When a passenger aircraft crashed in the jungles near the village of T

Answer is B?

My 2 cents:

C is wrong because: had already been were made is unidiomatic
D is wrong because: and already were made difficult by the remoteness of error in parallelism
E is wrong because: unintentional in thwarting the efforts correct usage has to be unintentionally

So it boils down to A OR B

A is wrong because "THAT" should introduce an essential clause. but the information that follows "THAT" is not essential.

B:
I assume the query must be that "Which" should modify investigators, But the local tribesmen thwarted the EFFORTS OF INVESTIGATORS, not the investigators themselves, so which, here refers to EFFORTS OF INVESTIGATORS and these efforts were difficult.

Experts may provide a better solution.
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The GMAT will not make a test taker decide whether information is essential. (Only one modifying structure will be correct grammatically, as is the case here.)


When referring to people, the relative pronoun is always who, and never that.

Correct.
-- "which" can modify a noun phrase (efforts of investigators)
-- "which" can "reach back to" a noun followed by modifiers, because:
-- the phrase of investigators is essential;
-- essential modifiers "trump" nonessential ones in terms of proximity to what is being modified; and
-- of investigators cannot be placed elsewhere in the sentence.


that signals essential information. Essential information is never set off by a comma or commas.


This sentence is a fragment. There are not two independent clauses.


Fragment as in (D).
A location does not make investigative efforts difficult. The location's remoteness does.

Manhattan GMAT and Manhattan Prep are not the same company.

Manhattan Prep publishes highly recommended books, especially the Sentence Correction Guide.
In this post a representative of Manhattan Prep
describes the confusion.

This question comes from Manhattan GMAT.
The quality of the company's questions is uneven.

Regardless of prep company, no company can replicate official questions.

Answers in this question at the moment are split between A and B.
Almost 60 percent chose (A). The other ~40 percent chose B.

We don't have to decide the issue because only (B) has no grammar errors, but if you want to check whether (B) will work, omit the entire WHICH clause.
-- the remaining sentence is fine
-- Villagers picked up pieces of a crashed plane, unintentionally thwarting the efforts of investigators.

In other words, removing the WHICH clause does not damage the core meaning of the sentence.

Grammarians online and in books are split on the issue of whether "that" can refer to people.
GMAC is not split. People are modified by who.

The answer is B.
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Yes, the answer is B.

But i couldn't understand what is "which" referring to.
I am assuming that which is referring to Noun "investigators". But can which refer to a Noun phrase "Efforts of investigators" ??

Here which refers to the efforts of investigators, as the tribesmen thwarted the efforts of investigators and not the investigators themselves.
So Which is referring to "Efforts of investigators", not "Investigators"
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When a passenger aircraft crashed in the jungles near the village of Triskiti, local tribesmen collected pieces of the broken plane before they could be carefully examined where they had fallen, unintentionally thwarting the efforts of investigators that already were made difficult by the remoteness of the crash site.

A.) unintentionally thwarting the efforts of investigators that already were made difficult by the remoteness of(thwarting modifies the verb collected,that introduces an essential information,correct)

B.) unintentionally thwarting the efforts of investigators, which already were made difficult by the remoteness of(that is more appropriate)

C.) unintentionally thwarting the efforts of investigators, that had already been were made difficult by the remoteness of(two verbs are used)

D.) unintentionally thwarting the efforts of investigators, and already were made difficult by the remoteness of( use of and is not correct as it was the efforts of investigators that were made difficult, that is required )

E.) unintentional in thwarting the efforts of investigators, and already were made difficult by the remote location of( same as in D)

Will go with choice A.

Thanks
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I was in an impression that "which" can only modify preceding Noun, But not Preceding Noun Phrase.
So, can I consider that "which" can modify either Noun or Noun phrase depending on the context. ?

Which can modify nouns placed away from the comma.
Have a look at this sentence from OG13 -Question 29

Emily Dickinson’s letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson, which were written over a period beginning a few years before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother and ending shortly before Emily’s death in 1886, outnumber her letters to anyone else.
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Thank you. I's much clear now.

fitzpratik



i highly doubt that information that follows THAT is not essential.

without the information, you will miss how it becomes more difficult.

.....efforts of investigators, which....
Now place each efforts and investigators in place of which and learn does the sentence make sense with each placement. No.
Only with "efforts" placement will make sentence meaningful and correct.

I think we can use this strategy on other SC problems.
Moreover,
that adds only essential information to noun.
which can add both essential and non-essential information to noun.

In my opinion, this is not a case in which we can surely say whether the part that follows "that"/"which" - "already were made difficult by the remoteness of the crash site."- is essential or non-essential.

Is there a concrete reason to chose B over A?

AjiteshArun , GMATNinja , MagooshExpert , GMATGuruNY , VeritasPrepBrian , MartyMurray , DmitryFarber , daagh , generis , other experts - please enlighten
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The purpose of a that-modifier is to provide ESSENTIAL information that RESTRICTS the scope of the modified noun.
Since a that-modifier provides essential information, it cannot be removed without changing the basic meaning of the sentence.
Here's A:
Local tribesmen collected pieces of the broken plane, unintentionally thwarting THE EFFORTS THAT ALREADY WERE MADE DIFFICULT BY THE REMOTENESS OF THE CRASH SITE.
Here, the that-modifier restricts the scope of the noun EFFORTS.
The implication is that the tribesmen were thwarting not ALL of the investigators' efforts but only a PARTICULAR SUBSET of these efforts:
efforts THAT ALREADY WERE MADE DIFFICULT BY THE REMOTENESS OF THE CRASH SITE.
Not the intended meaning.

The purpose of a which-modifier is to provide NONESSENTIAL information -- information that DOES NOT RESTRICT the scope of the modified noun.
Since a which-modifier provides nonessential information, it can be removed without changing the basic meaning of the sentence.
Here's the OA, with the non-essential which-modifier omitted:
Local tribesmen collected pieces of the broken plane, unintentionally thwarting the efforts of investigators.
This is the intended meaning -- that the tribesmen were thwarting ALL of the investigators' efforts.

That said, I question the validity of the OA.
Generally, COMMA + VERBing serves to modify the NEAREST preceding action and the agent of this action.
OA: Local tribesmen collected pieces of the broken plane before they could be carefully examined where they had fallen, unintentionally thwarting the efforts of investigators.
Here, COMMA + thwarting seems to modify the clause in red, implying that they -- pieces of the broken plane -- were THWARTING the efforts of the investigators.
The intended meaning is that the TRIBESMEN were thwarting the efforts of investigators.
I would not include this SC in my studies.
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Can anyone explain that how ,+ING modifier thwarting , in this case, is modifying the subject local tribesmen? To me it looks like modifying the subj ft of previous clause "they".

Posted from my mobile device

generis wrote



I have a request to the admin. Whenever the Manhattan GMAT questions are posted in the club, is there a way to tag them as questions from the inferior Manhattan Review company and not from the illustrious Manhattan Prep? We can simply skip them.
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As you can read from above explanations that the answer is B .
I will tell the difference between that and which in simple words
That refers to particular thing
Which refers to general thing

Kudos please

I am sharing GMATGuruNY's take on this SC. https://gmatclub.com/forum/?href=-a-pass ... 94675.html
It helped me. I hope it will help others too.

The purpose of a that-modifier is to provide ESSENTIAL information that RESTRICTS the scope of the modified noun.
Since a that-modifier provides essential information, it cannot be removed without changing the basic meaning of the sentence.
Here's A:
Local tribesmen collected pieces of the broken plane, unintentionally thwarting THE EFFORTS THAT ALREADY WERE MADE DIFFICULT BY THE REMOTENESS OF THE CRASH SITE.
Here, the that-modifier restricts the scope of the noun EFFORTS.
The implication is that the tribesmen were thwarting not ALL of the efforts of investigators but only a PARTICULAR TYPE of effort:
efforts THAT ALREADY WERE MADE DIFFICULT BY THE REMOTENESS OF THE CRASH SITE.
Not the intended meaning.

The purpose of a which-modifier is to provide NONESSENTIAL information -- information that DOES NOT RESTRICT the scope of the modified noun.
Since a which-modifier provides nonessential information, it can be removed without changing the basic meaning of the sentence.
Here's the OA, with the non-essential which-modifier omitted:
Local tribesmen collected pieces of the broken plane, unintentionally thwarting the efforts of investigators.
This is the intended meaning.

The referent for which cannot be a person.
Thus, in the OA, it's clear that which refers to efforts.

Hi EducationAisle, can you help here ?

Hello from the GMAT Club VerbalBot!

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