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17 Jul 2021, 08:07
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Anchal270789
Excellent question! And the answer might not be terribly satisfying.
If our standard is that "where" must refer to a place, we can't justify this usage. "Where" appears to refer to "ironies," and "ironies" is definitely not a location.
That said, when it comes to the usage of "where" in the underlined portion of SC questions, basically every official example we've seen has used it to refer to a location. And because "where" isn't underlined here, if you saw this on the exam, you wouldn't want to worry about it.
So two things to consider:
1) The GMAT will occasionally undermine its own usage tendencies in the non-underlined portions of the sentence.
2) A usage tendency isn't an ironclad rule, so we have to allow our understanding of certain constructions to evolve based on what we see in official examples.
The takeaway: when you see "where" in the underlined portion, it's most likely going to refer to a place, but this might not be an ideal initial decision point. Look for other definitive errors first. If you can't find anything, the likelihood that "where" will refer to a location is high enough that it's very reasonable to keep using it as a back-up plan, even if it doesn't qualify as an ironclad rule.
I hope that helps a bit!
02 Jun 2022, 07:47
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happy1992
Can someone tell me what's wrong with Option A? I don't find any grammatical issues here. Also ''they'' properly is referring to ''facts''.
Also, I don't understand what is the role that ''the'' plays in option E. Why say ''the play's characters'', why can't we simply say ''play's characters''. Somehow using ''the'' didn't sound right to me. Is it correct to use 'the'' when the thing that follows is a clause? I don't know if there is any rule of that sort, but it just didn't sound right to me. Thus, I went with Option A.
I would appreciate if someone can provide some definite reason to eliminate option A.
Thank You
Vighnesh
08 Jun 2022, 15:13
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VIGHNESHKAMATH
Good question! And you couldn't find any grammatical errors in (A) for a very good reason. There aren't any. This is the tricky thing about SC -- sometimes an answer is wrong because it contains a definitive error, and other times it's wrong because it's confusing and another option is simply better.
Take another look at the relevant portion of (A):
Quote:
At first, when I saw the phrase, "they are recognized" I thought, "Who is recognized? People in the audience?" When I reread, I can see that "audience" is singular, and "they" has to refer to "facts," but the construction confused me.
Also, I see no good reason to use the passive voice here. Why not just write "the characters recognized the facts?" Seems simpler.
That said, neither one of these issues is a concrete error. Confusing pronouns can show up in a correct answer, and so can the passive voice. So after my initial read, I'm keeping (A).
But when I get to (E), I can see this version is just better. It gets rid of the confusing pronoun and uses a simple active construction. So while (A) may not be definitively wrong, it still loses to (E), which is clearer.
Quote:
All five answer choices contain the phrase, "the play's characters," so we have to live with it!
And generally, the presence or absence of a "the" isn't a great decision point to rely on unless you're 100% confident that one version creates an illogical meaning. If it just sounds weird, look for other issues.
I hope that helps!
