Many house builders offer rent-to-buy programs that enable a

This is the problem of paralleism. like: to X and to Y
'A' - To be able is wordy and not making sense over here.
'B' - Perfect
'C' - semicolon unnecessary and parallelism is not there.
'D' & 'E' - "That" is required. As per rule use "Which" when information needs to be followed of main clause is not very important. and Opposite for "That".

With option A and E the problem is not that they are wordy the problem is parallelism & modifier error.
A : to be able to move into ...... to apply part of .........
E : .. the part after which separated with a coma is an non essential modifier, remove it and the sentence left doesn't make sense..... which it should in case of non essential modifiers.

Another problem with A, what I see is that "to be able" is redundant when we are already talking about "enable a family with insufficient savings ...."

Many house builders offer rent-to-buyprograms that enable a family with insufficient savings for a conventional down paymentto be able to move into new housingand to apply part of the rent to a purchase later.

thus the reduced stem stands to be : House Builders offer programms THAT enable a family to be able to move...............AND...........to apply.

Verytical scan Reveals only A & B fits this :

A : Enable a family...............To be able to move into a new housing ( To be able = unnecessary = thus Eliminated )

B : Enable a family.................To move into a new housing ( perfect = maintains parallelism : TO move..............AND.................TO apply )

Leading to B

Rgds SKM

Note that we only have two parallels here: "..to move.. to apply". The portion that comes after the underlined portion simply modifies "apply", don't get confused by the addition of "TO a purchase", this does not indicate that this is part of the parallel. Even at that, if purchase was parallel, then it would already be preceded by "and". It's not preceded by and, so that indicates that we have two parallels, not three. Thus, we only need "and" between the parallels

A) "programs that enable a family... to be able to move.. and to apply part of the rent..." is parallel, but the bolded portion is somewhat superfluous and distorts the meaning of the author. These programs do not unlock the ability to move, families have the actual ability to move even prior to the program. The addition of the infinitive "to be able" distorts the intended meaning

B) The only difference between A and B is that B omits "to be able". Much more concise and does not distort the intended meaning

C) subject verb agreement is violated (programs.. enables), also the semicolon creates a fragment. The parallel is 100% correct, but C is wrong for the aforementioned reasons.

D) subject verb error, (programs.. enables), and the parallel is erroneous because we have a present participle that is not in accordance with the infinitive "to move". D is wrong

E) the comma is weird, the "which" creates a inessential clause but the information we are given IS essential, it specifies something crucial about these programs, thus we need "that" instead of "which". Also, the parallelism is violated since we have the infinitive to move and the present participle applying.

So, B is correct!

It is easy to boil it down to B & E..

E has redundancy issues with repetition of "be able to" and " , which " issue
For people interested in how the -ing part works here(I am one of these few)...
ing modifies the complete action as it is following the clause "which enable a family with insufficient savings for a conventional down payment to be able to move into new housing"..So it does makes sense to say that 'applying' is a correct usage of -ing modifier here as it is telling us something more about the previous clause..a valid usage
But there is also an additional premise to be fulfilled..the subject should also make sense with the ing modifier..
Here the subject is "which" i.e rent to buy programs..Here it is the program payment structure that is applying part of the rent payment to purchase payment.It is also a plausible meaning and is grammatically correct...
Although this modifies the intended meaning i.e Person applies for a part of the rent to be converted into purchase...I am concerned with the grammatical validity of the option E

Experts please comment on my thinking

Dear JusTLucK04
I'm happy to respond.

My friend, if you are going to ask questions about grammar, please learn the correct terminology. Referring to this structure as the "-ing part" is tantamount to saying that you have no intention of seriously understanding the grammar involved. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, "You can enter no world for which you do not have the language." If you ignore and neglect the technical grammatical vocabulary, you will never develop the kind of precise understanding that you need to master SC grammar.

Here, the word "applying" is a participle and begins a participial phrase, about which you can find out more here:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/participle ... -the-gmat/

The participle can modify the action of the clause if the action of the clause could be construed as the subject. Here, the use of the participle is incorrect, because the people who performed the action are the "families", but the placement of the participle doesn't clearly indicate them. Furthermore, the prompt indicates that the "applying" is something the "rent-to-buy program" enabled the families to do, and this connotation is lost in (E).

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Hi JusTLucK04,

You have correctly identified both the errors in option E. Also, your understanding regarding the verb-ing modifier is absolutely correct.

1. The phrase ‘to be able’ is redundant in the given sentence because of the presence of the verb ‘enable’.

2. The verb-ing modifier ‘applying’ is incorrectly used here. Since this modifier is placed after a clause and preceded by a comma it modifies the preceding clause. So, this conveys the meaning that the action of applying part of the rent to a purchase later enables the family to move into a new house. This is incorrect. The rent-to-buy programs enable a family to move into a new house.

Also, the modifier should make sense with the subject of the preceding clause. Since the modifier ‘which’ refers to ‘rent –to-buy programs’, this means that the programs apply the part of the rent to a purchase later. This is illogical since the programs cannot apply part of the rent to a purchase.



Option B does not have any of these errors and conveys the meaning clearly:

• Many house builders offer rent-to-buy programs
o that enable a family with insufficient savings for a conventional down payment
• to move into new housing
• and to apply part of the rent to a purchase later.


This option clearly states that the programs enable the family to do two things:

1.) to move into new housing.
2.) To apply part of the rent to a purchase later.



Hope this helps!
Deepak

@e-gmat:
Could you please help answer my query as well.

OG-12#55
OG explanation for option D and E says "applying following a non restrictive clause suggests incorrectly that the builders, not the family, are applying the rent."

I have seen many sentence structures such as "main clause + restrictive clause, -ing modifier ..." in which participle modifier can modify either of the clause main or restrictive, depends on sentence, but I am not aware of such rule that participle modifier can jump over non restrictive clause and modify the subject of main clause. Could you please shed some light on this ?

mike,

Can we eliminate option C because the ";" is used to separate two independent clauses.The second clause of the option, starting with that enables is not independent.

Please correct me if i am wrong.

Regards

Dear kirtivardhan,
I'm happy to respond.

Option (C) is set up so that, on both sides of the semicolon, we DO have independent clauses.

Version (C):
Many house builders offer rent-to-buy programs; that enables a family with insufficient savings for a conventional down payment to move into new housing, to apply part of the rent to a purchase later.
Independent clause #1:
subject = "Many house builders"
verb = "offer"
Independent clause #2:
subject = "that"
verb = "allows"

Remember, the word "that" has many different uses. In the prompt, and in many of the choices, the word "that" is a relative pronoun that introduces a subordinate clause. But the word "that" can also be a pronoun, and as such, can be the subject of an independent clause, as it is in (C). See:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/gmat-sent ... s-of-that/

What you identified is not true and not the problem with (C). The problem is a pronoun problem. The word "that," used as a pronoun, must have a noun antecedent. The antecedent cannot be an action. The problem with (C) is that the word "that" refers to the entire action in the first independent clause. This is an illegal pronoun use. That's a big problem with (C). See:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/gmat-pronoun-traps/

Does all this make sense?
Mike

The easiest way to eliminate C would be on the basis of subject verb dis-agreement. From the intended meaning of the sentence, hopefully it is clear that:

(rent-to-buy) programs enable a family with insufficient savings for a conventional down payment to move into new housing.

So, clearly, programs enable a family.

C uses the structure that enables a family. The intent is that that here refers to programs, but then the verb enables (singular) is incorrect for the subject programs (plural).

Many house builders offer rent-to-buy programs that enable a family with insufficient savings for a conventional down payment to be able to move into new housing and to apply part of the rent to a purchase later.

(A) programs that enable a family with insufficient savings for a conventional down payment to be able to move into new housing and to apply
(B) programs that enable a family with insufficient savings for a conventional down payment to move into new housing and to apply
(C)programs; that enables a family with insufficient savings for a conventional down payment to move into new housing, to apply
(D) programs, which enables a family with insufficient savings for a conventional down payment to move into new housing, applying
(E) programs, which enable a family with insufficient savings for a conventional down payment to be able to move into new housing, applying


____________________________________________________

This is Question # 55 from Official Guide 13th Edition.

I was able to solve this question, but I have a specific question.

This is the Official Explanation - https://screencast.com/t/4Y0IHxCGMJo

OE in option E says comma after program is incorrect because the clause is meant to be restrictive.

So what should we conclude ? If we remove the comma just like this -
(E) programs which enable a family with insufficient savings for a conventional down payment to be able to move into new housing, applying

would this become restrictive now?

But I think which requires comma before it.

_________________________________

I have more issue in what they have explained in Option D - applying following a Non restrictive clause suggests that the builders not the family, are applying for the rent. what should I take away from this explanation?

Dear honchos,
I'm happy to respond. My intelligent friend, remember the paradox of the GMAT OG. The questions are among the finest test prep questions in the entire world. The OE for the questions, by contrast, range from OK to abysmal. In many cases, as here, they opt for brevity rather than clarity in the OE.

Here's what I think they were trying to say. In the prompt version, we get
... rent-to-buy programs that enable ...
We don't need to know anything about the nature of rent-to-by programs and the different kinds of them. For whatever reason, the meaning of the sentence, as expressed in the prompt, requires the restrictive clause, a.k.a. the vital noun modifier. That's what the prompt gives.

Choice (E) changes this to a non-vital, non-restrictive modifier with a comma & a "which." This changes the meaning, because the original sentence expressed the ideas in terms of a vital noun modifier. There, both the comma & the "which," which are both indicative of a non-restrictive situation, are wrong.

You are right. On the GMAT:
[comma] + "which" always go together and always indicate the non-restrictive, non-vital case
[no comma] + "that" always go together and always indicate the vital and restrictive case.

The OE, in its extreme brevity, was not very precise. The problem is not simply the comma, as if removing the comma and leaving everything else unchanged would produce a perfect sentence! Instead, the comma, like the word "which," is indicative of a non-restrictive case, which changes the meaning from the prompt. We need the restrictive case.

As for the participle "applying"----suppose we have the structure
[subject][verb][direct object][noun modifying clause for direct object],[participle]
In many cases, that participle is meant to target the subject of the sentence or the action of the clause as a whole. Participles often reach over intervening words and point back to the subject. It's not 100% clear that this is happening in choices (D) & (E), but the fact that this reading is even a possibility introduces ambiguity, which is never good in a SC sentence. --- Perhaps another way to say this is: the prompt sentence makes clear that these programs enables families to take two actions, and it puts those actions in parallel as two infinitive phrases. Having the two actions in parallel is logical, because they both have the same actor and the same relationship to that actor. Choices (D) & (E) break this parallelism and choose an alternative structure for no particularly good reason. Now, toss in that this new alternative structure is also ambiguous. That's a lose-lose proposition. That's the problem with "applying" in (D) & (E).

My friend, even though the questions in the OG are pure gold, the OEs are often less than perfect and sometimes, as in this case, completely misleading because of their hyper-brevity. Do not put much trust in the OG explanations: they simply don't deserve the same level of respect that the questions deserve. You would be better off coming here to GC and getting the thorough explanations of the experts here.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

hi experts,
I totally got the agreement problem in C, except the agreement,
but I am still curious the use of "that",
in C,
programs; that enables a family with insufficient savings for a conventional down payment to move into new housing, to apply

here, comma connects two complete sentences.
"that" is after the semicolon, and works as a subject of second complete sentence.
can the word "that" refer to the "programs" in the first sentence ?
or "that" only can refer to the antecedent which appears in the same sentence of "that" ?

please confirm

thanks a lot
have a nice day.
>_~

Dear zoezhuyan,

How are you, my friend? I'm happy to respond.

What you ask is an excellent question! Here's a blog you may find helpful.
GMAT Sentence Correction: The Many Uses of ‘That’

Part of what is artificial about GMAT SC is that we are always looking at only one sentence at a time. In the real world, in real writing, of course, there are always many sentences together. When there are many sentences in a paragraph, the same pronoun can refer to antecedent in the previous sentence or even several sentences back, as long as it's clear. For example.

George Washington was the first president of the US. He was born in in February of 1732. He learned surveying when he was young, and at the age of 17 he began a career as a surveyor. In 1753, he first served in the military in the French and Indian Wars. ...

We could imagine this mini-biography going on for more than page, and the pronoun "he" in every sentence would refer back to the unambiguous antecedent, "George Washington."

Thus, it is absolutely no problem if a pronoun after a semicolon refers to an antecedent before the semicolon, as long as it's unambiguous in its referent. BTW, when a semicolon divides a sentence, there are two different clauses, but they are all part of the same sentence.

The word "that," in this context, is simply another pronoun. We easily could have a long string of sentences in which "that" referred to the same antecedent. There is absolutely no reason that a pronoun and its antecedent have to be in the same sentence.

Does all this make sense?

Have a wonderful day, my friend!

Mike

Hello e-gmat team

Use of which and that is correct in the sentence as per the rule which and that must clearly refer to the preceding noun. But you have explained here that use of which is illogical.

It's not very clear to me and I am still trying to understand the difference between that and which in this sentence. Please help.


Thanks