Residents of several Mexican villages have risen up in armed revolt ag

Question

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https://e-gmat.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/certified-fresh.png Residents of several Mexican villages have risen up in armed revolt against local drug traffickers terrorizing the region and against the government that residents say of as incapable to protect them from organized crime. A. terrorizing the region and against the government that residents say of as incapable to protect B. terrorizing the region and the government that residents say to be incapable to protect C. who have terrorized the region and the government who residents say it is incapable to protect D. who have terrorized the region and against the government that residents say is incapable of protecting E. that terrorized the region and against the government that residents say incapable of protecting Official Answer and official explanation will be posted after some discussion. Thanks.

egmat · Accepted Answer

Thanks everyone for their participation in this question. Sorry about the delay in posting the official solution

Residents of several Mexican villages have risen up in armed revolt against local drug traffickers terrorizing the region and against the government that residents say of as incapable to protect them from organized crime. https://e-gmat.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Meaning-icon-final.png • Clause 1: Residents of several Mexican villages have risen up in armed revolt against local drug traffickers terrorizing the region and against the government • Clause 2: that • Clause 3: residents say • Cont. of Clause 2: of as incapable to protect them from organized crime. Many Mexican villagers have started armed revolution against: a. local drug traffickers who have terrorized the region. b. the government who the people think is not capable of protecting them. https://e-gmat.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Grammar.png Error Analysis • Clause 1: Residents of several Mexican villages have risen up in armed revolt against local drug traffickers terrorizing the region and against the government • Clause 2: that • Clause 3: residents say • Cont. of Clause 2: of as incapable to protect them from organized crime. Error 1 – Relative Pronoun “that” starts a dependent clause. It acts as a subject and stands for “the government”. However, there is no verb for this subject. This leads to fragment error. Error 2 – “to protect” is not the correct expression here. The sentence wants to convey that the government did not have the ability. Hence, the correct expression here should be “of protecting”. Study the usage of “capable of” in the following correct official sentence: PoE A. terrorizing the region and against the government that residents say of as incapable to protect : Incorrect for the reasons stated above. B. terrorizing the region and the government that residents say to be incapable to protect: Incorrect. Error 1 – Per this choice, the list is no longer clear. In the absence of “against” before the second element “the government”, the sentence may be construed to mean the following: The villagers have started armed revolution against traffickers who have terrorized: a. the region b. the government. This is certainly not the intended meaning of the sentence. Thus to avoid ambiguity in meaning, we need to repeat “against” before “the government” the way we have it before “local drug traffickers”. Error 2 – Same fragment error as in Choice A. Error 3 – Same expression error as in Choice A. C. who have terrorized the region and the government who residents say it is incapable to protect : Incorrect. Error 1 – Same illogical parallelism error as in Choice B. Error 2 – Presence of pronoun “it” is incorrect because relative pronoun “who” is already present in the sentence that stands for “the government”. Error 3 – Same expression error as in Choice A. D. who have terrorized the region and against the government that residents say is incapable of protecting: Correct Answer Correct. Verb “is” is the verb for the relative pronoun subject “that”. E. that terrorized the region and against the government that residents say incapable of protecting: Incorrect. Error 1 – Local drug traffickers are people. Hence we should use relative pronoun “who” for them and not “that”. Error 2 – Same fragment error as in Choice A. https://e-gmat.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Takeaway.png 1. In cases in which the omission of common words before the entities may lead to ambiguity in meaning, repeat the common words before all the entities so that the conveyed meaning is logical. 2. Every subject must have a verb to form a clause. 3. Use correct expressions to convey the correct meaning. Thanks.

Shraddha

nm01 · Answer

+1 D

A - 'say of as' construction looks wrong
B - changes the intended meaning --suggests that 'local drug traffickers' are terrorizing 'the region' and 'the government'
C - Same issue as in B
D - Correct
E - 'who' should be used to modify group of people

fameatop · Answer

Residents of several Mexican villages have risen up in armed revolt against local drug traffickers  terrorizing the region and against the government that residents say of as incapable to protect  them from organized crime.
A. terrorizing the region and against the government that residents say  of as incapable to protect  
B. terrorizing the region and the government that residents say  to be incapable to protect  -  AGAINST is required before Government otherwise the meaning changes. "To be incapable" is very lengthy.  
C. who have terrorized the region and the government  who  residents say  it is incapable to protect -  AGAINST is required before Government otherwise the meaning changes. THAT must be used & 2nd portion is unnecessary long & awkward  
D. who have terrorized the region and against the government that residents say is incapable of protecting -   CORRECT  
E. that terrorized the region and against the government  that residents say incapable of protecting  -  It's a Fragment as verb is missing

So Answer has to be D

Hope it helps.

Fame

Dinesh2Apr · Answer

Meaning :-
Villagers have risen up in revolt against
a. Local drug traffickers
b. The government

Error Analysis :- Terrorizing the region is a verb-ing modifier whereas that residents say .. is a relative clause. Parallelism error. Say of as incapable is awkward.

Option A :- explained 
Option B :- Change of meaning drug traffickers don't terrorize the region and the government.
Option C :- same change of meaning error as in B
Option D :- Correct
Option E :- Need 'who' to refer to drug traffickers. Also the verb Terrorized is in past tense implying that the action completed in the past which is not correct.

IMO :- D

Archit143 · Answer

Hi 
Verb ing phraase cannot be parallel to noun + that modifier

Options D solves the issue at hand by introducing a modifier....Hence is the correct answer
D

Archit

venkatasuresh · Answer

Residents of several Mexican villages have risen up in armed revolt against local drug traffickers terrorizing the region and against the government that residents say of as incapable to protect them from organized crime.

A. terrorizing the region and against the government that residents say of as incapable to protect
- Awkward verb form - Terrorizing

B. terrorizing the region and the government that residents say to be incapable to protect
- Same reasoning as in A

C. who have terrorized the region and the government who residents say it is incapable to protect
- Missing parallel construction ''ägainst drug traffickers" ... needs "against the government"

D. who have terrorized the region and against the government that residents say is incapable of protecting 
CORRECT.- Proper parallel structure.

E. that terrorized the region and against the government that residents say incapable of protecting 
 cant use 'that' for people should use WHO

Narenn · Answer

Answer should be D.

The fight is between  is incapable to protect  and  is incapable of protecting . I don’t know how each of them is grammatically correct or incorrect but I can say both have distinct meanings.  Is incapable to protect  seems to indicate that the government don’t have power or potential to protect the subject residents whereas  is incapable of protecting  indicates that either the government was unwilling to protect the subject residents or it was failed(possibily because of wrong strategy),despite having ability, to protect subject residents. later is correct in the context of this question, so A,B,C will get eliminated. Between D and E, D is grammatical.

A)  say of as  is ungrammatical.

B) lack of  against  before the government creates parallelism error and changes the intended meaning of sentence.

C) use of  it  is redundant in second part of the sentence.

D) Correct.

E)  that  can not refer to living things. In second part verb (is) is lacking.

AvgIndianGuy · Answer

Residents of several Mexican villages have risen up in armed revolt against local drug traffickers terrorizing the region and against the government that residents say of as incapable to protect them from organized crime.

A. terrorizing the region and against the government that residents say of as incapable to protect( terrorising the region seems to point to fact that villagers taking arms has terrorised the region ..so its wrng )

B. terrorizing the region and the government that residents say to be incapable to protect( same error)

C. who have terrorized the region and the government who residents say it is incapable to protect(for goverement who pronoun cnt be used )

D. who have terrorized the region and against the government that residents say is incapable of protecting (correct)

E. that terrorized the region and against the government that residents say incapable of protecting (is verb is lacking ..pluss who should be used for persons)

mhrahil · Answer

Hello everyone,

Here is the detailed analysis i could come up with following the e-gmat process.

Meaning: 
Residents of several Mexican villages have risen up in armed revolt against 2 things
• local drug traffickers, who terrorize the region
• the government that residents say is incapable of protecting the citizens from organized crime.

Error analysis: 
Clause1 :  Residents  of several Mexican villages  have risen  up in armed revolt against
• local drug traffickers terrorizing the region – here terrorizing the region is a -ing modifier for drug traffickers. 
• against the government 
 Dependent clause -that residents say of as incapable to protect them from organized crime.

The 2 entities are not structurally parallel. One is a-ing modifier and the other a dependent clause.

POE:
A. terrorizing the region and against the government that residents say of as incapable to protect
- Parallelism error as described above. ‘Say of as incapable’ does not convey the intended meaning.

B. terrorizing the region and the government that residents say to be incapable to protect
 -Parallelism error as A. ‘to be incapable to protect’ may be considered wordy as well.

C. who have terrorized the region and the government who residents say it is incapable to protect
 -Here we need ‘against’ before government. This statement changes the intended meaning states that drug traffickers have terrorized the region and the government.

D. who have terrorized the region and against the government that residents say is incapable of protecting  
 - CORRECT parallelism structure maintained between drug traffickers and government.

E. that terrorized the region and against the government that residents say incapable of protecting
-  who needs to be used for drug traffickers (humans) instead of that.
Also helping verb ‘is’ is needed in the second part.

Hope this helps.

Cheerio
Rahil

soumens · Answer

This is really interesting. Not sure I am right though. The meaning makes the modifiers tricky.

Decoding Meaning
--------------------------

Residents (Subject)
of several Mexican villages
have risen up (Main Verb)
in armed revolt
against local drug traffickers terrorizing the region
and
against the government that residents say of as incapable to protect them from organized crime.

1st Simplified form: Residents <> have risen up <> against X and against Y.

Observations:
1) Against is required because without "against" it is inferred drug traffickers are terrorizing the region and the government. (Can ignore B, C)
2) Now X and Y should be parallel.

POE
--------------------------
POE Candidates: A,D,E

For A) Elimination
1)"Say of as" sounds weird
2) terrorizing and that are not parallel. (I am 100% sure of this though since both are modifiers, but does not sound right)

For E) Elimination
1) "that residents say incapable of protecting" does not sound right. Meaning is obscure. Seems to miss verb "is"

D) Best one:
1) X and Y seem parallel.
2) who and that > both are relative pronouns
3) Meaning seems OK.

Waiting for OA and OE.

egmat · Answer

Thanks every one for participating in this question/poll.

Here are the statistics for this question:

Number of responses - 68
82% people answered this question correctly.

Since 82% of people who attempted this question answered correctly, I would not classify this question as a 700 level question. It is more or less 600 level question. At times its good to through in a question that is not as difficult as the others!! But I and Shraddha will take it upon us to create a more difficult version of this question

Regards,

Payal

Regards, Payal

soumens · Answer

Well I found it quite tricky, and you broke my heart by saying it's a 600 level question. :roll:

Anyway judging the difficulty level is very not my cup of tea coz many times, I get the difficult ones correct and the easier ones wrong. My little experience tells me that difficult questions have 2 options too close that it is really hard to distinguish.

bagdbmba · Answer

Hey Payal, Great qs but was pretty easy as you said...! BTW, don't you think that from the perspective of grammar ,the above highlighted part should be 'Shraddha and I' instead...? :wink:

egmat · Answer

Yes you are correct bagdbmba, Shraddha and I will take it upon us to create a more difficult version of this question

crackwithneeraj · Answer

Meaning: The residents have revolted against 
1. Drug traffickers who have terrorized the region and 
2. The government that is incapable of protecting.

Error Analysis:
The two things should be logically parallel i.e the entities in the list should be parallel in structure. In the original sentence the structures are not similar as the modifiers of the entities are not parallel.

POE
A. Wrong per the Error analyis
B. Similar Error as in A. Additionally there is an idiom error as well. "incapable to protect is unidiomatic".
C. Pronoun error. Who can not modify government. SV error as there is no verb for who.
D. Addressed the original error. Thus logically the correct answer.
E. Relative pronoun that cannot modify traffickers as people can only be modified by who.

I hope my analysis is correct. E-GMAT may please comment.

Thanks

Cbirole · Answer

Residents of several Mexican villages have risen up in armed revolt against local drug traffickers  terrorizing the region and against the government that residents say of as incapable to protect  them from organized crime.

A. terrorizing the region and against the government that residents say of as incapable to protect

B. terrorizing the region and the government that residents say to be incapable to protect

C. who have terrorized the region and the government who residents say it is incapable to protect

D. who have terrorized the region and against the government that residents say is incapable of protecting

E. that terrorized the region and against the government that residents say incapable of protecting

sudarshan22 · Answer

+1 for   D  .

A)  terrorizing  the region and against the government that residents say of as incapable to protect

B)  terrorizing  the region and the government that residents say to be incapable to protect

C) who have  terrorized the region and the government  who residents say it is incapable to protect -->  Changes meaning

D)  who  have terrorized the region and  against the government  that residents say is incapable of protecting -->   Correct , "  Against X, and against Y  " is the correct idiom

E)  that  terrorized the region and against the government that residents say incapable of protecting

Hence,   D  .

Akash720 · Answer

+1 for D

A
 terrorizing  the region and against the government that residents say  of as  incapable to protect -  Incorrect. Modifier error

B
 terrorizing  the region and  the government  that residents say  to be  incapable to protect -   Incorrect. Modifier error
 
 C
 who have  terrorized the region and  the government  who residents say it is incapable to protect  - Parallelism error

D
 who have  terrorized the region and  against the  government that residents say  is incapable  of protecting - Correct. Rectified modifier error and parallelism is correct

E
that terrorized the region and against the government that residents  say incapable  of protecting  - Incorrect

Bunuel · Answer

Merging topics. Please search before posting.

Residents of several Mexican villages have risen up in armed revolt ag

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Residents of several Mexican villages have risen up in armed revolt ag

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