vasuca10
Expert
mikemcgarry please guide for this question....I am confused..Bioconservatives is a group so singular in nature hence predicts must be used instead of predict which is used in Option B. Also my second doubt is how can who refer to a group? Who is used to refer to persons isn't it?
Dear
vasuca10,
I'm happy to respond.
My friend, as in another question of yours that I answered, what you believe is a SVA problem is actually a misunderstanding of the nature of the nested clauses. Choice (B) is perfect as is. Here's the main outside sentence, without the noun-modifying clauses.
Bioconservatives . . . predict the opposite of what techno-progressives . . . forecast.
The main subject is "
Bioconservatives," a plural noun, and the main verb is "
predict," a plural verb. No SVA problem.
The main noun, a plural noun, is followed by a singular
appositive phrase "
group," and the noun-modifying relative clause, beginning with the word "
who," modifies that singular noun and so has a singular verb. You were confusing appositive phrase & subject of the noun-modifying clause with the main subject of the sentence. You were looking at two verbs operating at two completely different grammatical levels in the sentence.
As for your other question, it's 100% perfectly fine for "
who" to refer to a group of people, either a few people or a very large group:
my friends, who like to refer to Monty Python, . . .
my family, most of whom live on the East Coast, . . .
the NY Mets, who were the 2015 NL champions, . . .
the French, who take pride in their language, . . .
the world's Muslims, who are an astonishing diverse group, . . .
the human race, whose living members outnumber the dead members, . . . All of those constructions are 100% grammatically correct. There are about 70 million French people and about 1 billion Muslim on Earth. In the entire history of our species
Homo sapiens, there have been about 10 billion human beings altogether, and about 7 billion of those are alive right now. I don't think I can conceive of a bigger number of "
who," yet this use of "
who" is still perfectly correct.
My friend, rather than continue to cite SVA issues and other problems where in fact you misunderstand the relationship of different clauses, I would recommend developing a deeper understanding of sophisticated grammatical structures. A non-native English speaker develops this understand by cultivating a rigorous habit of reading. Learning all the rules of grammar will only give you about 20-30% of what you need to know. The rest is a living knowledge of how the language is used, and this comes only from reading. See:
How to Improve Your GMAT Verbal ScoreDoes all this make sense?
Mike