While depressed property values can hurt some large investors, they

Many eliminated D/E immediately - but are those not dummy subject? (description of a scenario, no antecedent required). Appreciate any insights. Thanks.

Well, there's certainly no rule to determine whether you're dealing with a dummy pronoun, but if you suspect you see one, ask whether the "it" in question could logically refer to a concrete noun. If "it" can, you're probably not looking at a dummy pronoun. If "it" can't, or seems to refer to an abstract state of affairs, then you MIGHT have one.

Here, have an example:

It is trying to eat Tim's children.

In this sentence, there's no way that "it" is referring to an abstract state of affairs. There is an entity with teeth somewhere in the vicinity, and Tim's kids are not safe. Not a dummy pronoun.

Here, have another example:

It is clear that Tim is concerned about the jaguar that escaped from his ill-conceived "home zoo."

Now the "it" feels a little more abstract, right? It's not a concrete thing that's "clear," but rather, we're talking about a general state of affairs. So this "it" is a candidate to be a dummy pronoun.

In (E), we see "it can potentially devastate homeowners." It's not a general state of affairs that's causing the possible distress here. Some thing is responsible, right? It's the "depressed property values," a noun phrase we see earlier in the sentence. Moreover, we've already seen answer choices that capture that meaning by including the plural pronoun, "they."

Put another way, when I see "they" I know exactly what the sentence is trying to convey. But when I see "it" I start scrambling to find a referent that does't seem to be exist.

Because "it" doesn't seem to be describing a state of affairs, and because the pronoun also has no logical antecedent, it's safe to treat "it" as a concrete error.

I hope that helps!
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Gmatninja, much appreciated for the insights.

Hi GMATNinja - I see you mentioned "State of affairs" when asking yourself if the "IT" is a dummy pronoun or not

Is "State of affairs" the only time, we use a dummy pronoun ?

Well, "state of affairs" is just vague enough that it's tough to think of a scenario when it wouldn't apply.

But don't overthink it. If the pronoun is actively doing something that should be performed by a concrete entity, then the pronoun definitely requires a referent. If not, there's a chance you're looking at one of those very rare dummy pronouns.

If you're not sure, don't treat "it" as a decision point. Simple as that. And again: they're very rare on the GMAT, so don't lose too much sleep over this.
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I have a question. It isn't necessarily related to the problem, but I have a doubt regarding Pronouns.

"While they can hurt some large investors, depressed property values...."

Can the above arrangement be grammatically correct? Maybe not in the above example, but is it grammatically correct to first mention a pronoun (for example in a dependant clause) followed by the noun it refers to?
If not generally the case, are there still any exceptions? I think I've heard such sentences quite a lot in speeches.

Verb good observation zeeb. This is one of those very few cases where the usage of Pronoun before the antecedent, is acceptable.

More specifically, when a Pronoun appears as part of the introductory modifier (most notably dependent clauses, prepositional phrases or participial phrases), the pronoun grammatically refers to the Noun immediately after that introductory modifier.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses this aspect of Pronouns. Have attached the corresponding section of the book, for your reference.

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Just a small doubt in Option C: Isn't "they" the subject of the second clause, just as in Option A, and would STILL unambiguously refer to the SUBJECT of the first clause? Does the second clause need to START with "they" in order to unambiguously refer to the SUBJECT of the first clause? Thanks GMATNinja

Hello Pankaj0901,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, independent clauses linked together need not have the same subject.

For example, "I bought my cat a toy, but he didn't like it." - here, the subject of the first clause is "I", but the subject of the second clause is "he", which refers to "cat".

The error in Option C is that it incorrectly uses the pronoun “they” and its possessive form “their” to refer to both “depressed property values” and “homeowners”, respectively; please remember, a pronoun and its derivatives can only be used to refer to one noun in a sentence.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team
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Thanks ExpertsGlobal5, but my query was different. I think I could not make it clear in my post. So, let me re-iterate just in case it was not clear.

In Option C, what is the SUBJECT of the second clause? (I understand Subjects can be different in the first and second clause.) According to me, it is "they" which is the subject, even though "they" is placed after "for homeowners". Or, is it "homeowners" which is the subject of the second clause? If it is "they", then why cannot it logically and unambiguously refer to the subject of the first clause which is "property values", since we know that the PRONOUN in the SUBJECT of the SECOND CLAUSE can UNAMBIGUOUSLY refer to the SUBJECT of the FIRST CLAUSE?

Hello Pankaj0901,

Thank you for the clarification.

To answer your query, the subject of the second clause in Option C is "they", and we actually can unambiguously take "they" to refer to "property values", as it is the only noun that makes sense in place of "they"; remember, pronoun ambiguity does not apply if there is only one noun that the pronoun can logically refer to.

To understand the concept of "Exceptions to Pronoun Ambiguity", you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):



All the best!
Experts' Global Team
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Thank you!

Now that we are on the same page that "they" refers to "property values", "their", derivative of "they", must also refer to "property values", thereby removing any ambiguity what "their" could refer to.

Basically, I am not able to comprehend the two quoted statements in red together.





1. "their" is not ambiguous, as it is referring to "they", which is referring to "property values". But, now we will say that the INTENDED meaning is that "their" should logically refer to "homeowners".

2. If we DO know that the INTENDED and LOGICAL referent of "their" is "homeowners", what "ambiguity" we have been talking about in Option C as well as in Option B?

BOTH statements cannot go together. I am BADLY CONFUSED. ExpertsGlobal5 GMATNinja - Please save me.

Hello Pankaj0901,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, it is our understanding of the question, as explained here, that the pronoun error in Options C and B is not one of ambiguity, but rather of multiple referents for a single pronoun; as we have mentioned, both answer choices incorrectly use the pronoun “they” and its possessive form “their” to refer to “depressed property values” and “homeowners”, respectively.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team
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How is "the pronoun error ambiguity in option C and B" different from "multiple referents for a single pronoun"? Aren't both the same thing?? Looks like I am more confused.

I wouldn't waste much energy worrying about how to label the issues you see, so long as you see why they're a problem. But for what it's worth, here are two the scenarios you might be confusing:

1) Curry passed the ball to Green, and then he missed his 19th consecutive shot of the game.

Here, the pronoun "he" could have more than one referent, "Curry," or "Green." That's not necessarily a definite error, but it's a little bit confusing.

2) Curry passed the ball to Green and then it ricocheted out of bounds, hitting the bottom of the backboard, its vibrations felt in the stands for a good 30 seconds.

Here, the first pronoun ("it") seems to refer to the "ball" and the second one ("its") seems to refer to the "backboard." Again, not a concrete error, but not crystal clear either.

To summarize: in the first example, we have multiple antecedents for one pronoun. In the second example, we have multiple pronouns referring to different antecedents. (B) and (C) are more like the second case above. "They" seems to refer to one thing and "their" seems to refer to another.

Is it important to differentiate between those scenarios? Not at all. All you need to do is ask yourself two questions:

1) Is this clear and logical?
2) Is there a better alternative?

Because the "their" in (B) and (C) isn't clear -- is it referring to the "property values", or a new antecedent, "the investors"? -- those options aren't as good as (A), in which "whose" unambiguously refers to "investors." I wouldn't necessarily argue that the pronouns are 100% wrong in (B) and (C), but they're unclear, and we have a much better alternative in (A).

I hope that clears things up!
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Thank you GMATNinja. You have very nicely explained and cleared my doubts, as you always do.

My biggest takeaway:
In the sentence, a pronoun and its derivatives (such as in choice B & C), or the same mulitple pronouns, need not necessarily refer to the SAME noun. We need to look out for possible antecedents for each pronoun. In case there can be multiple logical antecedents for a pronoun, which we refer to as "pronoun ambiguity", we should look for a better option that is free of such an ambiguity.

Until I read your post, I used to think:
In B and C, "their" MUST refer to "they", which refers to "property values" (subject of the preceding clause), and so there is no pronoun ambiguity at all. BUT, then it was making the intended meaning non-sensical that "property values' equity is plunging and disappearing". Instead, the intended meaning should be "homeowners' equity is plunging and disappearing." And, how do we arrive at the conclusion that what is the correct intended meaning?: we take clues from the given sentence (option A), in which it is "homeowners" (not "property values") whose equity should be plunging and disappearing.

One quick question:

Shouldn't "he" refer to the subject of the preceding clause, which is "Curry", unambiguously? Why there is even a little bit of confusion? I thought the GMAT has been consistent with this logic -- when two clauses are conjuncted, the pronoun of the second clause refers to the subject (noun) of the preceding clause. I am assuming, you were just intending to give an example of how a single pronoun can have multiple logical noun referents.

Glad to hear that our last post was helpful!

That's a good question. in short, there's no "rule" stating that the pronoun MUST refer to the subject of the preceding clause. It's just a natural place to look for the referent. So if you have multiple options and the subject of the preceding clause is the most logical choice, then your pronouns are probably pretty clear.

But that doesn't mean that it's wrong if the pronoun refers to something else. For example:

"The ball hit Klay in the head, and he lost consciousness."

Obviously it was Klay, not the ball, who lost consciousness. That's a bit less natural, but it's certainly not a definitive error.

For an official example, check out this question (and our post about the pronouns).
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