The North American moose's long legs enable it to move quickly through

In E, "THAT" refers to Legs. Can "THAT" refer to plural nouns?

I have a query in option E. I considered it to be incorrect because:
The North American moose has long legs that enable it - should we not say 'enables'?
Eg. He has long legs that enables him to walk fast.

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In a word, yes. To test what the pronoun refers to, just replace the word with the referent and see if the clause makes sense. Here,

that long legs enable it to move quickly through the woods

makes perfect sense. It is no different from saying something such as The books that were on the table... Again, testing our referent, we get a perfectly logical sentence in the books were on the table. No problem at all.

If you have further questions, feel free to ask.

- Andrew
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Be careful, Deeksha93. A that clause is restrictive and typically modifies the noun that immediately precedes it. You can see in my post above that you can replace the pronoun with its referent to test for a sensible statement:

that he enables him to walk fast

that long legs enables him to walk fast

that long legs enable him to walk fast

I think you will agree that the last sentence makes sense while the first two do not. For enables to work, you would need a singular noun ahead of it, along the lines of

He has long legs, a quality/feature that enables him to walk fast.

I hope that helps clarify the issue. Feel free to ask any further questions on the matter, and be careful not to eliminate answer choices too quickly based on what you want them to say.

- Andrew
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Dear DmitryFarber,
Can you please help me understand?
What you have said is right - 'present participle preceded by a comma acts an adverbial modifier.' This is precisely the reason I eliminated E.

In the option E, as written 'stepping easily over modifies the main verb has(long legs)'. I felt in option A 'stepping easily' modifies enable(it) in a better manner.

Yes, later I realized that A has pronoun error. As written in option A it should not refer to a possesive case(moose's).

But to the extent of understanding of present participles, could you please explain or help me understanding option E?

Thanks and Regards,
Vikram

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vikramgade
Note that in my post, we are talking about the use of "enabling" in D. E is different because it has an additional verb--"move"--that appears before the modifier. So the main sentence core is "The moose has long legs." Then "long legs is modified by "that enable it to move quickly." Then the adverbial modifier ("stepping easily") applies to the verb right before it in the modifier: "move quickly."

So . . . the moose has long legs. The legs enable it to move quickly. When it moves quickly, it is stepping easily.
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I have read a lot of the posts here which say that the pronoun "it" can't refer to a possesive pronoun and therefore the posts rule out A,B & C.

THIS IS FALSE. There have been GMAT questions, inwhich the correct answer includes a pronoun, which refers back to a possesive noun. All of the answer choices A,B and C have other mistakes.

(Please give this post a kudos so that people read this before reading the false explanations)

Hi EducationAisle

In option A, B and C, is usage of "it" applicable for a possessive pronoun?

Can there be any exceptions where usage of "it" for a possessive pronoun will be considered right ?

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Agree Mayank. The usage of pronoun it (used as an object pronoun here) to refer to a possessive noun (The North American moose's) is not a great construct and, at the very least, makes these options (A,B, and C) less preferable.
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A B and C has pronoun problem.
Moving on to D and E. D has SVA problem

E seems the best

How is "stepping easily over downed trees" after "enable it to move quickly through the woods" correct? What is "stepping...." modifying?

my 2 cents on this:

I believe it's important to question "it" and "them" correctly here and match accordingly.

option E does this well: Moose has long legs that allow it (i.e. Moose) to move .....stepping....while predators pursuing it (i.e. Moose) must leap over or go around them (i.e. long legs of Moose

He has a cow, helping people to get milk.
In this example, has is just a linking verb-‘has’ is used just for ‘possession’ not ‘doer’ it is. If this types of verbs can’t do anything ( I mean if there is no direct result) how the adverbial modifier (COMMA+ helping...) is used?

D. The North American moose has long legs, enabling it to move quickly through the woods and to step easily over downed trees while predators pursuing them must leap or go around.
In D, The North American moose has long legs.
-->here 'has' is a linking verb (not direct verb like 'go'). So, there is no chance to get 'adverbial modifier' from this part, I guess.

E. The North American moose has long legs that enable it to move quickly through the woods, stepping easily over downed trees while predators pursuing it must leap over or go around them.

He has a cow that helps people to get milk, keeping health blah blah.....
^^ it seems that the adverbial works fine as ‘helps’ plays vital role here like 'enable' in choice D.
Is my thinking rihgt? Can I have your suggestion on it, please RonTargetTestPrep, GMATNinja, MartyTargetTestPrep?
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Hello TheUltimateWinner,

Thank you for the query.
I will be more than glad to help you with this one.

It is not so that a comma + verb-ing action modifier does not modify a helping verb, especially has, have, and had because they are used to mean "possess".

The problem with Choice D is the usage of the comma + verb-ing modifier itself because we do NOT need an action modifier in this sentence. From the context, we know that the legs of the North American moose enable the animal to run quickly. Therefore, we need a modifier for the noun "legs".

Grammatically, the comma + verb-ing modifier MUST make sense with the doer of the modified verb. Even if say that comma + enabling... modifies the verb "has", the modifier does not make sense with the subject of this verb "the North American moose" because the moose do not enable anyone. So, the use of the comma + verb-ing modifier in Choice D is incorrect logically and grammatically.

Here is the link to our detailed article on the usage of comma + verb-ing modifiers. The article is well-loved. I am sure you will find it interesting too. https://gmatclub.com/forum/usage-of-verb-ing-modifiers-135220.html

Let me know if you have any other queries on this official sentence.

Thanks.
Shraddha.
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In the correct answer choice, why isn't "them" considered ambiguous? I realize that logically "them" should refer to trees but there is another plural noun in the sentence "legs" that "them" can refer back to. How do we know technically know that "them" doesn't refer back to "legs"?

Overall, I get confused on GMAT SC questions because we need to read literally, but in cases like this, you then need to make an assumption. How do you strike this balance? Is it just a matter of finding definite wrong answers with the other choices/being able to live but not love this answer choice because the others are wrong? GMATNinja may be able to knock my question out of the park

In the correct answer choice, why isn't "them" considered ambiguous?

Pronoun usage may not be as strict as some believe. The usage in the correct answer choice is acceptable. It matches with "trees" logically and in terms of plurality. Consider checking out the "elephant seal" and "Barret Browning" questions.
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Hey woohoo921

Happy to help you with this.

You need to stop feeling so apprehensive about pronoun ambiguity on the GMAT. Yes, the GMAT is slightly more relaxed when it comes to pronoun ambiguity, but it isn't senseless. There's a very sound principle of pronoun reference adopted by the GMAT, and that is:

"The GMAT relies on LOGIC to resolve pronoun ambiguity. So long as a pronoun can refer back to only one, unique noun logically/meaningfully, the pronoun will not be considered ambiguous even if there are other possible antecedents in the sentence."

"It is only when there are multiple, equally logical/meaningful antecedents that a pronoun is considered ambiguous on the GMAT deterministically."

So, keeping the above in mind, let's look at choice E:

The North American moose has long legs that enable it to move quickly through the woods, stepping easily over downed trees while predators pursuing it must leap over or go around them.

The plural nouns before "them" are: legs, woods, trees, and predators. So, which of these nouns can "them" refer to logically/meaningfully?

1. Is it "legs"?
Predators pursuing the North American moose must leap over or go around the moose's legs? Does that make any sense? Are the moose's "legs" are in the way of the predators? Or are the downed trees in the way of the predators? ILLOGICAL

2. Is it the "woods"?
Predators pursuing the North American moose must leap over or go around the woods? Can predators leap over the woods? No, right? ILLOGICAL

3. Is it 'trees'?
Predators pursuing the North American moose must leap over or go around the downed trees that the moose can easily step over owing to its long legs. Makes sense! LOGICAL

4. Is it 'predators'?
Predators pursuing the North American moose must leap over or go around the predators themselves? So, shouldn't the pronoun be 'themselves' and not 'them' in this case? And would that be logical? Or does the sentence talk about different categories of predators or some kind of competition between predators? No, right? ILLOGICAL

So, as you can see, there's only one possible LOGICAL ANTECEDENT. This means you should NOT be worrying about this pronoun usage and should focus on identifying other worse errors to eliminate this choice.

Apply the above to several medium and hard pronoun questions till you get the hang of it. Trust me, pronoun ambiguity will then be a strength and not a weakness.


I hope this improves your understanding.


Happy Learning!

Abhishek
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dear MartyTargetTestPrep

at first I narrowed down D and E, because I am not sure whether "to move" should be parallel with "to step", but the OA is E, which shows no parallelism between "move" and "step",

Don't you think it is better if "to move" parallels to "to step"

genuinely need your help.

thanks in advance.

zoezhuyan



Looking at the pronoun usage between (D) and (E) may also be helpful. D uses THEM but uses the singular MOOSE in the beginning.
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