can there be a decision point on "are pursued" and "are being pursued" ?
avohden
In these difficult economic times, those who have public pensions – veterans, mail workers, firemen, and others – are being pursued strongly by pension advance companies that operate without much oversight from banking regulators, but they are now drawing scrutiny from several other government organizations.
A. are being pursued strongly by pension advance companies that operate without much oversight from banking regulators, but they are now drawing scrutiny from several other government organizations.
B. are being pursued strongly by pension advance companies, which operate without much oversight from banking regulators but are now drawing scrutiny from several other government organizations.
C. are pursued strongly by pension advance companies and operate without much oversight from banking regulators but are now drawing scrutiny from several other government organizations.
D. are pursued strongly by pension advance companies, operating without much oversight from banking regulators but now drawing scrutiny from several other government organizations.
E. are pursued strongly by pension advance companies who operate without much oversight from banking regulators; however, they are now drawing scrutiny from several other government organizations.
Dear
avohdenI'm happy to help.
This is a good question.
The adjective "
they" in
(A) &
(E) is ambiguous. We know logically it has to refer to the "
pension advance companies" but grammatically, it could refer to "
those who have public pensions". Choice
(E) also creates a very strong break between two verbs, "
operate" and "
are drawing", that really should be contrasted in parallel. Similarly,
(A) doesn't maintain parallelism between them. These two are incorrect.
In
(B), the modifier refers very clearly and appropriately to the "
pension advance companies". This choice is promising.
In
(C), we have false parallelism. This is a trap designed for folks who think about parallelism mechanically, ignoring the meaning of the sentence. See:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/parallelis ... orrection/The subject of the verba "
operate" and "
are ... drawing" are the "
pension advance companies", but the parallelism suggests otherwise. This is incorrect.
Choice
(D) is perhaps the most tempting alternative to
(B). The problem with
(D) is subtle. Typically, when we have an independent clause, then a comma, then a participial phrase, the participial phrase, if it acting as noun-modifier, modifies the subject.
P did X to Q, doing Y.In that construction, most typically
P is the actor of the "
doing Y" action.
In
(D), this rule would suggest that "
those who have public pensions" should be the subject of the participial phrases, but logically, we know it must be the "
pension advance companies." Grammar & logic don't support the same conclusion --- that's always the sign of an incorrectly constructed sentence. We can reject
(D).
The only possible answer is
(B).
Does all this make sense?
Mike