Literacy opened up entire realms of verifiable knowledge to ordinary

That is one way of looking at it, imSKR. You can also think of the modifier in the way daagh had above, in this post. Either way you look at it, the -ing construct is suboptimal in this sentence. When a clearer alternative exists, it is better to play it safe.

- Andrew

This is a question from VerbalReview -2021.

The Explanation in Verbal Review is, "Themselves" is a reflexive pronoun to refer back to the plural noun phrase "ordinary men and women"

My doubt is,
Is "Himself or Herself" a correct reflexive pronoun to refer back to "Ordinary man and woman"?
If not what's the correct reflexive pronoun for "Ordinary man and woman"?

Yeah...that would work...though I believe themselves would work as well, since man and woman is plural.

santosh93

There's no proper answer to this one, because we can't say "ordinary man and woman." In the original, "men and women" was clearly plural, and "ordinary" applied to all of them. "Man and woman" would also have to be plural--compound subjects always are--but what would it mean? One man and one woman? Then we'd need "an ordinary man and an ordinary woman." In that case, yes, "themselves" would apply. For instance, "The movie shows an ordinary man and an ordinary woman who find themselves at the center of extraordinary events."

By the way, can you see why we can't say "an ordinary man and woman"? We'd have a singular article ("an") preceding a plural subject ("man and woman"). We might be better off saying "two ordinary people," unless their gender is important to the sentence.

Literacy opened up entire realms of verifiable knowledge to ordinary men and women having been previously considered incapable of discerning truth for themselves.

(A) having been previously considered incapable of discerning truth for themselves

Hello Dear Experts!

Can you please explain why "A"is a wrong answer?
Having been considered without comma modifies preceding noun "men and women", and that participle is an analogous to a verb in the Past Perfect tense and in the Passive voice.
It seems grammatically better to use a relative pronoun "who" to refer to "men and women", but I cannot articulate why exactly B is a better choice and how to decide between "having been considered" participle and other choices later.

Thank YOU!

Choice (A) is a tough one to eliminate, so don't beat yourself up too much about this one!

First, take a look at this "having + verb" example (stolen from one of our crusty old chat transcripts):

"Having eaten dinner already, Amber immediately began drinking heavily at the dinner party."

• As stated in the chat, this one gets the timeline right. Amber ate dinner first, and then started drinking at the dinner party. That’s perfectly fine logically.
• Also, notice that the "having + verb" construction logically modifies the main clause. It tells us what Amber had already done BEFORE she started drinking heavily.

In choice (A), the timeline isn't really an issue -- the ordinary men and women were considered incapable BEFORE literacy opened up entire realms of verifiable knowledge.

But notice that the "having been" construction in (A) doesn't modify the main clause. Instead, it modifies an object of the main clause (an indirect object, actually -- literacy opens up realms to whom? To the ordinary men and women).

Unlike the Amber example above, the "having + verb" construction in (A) does NOT tell us what the noun (ordinary men and women) had already done (or been) before doing something else. Instead, it tells what the ordinary men and women had been before the LITERACY did something else.

That's certainly not a concrete error (so, no, please don't ask if we can make up some rigid rules about when "having + verb" works and when it doesn't!). But the fact that the "having been" doesn't describe the main clause in (A) makes the intended meaning somewhat unclear in this case. The meaning is much clearer in (B), where we have a noun modifier ("who...") describing the ordinary men and women. That makes (B) a better option.

Also, the use of "previously" doesn't make as much sense in (A). (Check out the bottom of this post for our defense of the "previously" in B.) The "having + verb" modifier is trying to tell us that the ordinary men and women had been incapable before literacy opened up realms. The addition of the word "previously" in (A) makes the reader wonder, "well, were they incapable just before literacy opened up realms? Or at some point even further back on the timeline?"

In other words, if we go back in time and observe the ordinary men and women before literacy opened up realms, would we describe them as incapable? Or previously incapable? There's a subtle difference in meaning, and that gives us another vote against (A).

I hope that helps!

hello MartyTargetTestPrep,
In choice A,
having been is also used for past.
Is there a rule to differentiate between had vs having been?
Is having been used for recent past?
I chose A because it was shorter than B.
why exactly is A wrong?

Hi EducationAisle

Doesn't the two tenses have to modify the same subject or is it just that the events have to be related?

"had been considered" is for the subject 'men and women' whereas 'opened up' is for 'Literacy'.

There is really no requirement for the two tenses to refer to the same subject.

Perhaps few examples would help:

Peter helped Maria, who had been going through difficult times.
- "helped" refers to "Peter", while "had been going" refers to Maria.

Michael bought a new car that had been a best seller across segments.
- "bought" refers to "Michael", while "had been" refers to "car".

Vegita


First, it's worth noting that one of the terms is in a modifier but the other isn't. The first two words of the sentence--"Literacy opened" are the main subject and verb. No modifier is involved. "Who had been considered" is a modifier for "men and women."

In any case, even if both the verbs in question were normal verbs (or both were modifiers), we still wouldn't necessarily have a problem. It's quite normal to have different modifiers and verbs that work with different parts of the sentence. We just need to make sure that the meaning is clearly expressed.

Hello All,

I dint get this question how the sequence is happening and secondly what is the verb for the literacy is it "opened" ?
if it is then how ? because literacy is not doing the action of opening up of entire realms.....

Also why "having been" is incorrect usage since it is correctly modifies men and women

when we have to sure about the usage of relative pronouns ?

Awaiting for your response !


#Egmat
#Shradhaa
#Payal

Hello Babashyam,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your queries, the order of events is such -- ordinary men and women were considered incapable of discerning truth for themselves, and then literacy opened up entire realms of verifiable knowledge to them.

Further, "having been...considered" is a participle construction, so it cannot be used to refer to the earlier of two actions - ordinary men and women being considered incapable of discerning truth for themselves and literacy opening up entire realms of verifiable knowledge to these people; remember, the past perfect tense (marked by the use of helping verb "had") is used when a sentence contains two actions in the past; the helping verb "had" is used with the action in the "greater past".

Additionally, "opened" is, indeed, the verb that acts upon the noun "Literacy"; the clause "Literacy opened up entire realms of verifiable knowledge" means that the quality of being literate allowed ordinary men and women access to "entire realms of verifiable knowledge".

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Can anyone explain what is the difference between the answer choices B & E and what is GMAC actually testing here ?? I am really confused with the explanations provided.

Thanks,

Hello GMATking94,

Hope you are doing fine. I will be glad to help you with this one.

The original sentence used the expression "men AND women". Therefore, to refer to both "men" and "women", the collective group denoted by "men and women", we need a common pronoun. Choice B stands correct for the usage of "themselves" because this plural pronoun refers to both "men" and "women".

Choice E is incorrect for the usage of "himself OR herself". The use of "or" considers only either men or women for reference through "himself or herself". The expression does NOT refer to both "men" and "women".

This sentence tests the usage of an appropriate pronoun for correct reference to convey the intended logical meaning.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

"men" is a plural noun and so is "women".

On the other hand, the pronouns "himself" and "herself" can only refer to singular nouns.

Hence, the pronouns "himself" and "herself" used in option E do not have any valid antecedent. So, E is incorrect.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses pronoun antecedents, their application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.

Here are a few examples that might help:

1. "Each man in the group is incapable of discerning truth for himself."

Who's incapable of discerning truth? Each man individually -- here we're referring to the men one at a time, so the subject is singular (hence the singular verb, "is"). So we need singular reflexive pronoun at the end: "himself".

2. "Each person in the group is incapable of discerning truth for himself or herself."

Who's incapable of discerning truth? Each person. Again, we're referring to the people one at a time, so the subject is singular (hence the singular verb, "is"). So we need a singular reflexive pronoun at the end: "himself or herself" (the "or" signifies that we'd use one of those two pronouns, depending on the person).

3. "The people in the group are incapable of discerning truth for themselves."

Who's incapable of discerning truth? The people -- and that's plural (hence the plural verb, "are"). So we need plural reflexive pronoun at the end: "themselves".

4. "The men and women in the group are incapable of discerning truth for themselves."

Who's incapable of discerning truth? The men and women -- again, we have a plural subject (and verb), so we need plural reflexive pronoun at the end: "themselves".

The final example above is essentially what we have in the official question: a plural subject (men and women) that requires a plural reflexive pronoun ("themselves").

I hope that helps!