.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
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Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not 28 Aug 2022, 17:40
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himanshu0123

So, you mean that in option C] the usage of 'IT did not mean....' is wrong because 'it' is not used as a placeholder and has no referent.
Show more

Yes. (It 'wants' to stand for the whole idea of the preceding sentence—i.e., that King Alfred occupied and fortified London in the year A.D. 886—but a proNOUN can't stand for a whole clause. (...and even if "it" COULD stand for that whole clause, you'd just get redundancy!)
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Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not 28 Aug 2022, 18:00
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a pronoun and its derivatives can only have one referent in a given sentence.
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This is not true. There are multiple official problems that disprove this idea—e.g., in this problem, "their" and "them" refer to different groups of people.
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Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not 13 Oct 2022, 02:50
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ritula
Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he also won the loyalty of its citizens: the invading Danes were well aware of this weakness and used it to their advantage in 893.


(A) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he

(B) The fact that King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he had

(C) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he

(D) The fact that King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean that he

(E) Just because King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he
Show more
I got this question wrong!

Will write down my thought process so you may avoid my mistakes!

Meaning -

2 actions took place in the following order-
i) King occupied and fortified
ii) Did not win loyalty of people

Mistake Number 1 : Skimmed through the text in the colon because who cares about stuff in colon.

Because of my above mistake, I was focused only on finding an option that added a past perfect before the first action.


(A) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he

I did not like Option (A) because of the tense error.

Mistake Number 2 : Thought "Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886" was the subject.

Even though, it is pretty logical if you take a second and ask yourself, "Can the above phrase perform the action 'did not mean'?"

Eliminated Option (A)


(B) The fact that King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he had

I saw "had" twice and rolled my eyes. How can these 2 actions happen at the same time in the past. We clearly want to sequence the events.

Eliminated Option (B)


(C) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he

As GMATNinja says, "Eliminate the definite errors" and this error was one.

"it" cannot refer to an entire clause.

We can safely eliminate Option (C)


(D) The fact that King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean that he

I saw the same error in Option (D) and I was like "lol, what an easy elimination".

Eliminate Option (D). I guess Option (E) is our answer.


(E) Just because King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he


Wtf why is there an "it" here too. I hate GMAT lol.

Eliminate Option (E)


Now we are back at Option (A) and Option (B).


So I looked back at Option (A) and thought. Hmm, maybe the order is pretty clear we can do with the same tense for both the actions.

But then why the hell do we need "had" when simple past is much cleaner.

Mistake Number 1 made me eliminate Option (B) and mark Option (A).

Never again will I ignore text in a colon.

Takeaways
i) “it” cannot refer to the whole clause it must only refer to a noun. So using “the fact” is much clearer
ii) Whenever a subject is not in the standard noun form and you are unsure what the subject is ask yourself “Is the supposed subject doing the action?”
iii) Do not ignore text in colon. Verb Tense of the clause after the colon can determine the verb tense of the main clause.

Thanks for reading!
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Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not 13 Nov 2022, 03:51
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I did not understand the past perfect usage.

'King occupied London in 886'- why is this a prior activity to justify the use of past perfect ?
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Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not 08 May 2023, 03:03
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ritula
Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he also won the loyalty of its citizens: the invading Danes were well aware of this weakness and used it to their advantage in 893.


(A) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he

(B) The fact that King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he had

(C) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he

(D) The fact that King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean that he

(E) Just because King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he
Show more
Could an expert please help:
My thought process while solving this question:
"Just because... citizens" is an independent clause, in which three events are taking place:
a- King Alfred occupied and fortified London
b- he being unable to win the loyality of citizens

Hence the event a should take had and event b should take simple past.
So i chose E, in which i thought "it" is a place holder.

Doubts:
1- Can colon connect two independent clauses as in this question
2- When we use a colon in a sentence, do we need to consider the events from whole of the sentence or just events before and after the colon
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Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not 08 May 2023, 06:32
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ritula
Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he also won the loyalty of its citizens: the invading Danes were well aware of this weakness and used it to their advantage in 893.


(A) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he

(B) The fact that King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he had

(C) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he

(D) The fact that King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean that he

(E) Just because King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he
Could an expert please help:
My thought process while solving this question:
"Just because... citizens" is an independent clause, in which three events are taking place:
a- King Alfred occupied and fortified London
b- he being unable to win the loyality of citizens

Hence the event a should take had and event b should take simple past.
So i chose E, in which i thought "it" is a place holder.

Doubts:
1- Can colon connect two independent clauses as in this question
2- When we use a colon in a sentence, do we need to consider the events from whole of the sentence or just events before and after the colon
Show more

Hello Stanindaw,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, yes colons can connect independent clauses if the latter clause explains the former in some way, and in such a sentence, all events must be considered in determining order of events.

To understand the use of punctuation on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~10 minutes):



All the best!
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Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not 10 Jun 2023, 03:30
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Can someone explain what is the sequence of events here? What is the past event and what is the later event ?
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Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not 23 Oct 2023, 09:06
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Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he also won the loyalty of its citizens: the invading Danes were well aware of this weakness and used it to their advantage in 893.

Option elimination -

(A) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he - "just because" introduces a subordinate adverbial clause. It can't be the sentence's subject (noun or pronoun). Thus, there is no subject in this sentence.

(B) The fact that King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he had - We have a subject here (The fact). What is that fact? The fact is "that King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886." Moreover, it correctly uses past perfect to refer to the events before the Danes used it to their advantage.

(C) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he - Is "it" referring to the act of occupying and fortifying? But the pronoun "it" can't refer to an action. Wrong.

(D) The fact that King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean that he - There is no verb for the "The fact that King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886." Moreover, "it" referring to occupying and fortifying is wrong.

(E) Just because King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he - Is "it" referring to the act of occupying and fortifying? But the pronoun "it" can't refer to an action. Wrong.
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