Many individuals invest in “monthly savings schemes”, with the : Sentence Correction (EA only)

Nevernevergiveup

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24 Feb 2016, 14:15

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mikemcgarry

Many individuals invest in “monthly savings schemes”, with the intention to help maintain a standard of living in case of a sudden loss of employment.

A) schemes”, with the intention to help maintain a standard of living in case of a sudden loss of employment
B) schemes”, the intention of which is to help maintain a standard of living in case they suddenly lose their employment
C) schemes” intended to help maintain a standard of living in case employment is suddenly lost
D) schemes” intended to help maintain a standard of living in case they suddenly lose their employment
E) schemes” that they intend to help maintain a standard of living in case their employment is lost

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

My colleague, I have some criticisms about this question.
Choice (A) is wrong for the idiom awkwardness "with the intention to help"
Choice (B) is not grammatical problematic, but rhetorically it is awkward, so it is out.
Choice (C) is the OA; it is acceptable, although the passive structure in the second half is weak.
Choice (D) is also a choice that would be correct by GMAT standards. I infer that the OE would object to a pronoun problem, but the grammatical structure reinforces the pronoun-antecedent relationship. The noun "individuals" is the subject of the main clause, so this makes clear that the pronoun subject "they" has the first subject as an antecedent. This is a pattern on some official questions. The same actors are consistently the subject throughout (D): this version has rhetorical unity and an active quality that (C) lacks.
Choice (E) would also be correct, but it's a bit too indirect.

Finally, I would say that the "in case" structure is a bit too colloquial for the tone of the GMAT. I don't remember ever seeing that particular structure in an official questions, but perhaps there is one. This sentence would be fine in ordinary conversation, I believe formal writing would use a mores sophisticated structure (e.g. "in the event that")

Those are my thoughts on this questions. I am open to any discussion.

Mike :-)

Dear Mike,

I have few more thoughts regarding the question.

say here monthly savings schemes is a noun X.

B. Many individuals invest in X, the intention of which is to help maintain a standard of living in case they suddenly lose their employment.

you mentioned that B is not incorrect grammatically. But what about the relative pronoun which usage in it.
Is it justified?

C) schemes” intended to help maintain a standard of living in case employment is suddenly lost
How can we passive form employment is lost when remaining half is in active sense. How can this sentence be OA.

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24 Feb 2016, 16:58

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Dear Nevernevergiveup, In relation to Option C: schemes” intended to help maintain a standard of living in case employment is suddenly lost. Both of the verbs “intended” and “lost” are in the passive voice here. It is an example of a reduced relative clause, in which the relative pronoun and the part of the verb “to be” are left out. You could rewrite the option as schemes” that are intended to help maintain a standard of living in case employment is suddenly lost. In this way you can see the passive structure more easily.

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24 Feb 2016, 18:02

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1988achilles

Mike/Aryama,
In option C,D and E, intended.....employment is a modifier which will modify the nearest noun (in this case monthly saving scheme"). Technically, its not the scheme which is intended to maintain a standard of living, it is the result of investment in these scheme which enable to maintain standard of living.Hence the intended... employment should modifies the investment..
Please advise if my understanding is correct.
Regards,
Yash

Dear Yash,
With all due respect, my friend, I found your question very hard to understand. First of all, when you are asking about the use of words in a passage, please use proper quote marks to distinguish your words from the words you are quote. (I also like to use color to distinguish my words from quoted words, for extra clarity.)

You wrote
In option C,D and E, intended.....employment is a modifier which will modify the nearest noun ...
I think what you mean is
In option C,D and E, "intended.....employment" is a modifier which will modify the nearest noun ...

My friend, I think you are drawing a hyper-technical distinction. The “monthly savings schemes” can easily be construed to include the amount in the savings accounts, i.e. the results of the savings.

Hyper-technical distinctions that depart from real-world logic and usage are not helpful on the GMAT.

Does all this make sense?
Mike :-)

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24 Feb 2016, 18:23

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Nevernevergiveup

Dear Mike,

I have few more thoughts regarding the question.

say here monthly savings schemes is a noun X.

B. Many individuals invest in X, the intention of which is to help maintain a standard of living in case they suddenly lose their employment.

you mentioned that B is not incorrect grammatically. But what about the relative pronoun which usage in it.
Is it justified?

C) schemes” intended to help maintain a standard of living in case employment is suddenly lost
How can we passive form employment is lost when remaining half is in active sense. How can this sentence be OA.

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

The use of the word "which" in (B) is not only correct, but extremely sophisticated. You see, in well-spoken circles, it is considered improper to end a sentence or clause with a preposition.
This is the friend I went to the movie with.
The Alps are the mountains that Hannibal had to cross over.
Purists such as myself consider such a sentence abominable. Technically, this is not a grammar error, and there are authorities of a more liberal bent who would say that ending a sentence with a preposition is not a problem at all. The GMAT tends to be conservative. The GMAT will not test this as a criterion, but you will notice that a sentence or clause never ends with a preposition, except perhaps in a rare incorrect answer choice. To avoid ending with a preposition, the typical move is to put the preposition at the beginning of the clause and make a relative pronoun the object of the preposition.
This is the friend with whom I went to the movies.
The Alps are the mountains over which Hannibal had to cross.
Choice (B) has a similar construction, opening a clause with [preposition][relative pronoun]. This is something you will see in sophisticated writing frequently, and you are likely to see it on the GMAT.

For option (C), you wrote:
How can we passive form employment is lost when remaining half is in active sense. How can this sentence be OA.
To be honest, my friend, that first sentence makes absolutely no sense to me. When you are quoting words from the passage, please please please put those word in quote marks, as I do, to distinguish the words of your question from the words you are citing. Also, please be very careful to phrase your question as clearly and as eloquently as possible. One of the habits of excellence is asking the best possible questions: see this blog article:
Asking Excellent Questions

Does all this make sense?
Mike :-)

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24 Feb 2016, 22:30

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mikemcgarry

Choice (C) is the OA; it is acceptable, although the passive structure in the second half is weak.

Isn't C totally changing the meaning of the sentence. C says “monthly savings schemes” are intended to help maintain a standard of living .

From what I got from the original sentence, the act of "investment" is intended to help maintain a standard of living .

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25 Feb 2016, 01:55

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AryamaDuttaSaikia

Many individuals invest in “monthly savings schemes”, with the intention to help maintain a standard of living in case of a sudden loss of employment.

A) schemes”, with the intention to help maintain a standard of living in case of a sudden loss of employment
B) schemes”, the intention of which is to help maintain a standard of living in case they suddenly lose their employment
C) schemes” intended to help maintain a standard of living in case employment is suddenly lost
D) schemes” intended to help maintain a standard of living in case they suddenly lose their employment
E) schemes” that they intend to help maintain a standard of living in case their employment is lost

a question similar to one in gmatprep.
"intended to do" is an idiom used after a noun and refer to the noun. So, intention of which and that they, in b and e are wrong. not idiomatic.
in D , they are still ambiguous.

the most problematic thing is choice A. A is grammatical but meaning in a is different. a mean,
to intend to help maintain a standard of living, individual invest in the schemes.
the meaing is not clear. the individual help who. they help themself, so, we need "themself". meaning here is not clear.

in D, schemes intended to help : "help" here is good and acceptable.

very hard
am I correct?

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06 Mar 2016, 20:43

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Dear sukanyar,

I do not see a marked change of meaning between “individuals investing in schemes with the intention of…” and individuals investing in schemes intended to…”. This highlights the importance of eliminating A on the basis of the unidiomatic structure “with the intention to help”. It will always be more important to eliminate options that are unidiomatic rather than to try to determine whether options present a small change of meaning. Change of meaning is a relevant concept, of course, but unidiomatic structures must be eliminated before it is considered.

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06 Mar 2016, 21:18

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AryamaDuttaSaikia

Many individuals invest in “monthly savings schemes”, with the intention to help maintain a standard of living in case of a sudden loss of employment.

A) schemes”, with the intention to help maintain a standard of living in case of a sudden loss of employment
B) schemes”, the intention of which is to help maintain a standard of living in case they suddenly lose their employment
C) schemes” intended to help maintain a standard of living in case employment is suddenly lost
D) schemes” intended to help maintain a standard of living in case they suddenly lose their employment
E) schemes” that they intend to help maintain a standard of living in case their employment is lost

Does option 'D' not have pronoun ambiguity. They may also refer to schemes. That why I didn't pick option D. Please throw some light.

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AryamaDuttaSaikia

Many individuals invest in “monthly savings schemes”, with the intention to help maintain a standard of living in case of a sudden loss of employment.

A) schemes”, with the intention to help maintain a standard of living in case of a sudden loss of employment
B) schemes”, the intention of which is to help maintain a standard of living in case they suddenly lose their employment
C) schemes” intended to help maintain a standard of living in case employment is suddenly lost
D) schemes” intended to help maintain a standard of living in case they suddenly lose their employment
E) schemes” that they intend to help maintain a standard of living in case their employment is lost

Does option 'D' not have pronoun ambiguity. They may also refer to schemes. That why I didn't pick option D. Please throw some light.

GMAT allows such usage. Suppose we have a pronoun which is the subject of a clause, and there are two possible antecedents out of which one is the subject of a preceding clause. In such case the pronoun would unambiguously refer to the subject of the previous clause by virtue of parallelism. In this case the pronoun they may seem to have two possible antecedents, many individuals and schemes, but because they is the subject of a clause, it would refer to the subject (many individuals) of the previous clause by virtue of parallelism.

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07 Mar 2016, 18:16

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Dear thangvietnam, Just a comment in relation to your comparison of options b and d. The structure “the intention of which” is idiomatic, so you cannot eliminate b on this basis. However, compare b and d. The only relevant difference is that d is much shorter. That’s the reason to eliminate b. As I mentioned in an earlier post on this topic, I don’t see a relevant change of meaning between a and d. The problem with a is the unidiomatic structure “with the intention to help”.

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10 Mar 2016, 20:10

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AryamaDuttaSaikia

Many individuals invest in “monthly savings schemes”, with the intention to help maintain a standard of living in case of a sudden loss of employment.

A) schemes”, with the intention to help maintain a standard of living in case of a sudden loss of employment
B) schemes”, the intention of which is to help maintain a standard of living in case they suddenly lose their employment
C) schemes” intended to help maintain a standard of living in case employment is suddenly lost
D) schemes” intended to help maintain a standard of living in case they suddenly lose their employment
E) schemes” that they intend to help maintain a standard of living in case their employment is lost

picked D.
individuals invest in MSS.
these MSS are intended to help maintain a standard of living in case people lose their job.

A. whose loss of employment?
B - intention of which - I would rather prefer verb. but ok..let's see what other options are..
C - whose employment?
D - definitely better than B.
E - they intend - who people or MSS? so ambiguous pronoun - out.

mikemcgarry

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16 May 2016, 13:39

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MeghaP

I think C is the better option than D as I feel that "intended to help maintain a standard of living in case employment is suddenly lost" talks about the schemes and describes what the scheme does.

IMO D is incorrect because of the usage of "they".

Can you please explain this?

Dear MeghaP
I'm happy to respond. :-)

This is a funny thing about pronouns: the antecedent needs to be clear, but sometimes that clarity can be established by rhetorical focus. If we use "they" and there's only one previous plural noun in the sentence, that's a very easy choice for the antecedent. Sometimes, though, if the subject and focus of a sentence is particularly clear, this can establish the priority of one noun as the antecedent even if there are other possible antecedents lying around in the sentence. Consider option (D).

(D) Many individuals invest in “monthly savings schemes,” intended to help maintain a standard of living in case they suddenly lose their employment.

The noun "many individuals" is the subject of the first verb, "invest." The participle "intended" modifies the saving schemes, but the actor, the people doing the "intending" are again the "many individuals." So, in a way, "many individuals" are subjects at the beginning and in the middle of the sentence, so it makes sense by parallelism that these same individuals. This rhetorical means of determining the antecedent sometimes appears on the real GMAT.

I suspect that the question writer of this particular question was thinking purely mechanically, reductionistically, about the grammar rules, without considering the larger rhetorical concerns. That's a characteristic of many poor quality SC questions.

Here's a higher quality SC practice question:
Although more expensive

Does this make sense?
Mike :-)

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18 Dec 2018, 23:33

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mikemcgarry

AryamaDuttaSaikia

Many individuals invest in “monthly savings schemes”, with the intention to help maintain a standard of living in case of a sudden loss of employment.

A) schemes”, with the intention to help maintain a standard of living in case of a sudden loss of employment
B) schemes”, the intention of which is to help maintain a standard of living in case they suddenly lose their employment
C) schemes” intended to help maintain a standard of living in case employment is suddenly lost
D) schemes” intended to help maintain a standard of living in case they suddenly lose their employment
E) schemes” that they intend to help maintain a standard of living in case their employment is lost

Dear AryamaDuttaSaikia,
I'm happy to respond.

My colleague, I have some criticisms about this question.
Choice (A) is wrong for the idiom awkwardness "with the intention to help"
Choice (B) is not grammatically problematic, but rhetorically it is awkward, so it is out.
Choice (C) is the OA; it is acceptable, although the passive structure in the second half is weak.
Choice (D) is also a choice that would be correct by GMAT standards. I infer that the OE would object to a pronoun problem, but the grammatical structure reinforces the pronoun-antecedent relationship. The noun "individuals" is the subject of the main clause, so this makes clear that the pronoun subject "they" has the first subject as an antecedent. This is a pattern on some official questions. The same actors are consistently the subject throughout (D): this version has rhetorical unity and an active quality that (C) lacks.
Choice (E) would also be correct, but it's a bit too indirect.

Finally, I would say that the "in case" structure is a bit too colloquial for the tone of the GMAT. I don't remember ever seeing that particular structure in an official questions, but perhaps there is one. This sentence would be fine in ordinary conversation, I believe formal writing would use a mores sophisticated structure (e.g. "in the event that")

Those are my thoughts on this questions. I am open to any discussion.

Mike

Hi mikemcgarry

Just one question. Isn't there a change in meaning in options C and D. The original sentence intends to say that people do it with some intention X and the correct option choice says what the the "monthly saving scheme" does X. In my opinion , The meaning of two sentences is poles apart.

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