ravigupta2912 wrote:
A. Regarded by opponents as ineffective and meddlesome and by supporters as a conserver of life and energy, the fight over the speed limit continues in our legislatures and on our freeways. — modifier error. Eliminate.
B. Regarded by opponents as ineffective and meddlesome and by supporters as a conserver of life and energy, the speed limit continues to be fought over in our legislatures and on our freeways. — prima facie this looked passive to me if you cut out the opening modifier. But I was wrong. I think the issue here is as daagh described - “speed limit continues to be..” no “the fight continues to be..”
C. Regarded by opponents as ineffective meddling and by supporters as the conservation of life and energy, the speed limit continues to be fought over in our legislatures and on our freeways. — “ineffective meddling” and “conservation of” jumped out to me here. I’m not able to pin point errors here but just doesn’t sound right. “Ineffective meddling” is a gerund while conservation of is a noun phrase. It’s not structurally parallel. “Regarded by X as sth and by Y as sth”
D. The fight over the speed limit, regarded by opponents as ineffective and meddlesome and by supporters as a conserver of life and energy, continues in our legislatures and on our freeways. — again a very close contender. I could not exactly say why this is wrong. People have said that -Ed modifier is creating ambiguity in the sense that who is it referring to ie “speed limit” or “fight”. Imo, it should be speed limit and this isn’t ambiguous at all. Anyways let’s keep it.
E. The fight over the speed limit, a measure regarded by opponents as ineffective and meddlesome and by supporters as a conserver of life and energy, continues in our legislatures and on our freeways. — same as D except the Ed modifier is now an appositive modifier. Sorta prefer this over D.
Hello
AndrewN IanStewart generis - request you guys to please give your opinion on this one as well as my POE. Though I got the right one but took 4 mins and that was primarily because I wasn’t very confident of my PoE.
Posted from my mobile deviceHello,
ravigupta2912. I agree with your analysis of the question, and congratulations on arriving at the correct conclusion. (I myself took 1:50 to answer it correctly, a long time for me on SC.) Some additional notes:
Answer choices (A) through (C) are all left-branching sentences, starting off with a two-pronged modifier that is baseless until we jump across the comma to qualify it. I write sometimes about this very issue in my responses, often to more challenging SC questions. To be clear, the GMAT™ prefers right-branching sentences to their left-branching counterparts. It is not as though you should read every line and get rid of anything that has an introductory phrase or clause, but just keep in the back of your mind that a straightforward [subject] + [verb] sentence is easier to follow, and that the correct answer is based on the clear and concise expression of vital meaning. Among (A), (B), and (C), the original sentence is the worst, for the very reason you outlined. Choice (C) smashes
ineffective and meddlesome together to yield
ineffective meddling, and that gerund places the focus on some unseen agent doing the meddling. Although I did not eliminate (B) for the reason as
daagh, I let it be while I sought a clearer alternative.
Between (D) and (E), the former does indeed leave itself open to interpretation, since a modifier can either modify the previous noun, prior to the comma, or jump over the prepositional phrase to modify a different noun. As long as both interpretations are sensible, they can each be considered valid. I agree that the
speed limit itself seems to make
more sense as to what is being modified, but I cannot dismiss the other interpretation outright. Could a
fight about some issue be seen as
ineffective and meddlesome? Certainly. Could that same fight be viewed as
a conserver of life and energy? Although this one is more debatable, it would be in keeping with the saying,
fight the good fight. Perhaps some people could view the fight for a worthy cause as itself contributing to an improved quality of life. However, choice (E) removes the ambiguity and also adopts a more direct (right-branching) framework. Since we are looking for the best answer of the five presented, we should go with the safest option in (E).
I hope that helps. Thank you for thinking to ask me about this one.
- Andrew
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