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555-605 Level|   Comparisons|   Meaning/Logical Predication|   Modifiers|   Pronouns|                     
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 04 Apr 2018, 10:00
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vishwajeet2015


I have question regarding usage of 'as' in Option C.Use of 'as' without a verb/phrase is of a role player . eg: as a doctor
So, in that way : as Great Britain's land area
Is it incorrect for comparison ?
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Hello vishwajeet2015,

I am not sure if your doubt still persists. Here is the explanation nonetheless. :-)


In Choice C, as has been correctly used to present the intended comparison.

Basically, the verb is after as is understood in this choice because omission of this verb dose not lead to any ambiguity in the comparison.

Choice C has other flaws that makes this choice incorrect.


Hope this helps. :-)
Thanks.
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 27 Oct 2018, 23:04
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aragonn generis GMATNinja hazelnut
Can we reject B and C on the basis of parallelism ?

But in Laos is not parallel to Laos so we can reject B and C
Please correct me if I am wrong.
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 28 Oct 2018, 19:17
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aragonn generis GMATNinja hazelnut
Can we reject B and C on the basis of parallelism ?

But in Laos is not parallel to Laos so we can reject B and C
Please correct me if I am wrong.
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We'll ignore the in Laos bit while checking the structure of the portion after but. For example:

That song was initially only somewhat popular, but in the last month, it has gone viral.

Here we're not (in terms of parallelism) looking at (a) that song and (b) in the last month. Instead, we're really looking at (a) that song was initially only somewhat popular and (b) it has gone viral (in the last month).

The comparison problem in option B is that B compares land area to Great Britain (a land area of about the same size as Great Britain is).
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 05 Sep 2019, 23:29
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Official Explanation:

Logical predication; Grammatical construction
The comparison in this sentence is between the land area of Laos and the land area of Great Britain, not between the land area of Laos and Great Britain. The phrase about the population of Laos is most clearly and efficiently expressed in an appositive using a relative pronoun to refer back to people rather than the more abstract population. Using this construction keeps the appropriate emphasis on the two main claims being made about Laos, one describing its land area and the other its sparse population.
A The comparison between land area and Great Britain is incorrect; where is an inappropriate referent to population, which does not designate a place.
B Inappropriate comparison between land area and Great Britain; the there is …construction is wordy and imprecise.
C The reference of them is unclear and the expression is generally awkward.
D The coordinating conjunction and gives undue emphasis to the claim that many of the people in Laos live in inaccessible places.
E Correct. The land area of Laos is correctly compared to that of Great Britain; whom refers appropriately to people.
The correct answer is E.
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 13 Oct 2020, 19:56
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Quote:
E. Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but a population of only four million people, many of whom are members of hill tribes ensconced in the virtually inaccessible mountain valleys of the north.
Show more

If we strip it down, it becomes:
Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but a population of only four million people, [many of whom are members of hill tribes ensconced in the virtually inaccessible mountain valleys of the north.]

I am not able to figure out 2nd part of sentence without any verb . Does not it sound incomplete? . Should it not be :
1. Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but has a population of only four million people,

If we take literal meaning it could be weird also as:
2. Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but a population of only four million people - Great Britain that has population of only 4 million people ( as if area that has 4 million people in Great Britain)

Point what i want to emphasize is : GMAT like to have complete and concise meaning without ambiguity. But in option E , it seems something is missing.

Please suggest AndrewN sir.

thanks!
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 14 Oct 2020, 08:39
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Quote:
E. Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but a population of only four million people, many of whom are members of hill tribes ensconced in the virtually inaccessible mountain valleys of the north.

If we strip it down, it becomes:
Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but a population of only four million people, [many of whom are members of hill tribes ensconced in the virtually inaccessible mountain valleys of the north.]

I am not able to figure out 2nd part of sentence without any verb . Does not it sound incomplete? . Should it not be :
1. Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but has a population of only four million people,

If we take literal meaning it could be weird also as:
2. Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but a population of only four million people - Great Britain that has population of only 4 million people ( as if area that has 4 million people in Great Britain)

Point what i want to emphasize is : GMAT like to have complete and concise meaning without ambiguity. But in option E , it seems something is missing.

Please suggest AndrewN sir.

thanks!
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Hello, imSKR. The has of the former part of the sentence carries over to the latter, after the conjunction but. Thus, we understand choice (E) to mean that Laos has a land area comparable to [the land area] of Great Britain but [has] a population of only four million people. Remember that conjunctions, when used without a comma, join two elements in parallel. It is not uncommon to elide or leave out the verb that is understood to apply to the second phrase or clause in the same manner as the first. Watch those conjunctions!

Thank you for calling my attention to the question.

- Andrew
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 14 Oct 2020, 09:07
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Quote:
E. Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but a population of only four million people, many of whom are members of hill tribes ensconced in the virtually inaccessible mountain valleys of the north.

If we strip it down, it becomes:
Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but a population of only four million people, [many of whom are members of hill tribes ensconced in the virtually inaccessible mountain valleys of the north.]

I am not able to figure out 2nd part of sentence without any verb . Does not it sound incomplete? . Should it not be :
1. Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but has a population of only four million people,

If we take literal meaning it could be weird also as:
2. Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but a population of only four million people - Great Britain that has population of only 4 million people ( as if area that has 4 million people in Great Britain)

Point what i want to emphasize is : GMAT like to have complete and concise meaning without ambiguity. But in option E , it seems something is missing.

Please suggest AndrewN sir.

thanks!
Hello, imSKR. The has of the former part of the sentence carries over to the latter, after the conjunction but. Thus, we understand choice (E) to mean that Laos has a land area comparable to [the land area] of Great Britain but [has] a population of only four million people. Remember that conjunctions, when used without a comma, join two elements in parallel. It is not uncommon to elide or leave out the verb that is understood to apply to the second phrase or clause in the same manner as the first. Watch those conjunctions!

Thank you for calling my attention to the question.

- Andrew
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Hi Sir

So if no comma before conjunction then verb would be carried over as you mentioned above.
What if there is comma then usually need to repeat the verb/helping verb? If it is not repeated then it could be an error?

Sorry , I didn't notice such difference before with or without comma before conjunction in correlation with verb carrying forward.
Please confirm.

Thanks!
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 14 Oct 2020, 10:25
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imSKR


Hi Sir

So if no comma before conjunction then verb would be carried over as you mentioned above.
What if there is comma then usually need to repeat the verb/helping verb? If it is not repeated then it could be an error?

Sorry , I didn't notice such difference before with or without comma before conjunction in correlation with verb carrying forward.
Please confirm.

Thanks!
Show more
Yes, the comma makes a big difference. If you see one, it is typically indicating that the sentence consists of two independent clauses. And of course, you cannot have two independent clauses without a proper subject and predicate in the second portion. You should still pay attention to parallelism when a comma is present, but the independent clauses are not quite as tightly governed. Consider the following:

1) Jim has a fever and a sore throat.

2) Jim has a fever, but he still practices the piano every day.

Either sentence is fine. In the first, has carries over into the second item; in the latter sentence, if I wanted to use has again, I would need to replace the verb practices and alter the rest of the predicate accordingly (e.g., but he still has piano practice every day).

- Andrew
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 11 Dec 2020, 20:13
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I marked Choice E as wrong because I thought there needed to be a has after "but". The wording is awkward, but why do you not need a has? Thank you in advance :)
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 25 Jan 2021, 12:16
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woohoo921
I marked Choice E as wrong because I thought there needed to be a has after "but". The wording is awkward, but why do you not need a has? Thank you in advance :)
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This is a fairly common construction. Consider an example:

    "Tim's children had 17 temper tantrums two nights ago but only 12 tantrums last night, leading Tim to conclude that the medication he was slipping into his children's pancakes was working."

Because the components in red are both objects of the action, "had," there's no need to repeat the verb. We know the writer must mean that the kids had 17 tantrums one night and had 12 tantrums the next night, as there's no other way to interpret the sentence. This construction is perfectly fine.

Same deal in (E). In "Laos has a land area...but a population," the parts in red are again objects of the same verb, "has," so it's not essential to repeat it.

The takeaway: Don't try to memorize the idea that objects can be connected with a conjunction! The point here is that if you'd read (E) with an emphasis on meaning, you would have realized that it made perfect sense and held on to it. If an option is logical, and there's a construction that might be problematic, but you're not 100% sure, try not to use that construction as a decision point! Instead, rely on the issues you're sure about -- concrete grammatical errors and meaning problems.

I hope that helps!
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 03 Feb 2021, 21:46
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Hi,
I eliminated C for using 'as' incorrectly(as per my analysis). Can this be a solid reason to eliminate option C? Same goes for option A also!! Is it OK, or am I picking wrong decision point?
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 03 Feb 2021, 23:22
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Mck2023
Hi,
I eliminated C for using 'as' incorrectly(as per my analysis). Can this be a solid reason to eliminate option C? Same goes for option A also!! Is it OK, or am I picking wrong decision point?
Show more
Its not just as; it is same as.

So, there is nothing wrong in C in the following construct:

Laos has a land area that is about the same size as Great Britain's land area.
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 04 Feb 2021, 01:26
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Quote:
Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four million in population, where many are members of hill tribes ensconced in the virtually inaccessible mountain valleys of the north.

(A) about the same as Great Britain but only four million in population, where many
(B) of about the same size as Great Britain is, but in Laos there is a population of only four million, and many
(C) that is about the same size as Great Britain's land area, but in Laos with a population of only four million people, many of them
(D) comparable to the size of Great Britain, but only four million in population, and many
(E) comparable to that of Great Britain but a population of only four million people, many of whom

Hi AndrewN GMATNinja

This question catches my attention once again.

A silly question :
[quote]Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but a population of only four million people, many of whom are members of hill tribes ensconced in the virtually inaccessible mountain valleys of the north.

population of only four million people is not redudant?
Population means here people who inhabit a territory or state/lives there
we can say 4 million people or population of 4 million?

Please confirm .

Thanks!
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 04 Feb 2021, 11:32
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imSKR
Quote:
Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four million in population, where many are members of hill tribes ensconced in the virtually inaccessible mountain valleys of the north.

(A) about the same as Great Britain but only four million in population, where many
(B) of about the same size as Great Britain is, but in Laos there is a population of only four million, and many
(C) that is about the same size as Great Britain's land area, but in Laos with a population of only four million people, many of them
(D) comparable to the size of Great Britain, but only four million in population, and many
(E) comparable to that of Great Britain but a population of only four million people, many of whom

Hi AndrewN GMATNinja

This question catches my attention once again.

A silly question :
Quote:
Laos has a land area comparable to that of Great Britain but a population of only four million people, many of whom are members of hill tribes ensconced in the virtually inaccessible mountain valleys of the north.

population of only four million people is not redudant?
Population means here people who inhabit a territory or state/lives there
we can say 4 million people or population of 4 million?

Please confirm .

Thanks!
Show more
Hello, imSKR. Just because Laos is mentioned does not mean that we are necessarily talking about Laotians, and the same can be said for Great Britain and the British (or Britons, if you prefer). A different sentence could just as easily swap out people for, I don't know, pigeons, and the comparison would be just as valid. Although the context of this particular sentence suggests that the part before the comma is referring to people, and the part after the comma definitely spells it out—I cannot imagine pigeons being described as members of hill tribes—the meaning conveyed by the comparison would be unclear until the latter half of the sentence, and you probably know by now that clarity of meaning rests atop the GMAT™ SC pyramid. That is, since the first half of the sentence is lengthy, this might be a case in which it would be better to risk redundancy after the fact (once someone has read the entire sentence) than to delay the clear expression of vital meaning. In short, either spelling out the comparison or letting the context of the sentence fill in the gap can work, but it depends on the sentence you are examining.

I hope that helps. Thank you for thinking to ask me.

- Andrew
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 05 Apr 2021, 00:46
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GMATNinja

Hi but when I use the conjunction "BUT" i do not need always the comma before? "x, but y"

many thanks
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 27 Apr 2021, 09:57
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GMATNinja

Hi but when I use the conjunction "BUT" i do not need always the comma before? "x, but y"

many thanks
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If you are using "but" to join two independent clauses, then you definitely need the comma. For example:

    Tim thought about buying a Porsche Spyder, but he wasn't happy with its gas mileage.

After the "but" in (E), we really only have a noun ("a population") and a bunch of modifiers -- no verb. Since we don't have an independent clause after the conjunction ("but"), a comma isn't required.

For more on (E), check out this post.
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 15 May 2021, 01:05
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Hi everyone..

what is wrong with saying "Laos has the same area as Great Britain" ?? here we are comparing Laos and Great Britain...so the 1st bit in option A isn't wrong right?

Another example - "gmat requires the same effort as the GRE"... here i am comparing the gmat to the gre..right?

The reason i am asking all this is that I have read similar constructions/structures quite a few times in online articles/news etc etc, though i agree everything cannot be considered reliable especially when we are talking about the gmat.

Of course the above two sentence can also be written as "The area of Laos is the same as that of Great Britain" and "the effort required for the gmat is the same as that for the gre" ,respectively - in these, we are comparing the area of one place to the area of another and the effort for one exam to the effort for the other, respectively.

GMATNinja AjiteshArun VeritasKarishma GMATNinjaTwo .. hi experts, please help... looking forward to hearing from you guys.. regards,
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 15 May 2021, 21:40
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goaltop30mba
Hi everyone..

what is wrong with saying "Laos has the same area as Great Britain" ?? here we are comparing Laos and Great Britain...so the 1st bit in option A isn't wrong right?

Another example - "gmat requires the same effort as the GRE"... here i am comparing the gmat to the gre..right?

The reason i am asking all this is that I have read similar constructions/structures quite a few times in online articles/news etc etc, though i agree everything cannot be considered reliable especially when we are talking about the gmat.

Of course the above two sentence can also be written as "The area of Laos is the same as that of Great Britain" and "the effort required for the gmat is the same as that for the gre" ,respectively - in these, we are comparing the area of one place to the area of another and the effort for one exam to the effort for the other, respectively.

GMATNinja AjiteshArun VeritasKarishma GMATNinjaTwo .. hi experts, please help... looking forward to hearing from you guys.. regards,
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Hi goaltop30mba,

I see where you're coming from on this, but wouldn't something like "the same amount of effort" be a better fit for that sentence? As for the first sentence ("Laos has the same area as Great Britain"), we don't want to imply that they share an area.

1. Vikram Chandra has the same agent as Jhumpa Lahiri. ← "X has the same A as Y (has)" means that they share that A.
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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 27 May 2021, 14:07
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SergeyOrshanskiy
"Land area" can mean two different things. It can mean the acreage, i.e. the number of acres, as in One MIT study claims that, in some U.S. cities, parking lots cover more than a third of the land area. It can also mean just some territory, not its size, as in Thunderstorms are well-monitored over land areas, where radar can keep an eye on their sometimes- quick development.

B and C mention the size of the land area; thus, they assume the second interpretation above. C then proceeds to use the expression "land area" in the first sense, i.e. size. Thus, C compares the size of one land area with another land area, which seems unnecessarily complicated. Now, B is more logical, yet B changes the meaning of the sentence! We can also say that the United States has a land area of about the same size as the entire Great Britain; for example, the State of Texas would qualify. A suggests that many people in Great Britain are members of hill tribes.

In D the non-idiomatic "but only four million in population" is offset by commas, which suggests that "many are members..." should make sense with the first part of the sentence: "Laos has a land area comparable to the size of Great Britain, and many are members..." Even if we rewrite the sentence to say "Laos has four million citizens, and many are members...", this still doesn't quite sound right because it is not specified, many of whom or of what. It would be better to say "Laos has four million citizens, many of whom are members..."

Basically, we are left with E. Note that "...to that of Great Britain..." makes it clear, in which sense the words "land area" are used. In this context Great Britain has one, the land area, which is a number, rather than a piece of land. The logic of the sentence still escapes me. I understand that Laos is sparsely populated, but why this detail about hill tribes? Is it saying that the mountain valleys are densely populated, thus even further lowering the population density at the accessible part of Laos?
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In what way is "but only four million in population" unidiomatic? Cant we say "a population of only four million"?

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Laos has a land area about the same as Great Britain but only four mil 30 May 2021, 07:55
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Hi AndrewN egmat AjiteshArun



Regarding Option-C, Could you please confirm that these following splits are whether correct or not:

1) Run-On as two independent clauses are connected using a comma
IC1: Laos has a land area that is about the same size as Great Britain's land area
IC2: many of them are members of hill tribes ensconced in the virtually inaccessible mountain valleys of the north.

Or 'BUT' in ", but in Laos with a population of only four million people," is serving as conjunction?

2) Faulty Parallelism between "a land area" AND " in Laos with a population of only four million people"

TIA

Regards
Rohit
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