Many stock traders in the United States have set out to become global

First, check out these examples:

• "Tim, convinced that watching television will silence his children, subscribed to Disney+." - No issue here! Notice that "watching television" functions as the subject of the "that" clause. "Watching television" is the thing that will silence his children. (For more on how "-ing" words can function as nouns, check this article.)
• "Tim, convinced that watching television, subscribed to Disney+." - This one doesn't work. The subject of the "that" clause ("watching television") needs a corresponding verb: Tim is convinced that watching television DOES something. It doesn't make any sense to simply say, "Tim is convinced that watching television."

Now back to choice (A). Notice what happens if we cut this sentence off before the underlined portion: "Many stock traders in the United States have set out to become global investors, convinced that limiting their investments to the U.S. stock market."

• This has the same problem as the second sentence above! The subject of the "that" clause is "limiting their investments to the U.S. market," and many stock traders are convinced that limiting their investments to the U.S. market DOES something. It doesn't make any sense to simply say, "Many stock traders are convinced that limiting their investments to the U.S. stock market."
• The subject of the "that" clause ("limiting...") has a corresponding action: "limiting their investments to the U.S. stock market restricted their gains." That action is a critical part of the "that" clause, and we can't simply take it out and leave the subject hanging on its own.

The true "core" of this sentence is, "Many stock traders in the United States have set out to become global investors." Everything after the comma simply modifies that main clause. So, we can temporarily take out everything from "convinced" to the end. But we can't keep the subject of the "that" clause ("limiting...") if we get rid of the action of the "that" clause ("restricted...").

Phew... I hope that helps!

chetan2u

Very helpful!

To clarify, I am confused on a the ambiguity surrounding the "it". Does it matter if "it "is referring to "United States" or the "U.S. stock market"? It seems that "it" can be referring to either antecedent without a major difference in meaning. How do you know that "it" is referring to the "U.S. stock market"?

woohoo921
It's important to use context when determining the antecedent for a pronoun. In this case, we are told that "it" is home to stocks, and that's an important clue. However, it's more important that "stock market" is the actual subject of the preceding clause, and we tend to assume that any pronoun is about the current subject unless we are given reason to think otherwise.

Hi -- one issue I have on SC is not knowing when the pronouns are vague vs when they are not. In this case, why is the pronoun "it" acceptable (intuitively I understand "it" refers to the U.S stock market but isn't there a chance that it could refer to the United States)? In what situations do we have to clarify and say "the market" vs allowing the vague pronoun "it"

Hi ynz,

A pronoun generally refers to the word placed close to it, though there are exceptions to the rule.
The key to making sure that a pronoun is not vague is to make sure that there aren’t any other nouns between the pronoun and its antecedent (the noun that it refers to).
In the sentence below, there are two nouns ‘goblet’ and ‘glass table’ before the pronoun ‘it’. So, the pronoun becomes ambiguous.
E.g.: John dropped the goblet on the glass table and it broke. (ambiguous)
John dropped the goblet on the glass table and the goblet broke. (not ambiguous)

In the given question, we can be sure that the pronoun ‘it’ refers to the “US stock market” because it is placed close before it. The pronoun is part of a modifier that provides some information about the US stock market.

While the pronoun ‘it’ can refer to ‘the US’, in this sentence, we can be sure that it doesn’t refer back to it because there is a logical antecedent placed just before the pronoun.

The confusion generally arises when there are a number of singular/plural nouns before the pronoun that the pronoun could refer to.

In this sentence, the noun “US stock market” is placed before the pronoun and before that noun, there are two plural nouns, ‘investments’ and ‘investors’. So, if the pronoun were to refer back to ‘the US’, the entire part of the sentence between ‘the US’ and the pronoun ‘it’ would have to be in between commas.
Many stock traders in the United States, have set out to become global investors convinced that limiting their investments to the U.S. stock market, even though it is certainly home to the stocks of some of the world’s great corporations, restricted their gains.
As you can see from the placement of the comas, this sentence does not make sense.

I hope this helps.

Jayanthi Kumar.

Dear moderators

Please help me understand how in option A - the part from even though... is not becoming a run on sentence ?
Requesting for your help

Thanks

Hi Shaurya, a run-on is when two Independent clauses are connected by just a comma.

The portion even though.... is a dependent clause (not Independent clause) and hence, cannot contribute to the formation of a run-on sentence.

You can watch our video on Independent and Dependent Clauses.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses run-on sentences, their application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.

Hi Moderators,
GMATNinja, GMATNinjaTwo, VeritasKarishma, AnthonyRitz, MartyTargetTestPrep, AndrewN, VeritasPrepBrian, fiftyoneverbal, GMATRockstar

I have 2 questions about V-ed Modifier.

1. What does ", convinced that limiting their investments to the U.S. stock market" modify?
Many stock traders or global investors?

**I heard that V-ed modifier ALWAYS modifies preceding noun or noun phase. So, should it be global investors?


2. What is the difference between "comma + V-ed" and "V-ed without preceding comma"?

Thanks!

dear DavidTutorexamPAL

GMATNinja, GMATNinjaTwo, VeritasKarishma, AnthonyRitz, CJAnish, MartyTargetTestPrep, AndrewN,
VeritasPrepBrian,fiftyoneverbal
GMATRockstar

I am still cannot get why C is incorrect, although some post the error of the C, but I think it is hard to understand, say DESPITE is wrong, please help.

zoezhuyan
An important part of knowing a word is knowing how it is used in a sentence. "Despite" is used to point out a factor that was overcome or ignored. For that reason, it should precede a noun. We say "Despite the rain, we stayed outside," or "Despite his insistence that he was innocent, everyone believed that he was guilty." In the second case, we seem to have a whole clause ("he was innocent") after "despite," but note that this part is all modifying a noun: "insistence."

Now let's look at C:
"despite that that market is certainly home . . . "

First, let's look at the double "that." This isn't inherently wrong if the "thats" serve different purposes. For instance, I could say "I didn't know that that coffee was yours."
The first "that" introduces a clause: "that coffee was yours." In fact, VERB+THAT will normally introduce a full clause with subject and verb.

Do we want that here? No. "Despite" should introduce a noun, not a clause, so "despite that" is the wrong setup to use. It introduces a clause ("that market is certainly home") instead of a noun. Answer choice A fixes that problem by using the phrase "even though," which does correctly serve to introduce a clause. We could also have fixed the problem by putting a noun after "despite," but this would have been tough, since there's a whole idea that the author wants to present there, not just a single thing. We'd have to say something like "despite its being home . . .," since in that context "being" serves as a noun, but the GMAT doesn't tend to look kindly on the use of "being."

dear DmitryFarber, thanks for your quick reply.
would you please explain further,
you said despite should be followed by noun, can I understand the it is applied to noun phrase, or the clause works as a noun,
because I regard that clause works as a noun. from my learning English, I know some clauses work as noun can be regarded as nouns, so if "that that market is certainly" works as a noun, why can't follow the word "despite."

your further explanation will help correct my learning errors.

thanks in advance

"convinced" is a passive participle. In most cases, it is true that a participle phrase will modify what it is next to. However, your claimed rule that



is not correct. (And I would generally hesitate a lot to use the word "ALWAYS" when stating rules about English grammar; almost everything has exceptions and caveats.)

A (1) participle phrase (2) at the end of a sentence or clause (3) set off by a comma will generally not modify what it is next to and will instead modify the preceding clause as a whole.



This is a full independent clause.

So this phrase modifies "stock traders," not "global investors." (But, ultimately, the distinction doesn't matter much in this case, since (1) it's not underlined and (2) the stock traders want to become global investors -- it's almost one and the same anyway.)

The comma does matter. Without the comma, you'd go back to modifying whatever you're next to.

Pronoun reference on the GMAT uses a really commonsense standard in general. I think it is very clear that "it" in A refers back to "the U.S. stock market," which is the closest available noun.

The example you cited, while interesting, is unlike the issue at hand. In your cited question about "the weight of the discus," the real issue is that parallelism controls; the "but" sets up two independent clauses, "the weight of the discus ... is concentrated," and "it is lined." The parallel structure itself seems to tell me that the "it" lines up with the previous subject, "weight," and therein lies the reference error. As a bonus, "discus" itself isn't even the closest noun; that would be "metal center," which might plausibly be the thing "lined with lead" -- adding to the confusion here.

(Note that each wrong answer in the discus problem also has at least one other error as well, whether tense or modifier reference/clarity.)

Our example poses no such parallelism concerns, so I wouldn't worry about just having "it" go back to the noun it's both (1) closest to and (2) clearly attempting to reference.

zoezhuyan

We definitely cannot treat clauses as nouns. A clause is an entire idea, with a subject that performed some verb. There's no way it can substitute for a noun in terms of meaning or structure. If you have an example of any case where that seemed to be what a right answer was doing, I'm happy to look at it.

Hello, TorGmatGod. I am satisfied with the broader response that AnthonyRitz provided to your original query. I did want to address this one question at the end with an example to make a further point. I could write two sentences that started the same way, in which one modifier employed a comma while the other did not:

1) The computer powered by a Core processor...

2) The computer, powered by a Core processor, ...

The first sentence provides restrictive information about a particular computer, perhaps to distinguish it from some other computer. (What did the computer with the Core processor do better or worse than one that did not?) Meanwhile, the second sentence tells us about a computer, but the information about its processor is interrupting the main clause, which would continue after the comma. The modifier acts in a less distinctive manner than the one without the commas, almost as though we are just getting additional information about the computer. This is not to say that the clause could not continue in such a way as to emphasize the processor. I am merely drawing attention to the difference conveyed upfront by the commas or lack thereof.

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

- Andrew

dear DmitryFarber,
I got one.
Scientists say that, by bathing the skin cells in extracts of immune cells, they have made human skin cells in a test tube behave as if they were

here that clause works as a noun phrase,



and what GMATNINJIA says is I understand that clause works a noun phrase.

DmitryFarber, your help can correct my learning bug.

thanks in advance.

In option A (andB), isn't the pronoun 'it' ambiguous as it can refer to both the 'United States' and 'US stock markets'.
GMATNinja EducationAisle egmat