The CEO of Burberry, Angela Ahrendts, who has built some incredibly te

mikemcgarry : Hi Mike - can you please help me understand the usage of "had built" in the correct choice.... if it is in past perfect tense what is the prior related event ?

had+ past participle would be in the past perfect tense ?

Dear mikemcgarry,

Your response is always on demand

The OA is the best among the choices provided above. However, I find the past perfect tense is somehow useless here.

My thoughts:
Someone could interpret that 'building of stores' was prior action to 'joining the company as VP' but I think both maybe independent so past perfect is unjustified. Also, the sequence of tenses of 'had built' and 'has been influential' is strange. I think also that we do not need 'had build'. It could be 'built....... and has been'.

Bottom line: using 'built' is better than 'had built'

I do not know if I'm correct or not. What do you think about the verb tenses used in the OA?

Your insightful critic about the quality of the question at hand is really appreciated.

Thanks

Dear Tan2017,

I'm happy to respond.

Here's the full sentence version of (E), the OA.
Angela Ahrendts, who, as CEO of Burberry, had built some incredibly tech-savvy retail stores, where people can use their smart-phones to learn more about a product, and has been influential on fashion industry, joined Apple as Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores.
The main verb, the only verb that's not part of the noun modifying clause is "joined," a past tense verb. The suggestion is that, relatively recently, Ms. Ahrendts, who is a real person, "joined Apple" as a big VP. That's the recent past event. BTW, Ms. Ahrendts was ranked 25th most powerful woman in the world o Forbes 2015 list. Pretty cool!

The event before this in time is what Ms. Ahrendts did in her previous job, as "CEO of Burberry." This explains the use of the past perfect.

That's the short answer. See more discussion below.

Dear Mo2men,

I'm happy to respond, my friend.

This is a GMAT Club Test. This always makes me suspicious. The Quant on the GC Tests is uniformly superb, because all that has been vetted by the genius Bunuel. The quality of the Verbal questions, though, varies.

Part of the problem here is that the prompt version, (A), is so atrociously wrong that it leaves us guessing a bit. That is not a feature of official questions: official questions are logically tighter.

To some extent, this question is asking us to look beyond the grammar to the meaning. Official questions sometimes do this. Quite simply, would Mr. Ahrendts' activity as the "CEO of Burberry" be essentially simultaneous with joining Apple as a VP? On the one hand, basic marketplace logic tells us that one has to leave one job in order to accept another. On the other hand, I don't know if the official questions would make us lean that heavily on extra-grammatical logic. The official questions don't leave quite so much to deduction.

Again, here's (E):
Angela Ahrendts, who, as CEO of Burberry, had built some incredibly tech-savvy retail stores, where people can use their smart-phones to learn more about a product, and has been influential on fashion industry, joined Apple as Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores.
"had built" = completed past action in relatively distant past
"has been" = present perfect = begun in the past and continuing to the present
This certainly works. The building of stores happened only when she at her old job. Someone else might still be building those fancy stores, but that would no longer be Ms. Ahrendts activity. Her activity there is definitely done, and as part of her old job, had to proceed accepting her new job. By contrast, it may well be that she is still an influence in the "fashion industry"--an influence that started in the past and continues to the present moment. There's not problem with these two tenses. Two verbs in parallel do NOT have to be in the same tense. See:
GMAT Grammar Rules: Parallelism and Verb Tenses

BTW, the term "sequence of tenses" does not accurately describe this scenario--that's a whole other situation, irrelevant to this sentence. See:
Sequence of Tenses on GMAT Sentence Correction

Overall, I don't think this is the most well designed SC question. I don't know that I have seen any SC questions from the GC tests approach the high standards of the GMAT.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Dear mikemcgarry , I choose C here. Would you please elaborate more, what is wrong with C?

"Building" and "Influencing" here seems parallel to me, and they become modifier of Angela Ahrendts.

Thanks you for your explanation!

Hi mikemcgarry,

I am posting the original sentence again :

The CEO of Burberry, Angela Ahrendts, who has built some incredibly tech-savvy retail stores, where people can use their smart-phones to learn more about a product , is influential on fashion industry, has joined Apple as Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores.

Now, my question is that does the 'WHO' refer to Angela Ahrendts or to the CEO of Burberry. I do understand that Angela Ahrendts is used as an appositive for the CEO of Burberry but if that 'WHO' refers to Angela Ahrendts then the original sentence just means that she built those incredibly tech-savy retail stores, not necessarily at Burberry (As the CEO of Burberry).
On the contrary if that 'WHO' refers to the CEO of Burberry then it definitely means that Angela Ahrendts built those tech-savy retail stores at Burberry and the OA 'E' would make a lot more sense to me.

Thanks Much !!!

Dear septwibowo,

I'm happy to respond.

My friend, you can't do GMAT SC just paying attention to grammar. You have to think about the ways that grammar, logic, and rhetoric all come together to produce meaning.

Choice (C) is 100% grammatically correct and it completely distorts the logic. Participles, such as "building" and "influencing," take on the tense of the main verb. Version (C) changes the meaning because it makes it sound as if all the actions happened at the same time.

Does this make sense?

Dear pkshankar,

I'm happy to respond.

My friend, your question tells me that you don't really understand appositives. See:
GMAT Grammar: Appositive Phrases
An appositive is another way to state the SAME THING. That appositive phrase tells us that "Angela Ahrendts" WAS the "CEO of Burberry." These are NOT two different people. It's one person, and the "who" refers to that single person.

Does this make sense?
Mike

Hi guys !

Can someone explain why is the present perfect 'has been' used in (E) considering the fact that 'had built' and 'joined' are both in the past tense. Plus, there is a parallel construction with 'AND' :
...had built..., and has been influential
Should it be the same verb tense ?

Thanks

Dear mahagmat,

I'm happy to respond.

Verbs in parallel do not have to have the same tense. See:
GMAT Grammar Rules: Parallelism and Verb Tenses

Does that make sense?
Mike

OA is E, but I think E is incorrect, for 2 reasons.

1. Simple past must indicate an event that began and ended in the past at a particular time. So if the sentence said: "... joined apple last month"... that would have been correct. Instead the sentence says "joined apple". If we remove all unwanted stuff from the sentence, we will get "The CEO of Burberry joined Apple". This is incorrect!! It should either say "The CEO of Burberry has joined Apple" (present perfect), or "The CEO of Burberry joined Apple last month" (simple past).

2. The sentence uses lots of clauses, and the three events are presented in three different clauses. e.g.

"had built ...." - clause 1
"has been influential ... " - clause 2
"joined apple ... " - clause 3

The OE is trying to link events in clause 1 and 3 to indicate the past perfect-simple past relation. I am not sure if this is correct. Event in clause 1 and clause 3 are not related. Let's take an example:

Ex1: "Ram, who had finished his dinner, went to bed". This is incorrect!
Even if we correct error related to simple past and say...

Ex2: "Ram, who had finished his dinner, went to bed an hour ago". This is still incorrect.

Ex3: Ram, who had finished his dinner by the time I arrived, went to bed an hour ago".
Here, "by the time" is linking two events together (Ram's dinner and my arrival), and hence this example is correct.


IMO, all the 5 answer choices are incorrect.

Experts - Please let me know your comments!!

1. Simple past "joined" is alright. The action "joining" started and completed in the past. (Do not get confused between the action "joining" and the action "working" - it does not matter whether Angela is still working for Apple - the action "joining" started and completed the very first day she worked for Apple.) Introducing a time reference (e.g., "last month") is not necessary to use simple past.

2. Past perfect "had built" is also alright. Use of past perfect is still required when the verbs are in different clauses.

The Ex1 you mentioned is wrong for a different reason altogether. When the sequence of event is already understood, then the use of past perfrect is unneccesary. I parked the car and went inside the shop... past perfect not required.
It is alright to say:
Ram, who had scored incredibly high scores in GMAT, did not do well in GRE... this is alright because the sequence of GMAT and GRE is clarified only by the use of past perfect.

I made the very basic and stupid mistake of choosing D. Now I see why E is correct.

Opn D. states that, Angela, as CEO did X, Y, AND joined Apple. Logically wrong, right!!! How could she, as CEO of another company join Apple.

sentence 1-My friend, on the GMAT, "where" is appropriate for any physical location.
sentence 2-Similarly, I think I would have to say that we should refer to websites, individual URLs, with "where," because a "place" on the world wide web is not a physical location.

both statements are contradicting . please help what i am missing???

Can you please explain the reason for using WHO in the sentence.