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505-555 Level|   Comparisons|   Modifiers|   Pronouns|   Verb Tense/Form|                     
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td
Retail sales rose 8/10 of 1 percent in August, intensifying expectations that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled that of the 1.4 percent growth rate in personal spending for the previous quarter.


(A) that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled that of

(B) that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double

(C) of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it more than doubled

(D) of personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubling that of

(E) of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it would more than double that of



Hi souvik101990 generis
I have a query with respect to the use of tense...
If option B would have been as follows, would it be still incorrect?

that personal spending in the July-September quarter will more than double

My reason: Since the sentence talks from the past perspective that is represented by the verb ROSE, WOULD is correct that WILL?
Please correct me if I am wrong.

Sometimes with the word EXPECTATIONS...WILL can also be correct but that depends upon the context of the sentence and tense used in the sentence.
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Suryakumar

Hi souvik101990 generis
I have a query with respect to the use of tense...
If option B would have been as follows, would it be still incorrect?

that personal spending in the July-September quarter will more than double

My reason: Since the sentence talks from the past perspective that is represented by the verb ROSE, WOULD is correct that WILL?
Please correct me if I am wrong.

Sometimes with the word EXPECTATIONS...WILL can also be correct but that depends upon the context of the sentence and tense used in the sentence.


Hello Suryakumar,
Thank you for the query. :-)

The context of the sentence is such that the verb will will also work in the correct answer choice.

See, if you visualize that the current time is still somewhere in September that is not over yet, the future tense verb will work because the time period mentioned in the sentence is yet to be over.



Hope this helps. :-)
Thanks.
Shraddha
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td
Retail sales rose 8/10 of 1 percent in August, intensifying expectations that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled that of the 1.4 percent growth rate in personal spending for the previous quarter.


(A) that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled that of

(B) that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double

(C) of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it more than doubled

(D) of personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubling that of

(E) of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it would more than double that of
I would like to know whether the first 'that' is a modifier or is a subordinate clause ?

GMAT ninja has mentioned that The first "that" is pretty harmless, and just modifies “expectations.”

But what follows the 'that' is a complete clause which makes me wonder if it is a subordinate clause. Is it ok for a modifier to have a complete clause ?

The below examples show 'that' being used as a modifier. What follows that is just the verb phrase not the complete clause.
Ex 1: The first-class airline tickets to Antarctica that were purchased using Amber’s retirement savings were worth every penny.
Ex 2 : The son of a gun that burned my dinner deserves to be punished.


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td
Retail sales rose 8/10 of 1 percent in August, intensifying expectations that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled that of the 1.4 percent growth rate in personal spending for the previous quarter.


(A) that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled that of

(B) that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double

(C) of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it more than doubled

(D) of personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubling that of

(E) of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it would more than double that of
I would like to know whether the first 'that' is a modifier or is a subordinate clause ?

GMAT ninja has mentioned that The first "that" is pretty harmless, and just modifies “expectations.”

But what follows the 'that' is a complete clause which makes me wonder if it is a subordinate clause. Is it ok for a modifier to have a complete clause ?

The below examples show 'that' being used as a modifier. What follows that is just the verb phrase not the complete clause.
Ex 1: The first-class airline tickets to Antarctica that were purchased using Amber’s retirement savings were worth every penny.
Ex 2 : The son of a gun that burned my dinner deserves to be punished.


GMATNinja VeritasKarishma
First, anytime you place "that" in front of an independent clause, the clause is no longer independent.

"Tony had a baby." Independent clause.

"That Tony had a baby." Not an independent clause.

Context will dictate how the dependent "that" clause is used. For example,

  • "I heard the news that Tony had a baby." - Sure, "Tony had a baby" has a noun+verb pair, but the "that" clause still modifies "news" - What news did I hear? The news THAT Tony had a baby.
  • "I can't believe that Tony had a baby!" - Here we have the same exact "that" clause, but in this case it functions as a noun (as the object of the verb "believe") instead of a modifier.

The takeaway is that GMAT SC isn't about coming up with a list of black and white rules (i.e. "modifiers can/cannot have a complete clause?") and blindly applying them to new problems -- instead, you always need to pay attention to the context and think really hard about the meaning in each unique sentence.

I hope this helps!
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Dear IanStewart AjiteshArun MartyTargetTestPrep GMATGuruNY AnthonyRitz VeritasPrepBrian ccooley DmitryFarber GMATNinja GMATNinjaTwo,

Although I got it correct by POE, I have 2 questions on the correct choice B.

Q1. Why is comparison in choice B. correct?
How can SPENDING (which is supposed to be a number double) a RATE?
Shouldn't it be that the RATE of personal spending in July-Sept double the RATE of personal spending in previous quarter?

Q2. Is it possible for a present value to double a past value?
How can a past value (the growth rate of a previous quarter) be changed or double?

Side note: The issue in Q2 is the reason why choice A. is wrong in this OG question: https://gmatclub.com/forum/a-1972-agree ... 52000.html
Quote:
WRONG : A 1972 agreement between Canada and the United States reduced the amount of phosphates that municipalities had been allowed to dump into the Great Lakes.
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varotkorn

Although I got it correct by POE, I have 2 questions on the correct choice B.

Q1. Why is comparison in choice B. correct?
How can SPENDING (which is supposed to be a number double) a RATE?
Shouldn't it be that the RATE of personal spending in July-Sept double the RATE of personal spending in previous quarter?

Q2. Is it possible for a present value to double a past value?
How can a past value (the growth rate of a previous quarter) be changed or double?

I only skimmed the thread, but some replies seem to eliminate C, D and E solely because they use "expectations of". "Expectations of" is an idiomatic phrase in English, as in the sentence "not much was expected of me", or "expectations of me were low". So you need to consider what the sentence means before eliminating those answers. And at least one long reply above says the pronouns in the wrong answer choices do not have clear antecedents, which is not true. There's only one singular thing in the sentence the "that" and "it" pronouns can refer to, "personal spending", so the pronouns have a perfectly clear antecedent. The pronouns are wrong because they create a nonsensical meaning.

You're right that if you read the sentence a certain way, even the right answer seems to be constructing an improper comparison. But if you read it differently, the comparison becomes fine. If you think of the first "personal spending" in the sentence as something that is "doing the work", rather than as an amount, then the sentence makes sense, much as the sentence "in September, factory workers were expected to more than double the 10% increase in production they achieved in August". It is a bit of a strange way to read the sentence though, and I"d have preferred a phrasing that more obviously compares two like things. When I answer this question, I don't like B much on a first read for that reason, but after reading the remaining choices, it is clearly the only possible answer.
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Lots of “that” going on this week. Check out our Topic of the Week, or our YouTube live webinar on the GMAT’s many uses of “that”.

In this question, we have two different uses of “that” going on. Fun.

Quote:
A. that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled that of
The first "that" is pretty harmless, and just modifies “expectations.” The second that is trying to function as a pronoun – and “that” is always singular when it’s being used as a pronoun, so let’s look for a singular noun it could refer back to. “Personal spending” is singular. So let’s replace “that” with “personal spending”:

    Retail sales rose 8/10 of 1% in August, intensifying expectations that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled the personal spending of the 1.4 percent growth rate in personal spending


Whoa, that’s a steaming pile of nonsense. Eliminate (A).

Quote:
B. that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double
Hm, this looks good. “Intensifying expectations that personal spending… would more than double” is perfectly clear, and we don’t have any pronoun issues. Keep (B).

Quote:
C. of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it more than doubled
I don’t like the “intensifying expectations of personal spending, but the pronouns are a much bigger issue. “That” looks like a noun modifier – modifying “personal spending in the July-September quarter”, I guess? But then what does “it” refer to? “Personal spending”, I guess? Then we have “intensifying expectations of personal spending, that personal spending more than doubled the 1.4 percent growth rate in personal spending…”

Wow, that’s another pronoun mess. I think we can safely get rid of (C).

Quote:
D. of personal spending in the July-September quarter, more than doubling that of
Same pronoun error as in (A), so (D) is gone.

Quote:
E. of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it would more than double that of
Same pronoun error as in (A) and (D), so (E) is gone, too.

We’re left with (B). Yay pronouns.

I have a question with C. How did you determine that 'that' in C is being used as a noun modifier ? Could it not have been an article ? If I determine that it's an article, where am I wrong?
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GMATNinja
Lots of “that” going on this week. Check out our Topic of the Week, or our YouTube live webinar on the GMAT’s many uses of “that”.

In this question, we have two different uses of “that” going on. Fun.

Quote:
A. that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled that of
The first "that" is pretty harmless, and just modifies “expectations.” The second that is trying to function as a pronoun – and “that” is always singular when it’s being used as a pronoun, so let’s look for a singular noun it could refer back to. “Personal spending” is singular. So let’s replace “that” with “personal spending”:

    Retail sales rose 8/10 of 1% in August, intensifying expectations that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled the personal spending of the 1.4 percent growth rate in personal spending


Whoa, that’s a steaming pile of nonsense. Eliminate (A).

Quote:
B. that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double
Hm, this looks good. “Intensifying expectations that personal spending… would more than double” is perfectly clear, and we don’t have any pronoun issues. Keep (B).

Quote:
C. of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it more than doubled
I don’t like the “intensifying expectations of personal spending, but the pronouns are a much bigger issue. “That” looks like a noun modifier – modifying “personal spending in the July-September quarter”, I guess? But then what does “it” refer to? “Personal spending”, I guess? Then we have “intensifying expectations of personal spending, that personal spending more than doubled the 1.4 percent growth rate in personal spending…”

Wow, that’s another pronoun mess. I think we can safely get rid of (C).

Quote:
D. of personal spending in the July-September quarter, more than doubling that of
Same pronoun error as in (A), so (D) is gone.

Quote:
E. of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it would more than double that of
Same pronoun error as in (A) and (D), so (E) is gone, too.

We’re left with (B). Yay pronouns.

I have a question with C. How did you determine that 'that' in C is being used as a noun modifier ? Could it not have been an article ? If I determine that it's an article, where am I wrong?
First, the fact that you were unable to figure out what "that" was doing in the sentence is a pretty good indication that you were looking at a flawed answer choice!

More generally, context will typically allow you to see what role "that" is playing. For example,

    Tim described the music that his kids were blasting as "thrash klezmer," a designation that confused everyone else in his choir.

Here "that his kids were blasting" is clearly describing the music. There's nothing else that phrase could be doing.

If "that" were being used more like an article (or a "determiner" if you're into the jargon), it would likely precede a noun and differentiate it from other nouns in the same category. For example:

    Tim asked his children why they would choose to play that music, as opposed to music that didn't sound like a violin strangling a cat.

Here, the "that" in red is differentiating between one kind of music and another. (The second "that," in blue, is a relative pronoun, one merely describing the alternative type of music.)

Is it important to know the difference between a determiner and a relative pronoun? Not at all. You just want to ask yourself: is it clear what the modifier is describing and is it logical? If you can answer those questions, the terminology is completely irrelevant.

I hope that helps!
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Hey guys, QQ;

(B) that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double

even though I marked B as my answer (took 2.20 as I had eliminated this option earlier and Kinda came back to it since the rest were just plain BAD). I am not convinced with B. how come personal spending's || to 1.4% growth rate.

intensifying expectations that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double the growth rate of 1.4%. How come we're okay with this? personal spending and growth rate, as an entity, are not the same.
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ueh55406
Hey guys, QQ;

(B) that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double

even though I marked B as my answer (took 2.20 as I had eliminated this option earlier and Kinda came back to it since the rest were just plain BAD). I am not convinced with B. how come personal spending's || to 1.4% growth rate.

intensifying expectations that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double the growth rate of 1.4%. How come we're okay with this? personal spending and growth rate, as an entity, are not the same.
Hi ueh55406, good question. Here than is not the classical "than" (in the sense that than does not really serve as a comparison indicator here).

Let's take a similar example:

The recent trend of extremely high birth rate in country X will more than double country X's population in the next few years.

This means that birth rate in country X has recently been so high that country X's population will increase by " > 2" factor, in the next few years.

Similarly here:

Retail sales have been so high in August that growth rate in personal spending in the July-September quarter will be > 2.8%.
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Lots of “that” going on this week. Check out our Topic of the Week, or our YouTube live webinar on the GMAT’s many uses of “that”.

In this question, we have two different uses of “that” going on. Fun.

Quote:
A. that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled that of
The first "that" is pretty harmless, and just modifies “expectations.” The second that is trying to function as a pronoun – and “that” is always singular when it’s being used as a pronoun, so let’s look for a singular noun it could refer back to. “Personal spending” is singular. So let’s replace “that” with “personal spending”:

    Retail sales rose 8/10 of 1% in August, intensifying expectations that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled the personal spending of the 1.4 percent growth rate in personal spending


Whoa, that’s a steaming pile of nonsense. Eliminate (A).

Quote:
B. that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double
Hm, this looks good. “Intensifying expectations that personal spending… would more than double” is perfectly clear, and we don’t have any pronoun issues. Keep (B).

Quote:
C. of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it more than doubled
I don’t like the “intensifying expectations of personal spending, but the pronouns are a much bigger issue. “That” looks like a noun modifier – modifying “personal spending in the July-September quarter”, I guess? But then what does “it” refer to? “Personal spending”, I guess? Then we have “intensifying expectations of personal spending, that personal spending more than doubled the 1.4 percent growth rate in personal spending…”

Wow, that’s another pronoun mess. I think we can safely get rid of (C).

Quote:
D. of personal spending in the July-September quarter, more than doubling that of
Same pronoun error as in (A), so (D) is gone.

Quote:
E. of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it would more than double that of
Same pronoun error as in (A) and (D), so (E) is gone, too.

We’re left with (B). Yay pronouns.


Hi GMATNinja
Just wanted to clarify, expectations 'that' - is this a correct idiom that is used on the GMAT ? could the answer choices C, D and E be eliminated based on the this incorrect idiom usage ?
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Hi GMATNinja
Just wanted to clarify, expectations 'that' - is this a correct idiom that is used on the GMAT ? could the answer choices C, D and E be eliminated based on the this incorrect idiom usage ?
In general, we don't recommend memorizing a whole bunch of idioms (read this article for a rant on this subject). There are so many different idioms, and so many factors that go into why a particular idiom might be used in a particular context, that we don't think it's that useful for GMAT SC.

For example, is "expectations of" always incorrect? Nope, there are certain correct usages of this idiom. For example, you might say "I have high expectations of myself," or "After many years of disappointment and food poisoning, my expectations of the local seafood buffet were incalculably low."

"Expectations that" does make more sense in the context of this official question. The "that" modifier clearly explains what kind of expectations we're dealing with -- expectations that "personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double the 1.4 percent growth rate in personal spending for the previous quarter." In (C), (D), and (E), this clarity is lost: what exactly are the expectations of personal spending? It really doesn't make much sense.

That's a kind of wishy-washy reason to get rid of an answer choice, though. It's much more efficient to focus on the pronoun issues in those answer choices, and let the idiom slide unless you know for a fact that it's incorrect.

I hope that helps!
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Hi,

I have a problem with the noun modifier "that" in "that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double". Here, the "that" is a relative pronoun, which acts as the subject the following clause. I assumed after "that" as a relative pronoun only "verb" is allowed, however, here we introduce the new subject of "personal spending".
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soltanveis
Hi,

I have a problem with the noun modifier "that" in "that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double". Here, the "that" is a relative pronoun, which acts as the subject the following clause. I assumed after "that" as a relative pronoun only "verb" is allowed, however, here we introduce the new subject of "personal spending".
Cardinal Rule #1 of SC: Do not invent rules! :)

"That" doesn't have to be followed by a verb. Consider a few examples:

    1) Tim believes that grounding your children involves burying them waist-deep in the ground.

    2) Tim's belief system is one that all sensible people should condemn.

In the first case, "that" doesn't seem to be a relative pronoun, because it isn't modifying a noun. Instead, it's introducing a subordinate clause informing the reader what Tim believes, and "that" is not the subject of this clause.

In the second case, "that" is describing the noun "one," which refers to the belief system. So here, "that" is functioning as a modifier, but notice that, again, "that" is not the subject. Rather, it's introducing a modifying clause with the subject "sensible people." This is fine too.

In the official question, "that" is functioning like the "that" in the second example above. It's introducing a modifier with a new subject. This is perfectly acceptable.

For a more thorough rundown on all things "that," check out this article, and let us know if you have any questions.

I hope that helps!
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Could anyone please explain the usage of verb "doulbe" here?
Is the idea trying to say “personal spending doubled the growth rate, which was 1.4 percentage before”?
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louisinau
Could anyone please explain the usage of verb "doulbe" here?
Is the idea trying to say “personal spending doubled the growth rate, which was 1.4 percentage before”?

Hello louisinau,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, yes; your interpretation is correct here.

Kudos.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
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td
Retail sales rose 8/10 of 1 percent in August, intensifying expectations that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled that of the 1.4 percent growth rate in personal spending for the previous quarter.


(A) that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled that of

(B) that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double

(C) of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it more than doubled

(D) of personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubling that of

(E) of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it would more than double that of


It was expected that spending would more than double. Only B says so....
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