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Sales of wines declines in the late 1980s, but they began to grow agai

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08 Oct 2022, 21:26

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mansianand1234

in A] we have an oxford comma before 'and'?

No. The "Oxford comma" is a comma that comes directly before "AND" or "OR" in a list of 3 or more parallel elements. ("And" and "or" are the only two words that can assemble three or more items into a list.)

E.g.,
With (pink-colored) "Oxford comma": X, Y, and Z
Without "Oxford comma": X, Y, and Z

In general, any source of decent quality will use consistent style conventions. The decision of whether to use the "Oxford comma" is one such convention, so text from any given source should either always use the "Oxford comma" or else never use it. (The only exception is precise, extremely detail-oriented technical writing. At that level of precision, there are some sentences that require the Oxford comma AND others that can't be written with it, so a skilled technical writer won't hold fast to either side of the issue.)

The "Oxford comma" is primarily an artifact of North American English; it's rarely used in other anglophone countries. (Things weren't always this way. The comma is named for Oxford, England—a place where it's generally NOT used nowadays!)

Because the GMAT is created by an American company and its original audience was U.S. business schools and their applicants, ALL lists of three or more items on the GMAT will have the Oxford comma.

If you do see something that looks like "X, Y and Z" on the GMAT, it's NOT A LIST! It's definitely something else—e.g., "Y and Z" could be a modifier of "X".

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14 Oct 2022, 14:16

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RonTargetTestPrep
isn't 'particularly' an adverb and 'red wine' a noun. so we have a modifier error in B] ?

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himanshu0123

is there a strong basis to eliminate option B] or its just the feel of it.

No GMAT answer will ever be right or wrong because of "the feel of it".

One issue is
a moderate alcohol consumption, particularly red wine
...which doesn't work because red wine is not a type of alcohol consumption.

These modifiers of the same type would both be fine here:
moderate alcohol consumption, particularly OF red wine
moderate consumption of alcoholic beverages, particularly red wine

Another problem is "began growing". The correct idiomatic pairing here is "began + TO [verb]".

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26 Oct 2022, 23:38

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1. EmpowerGMAT - The main problem I see with this question is the placement of the phrase "they began to grow again." Since this is referring to the "sales of wines," it's best for it to be placed directly before or after it. Otherwise, readers might get confused about what "they began to grow again" is really referring to.
Doubt : I learned the concept that a prepositional phrase should be next to the noun it is modifying, "they began to grow again" - "they" is not a preposition so how to understand when this proximity rule is applicable

2. ExpertsGlobal - Option C the construction of this clause incorrectly implies that moderate alcohol consumption caused sales of wine to grow;
Doubt : To understand why "caused" will jump the clause "and particularly of red wine, which was linked with a reduced risk of heart disease," but not "moderate alcohol consumption"

3. Can I say options B and D are wrong because of the following :
Option B: heart disease with a moderate alcohol consumption ?? heart disease cannot have characteristics of moderate alcohol
Option D: "a 1991 report with moderate alcohol consumption" ?? same logic as above

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27 Oct 2022, 04:53

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Rickooreo

Hello Rickooreo,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, "and particularly of red wine" is a modifying phrase that acts upon the noun phrase "moderate alcohol consumption" and "which was linked with a reduced risk of heart disease" is another modifying phrase that acts upon the prepositional phrase "of red wine"; as both of these modifiers are presented between commas, the verb phrase "caused them to begin to grow again" skips over both of them and acts upon the subject "moderate alcohol consumption".

We hope this helps.
All the best!
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27 Oct 2022, 05:02

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Hey Rickooreo

Happy to help with these queries:

1. You certainly are on to something. Indeed, the clause ‘they began to grow again’ should be placed closer to ‘sales of wines’, but not because readers would be confused what ‘they’ refers to. Notice that there are only three plural nouns in the sentence: sales, wines, and the 1980s. Now, if we place ‘they began to grow’ at the start of the second clause (right after ‘but’), the pronoun ‘they’ could still refer to any of these three. However, the GMAT relies heavily on LOGIC to resolve pronoun ambiguities. This is why ‘they’ unambiguously refers to ‘sales’ simply because the things that ‘declined’ were (logically) the things that ‘began to grow again in the late 1980s’.

Then why must ‘they’ be placed right after ‘but’? That’s because there isn’t a comma after ‘but’. Choices B, C, and D each begin with a modifier clause or phrase that must ideally be separated from ‘but’ by a comma. Moreover, the more important error to note in choices B and D is the phrase ‘particularly/in particular red wine’. These phrases equate ‘consumption’ to ‘red wine’. We need to insert the preposition ‘of’ before ‘red wine’ to imply that ‘the consumption is particularly of red wine’.

Doubt: The proximity rule applies to all modifiers (adjectives or adverbs; words, phrases, or clauses). All prepositional phrases, at the end of the day, behave as noun modifiers (adjectival phrases), verb modifiers (adverb phrases), or adjective modifiers (adverb phrases). You are right that ‘they’ is not a preposition. It is a pronoun, and ‘they began to grow again’ is a clause (Subject + Verb). So, no, proximity does not apply here. Instead, focus on identifying modifiers in sentences. Try shuffling them around and see how the meaning of the sentence changes. The proximity rule will become clear automatically.

2. Your analysis of choice C is spot on. It was because a 1991 report linked moderate consumption with a reduced risk of heart disease that the sales of wines began to grow again.

Doubt: The words “which was linked with a reduced risk of heart disease’ form an adjective clause intended to modify ‘red wine’. ‘And particularly of red wine’ is a phrase of additional information to the subject ‘moderate alcohol consumption’. ‘In a 1991 report’ is also a simple (adverbial) modifier of time. So, as you can see, the only potential subject for the verb ‘caused’ is the noun ‘moderate alcohol consumption’. So, I wouldn’t term this as “jumping over” exactly. We limit the use of this expression to modifiers that modify far away words by jumping over words in between. “Verbs” are usually quite far away from their “subjects” in lengthy noun phrases, but they still manage to connect and agree with their ‘subjects’.

3. Option B: No, we shouldn’t. Choice B uses the structure “A linked X with Y”.

X = a reduced risk of heart disease.

Y = a moderate alcohol consumption.

Even choice A uses a similar structure, the only difference is that in choice A...

X = moderate consumption of alcohol

Y = a reduced risk of heart disease.

So, should we consider this to mean “alcohol has a reduced risk of heart disease”? No, right?

Option D: Again, no. Look at these phrases as independent entities owing to their unique meanings. ‘In a 1991 report’ is a phrase of ‘place’. It answers the question ‘where’. Besides, ‘report with moderate alcohol consumption’ makes little sense. Remember, the GMAT relies heavily on logic to resolve ambiguity. So, for this to have been ambiguous, this phrase should have been equally meaningful/logical. So, just as above, ‘with moderate alcohol consumption’ connects with ‘linked’. And ‘in a 1991 report’ merely tells us ‘where’ it was ‘linked’.

I hope this improves your understanding.

Happy Learning!

Abhishek
SME & Product Creator
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29 Oct 2022, 14:13

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Rickooreo

The main problem I see with this question is the placement of the phrase "they began to grow again." Since this is referring to the "sales of wines," it's best for it to be placed directly before or after it. Otherwise, readers might get confused about what "they began to grow again" is really referring to.

Readers wouldn't get confused, because there's nothing else in the sentence that "they" could feasibly stand for. With any other antecedent for "they" other than sales of wines, this sentence is an absurdity.

This is how GMAT problems work more generally, too. GMAC will NOT give you any SC sentences in which it's genuinely impossible to tell which of two nouns is the desired antecedent.
In other words, you won't be confronted with anything like Janice was talking to Heather about her children (in which it's actually impossible to tell whether "her children" means Janice's kids or Heather's kids).

Quote:

Doubt : I learned the concept that a prepositional phrase should be next to the noun it is modifying

...but lots of prepositional phrases are adverbial (= modifying actions/clauses, not modifying nouns), in which case this principle is neither right nor wrong; it's just not applicable.

In this sentence, "in the late 1980s" and "after the 1991 report..." are both adverbial modifiers—they describe actions that took place in the specified timeframes. They don't modify nouns.

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29 Oct 2022, 14:20

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Rickooreo

Option C the construction of this clause incorrectly implies that moderate alcohol consumption caused sales of wine to grow;

This isn't really the issue in C.

One good habit you should try to develop is to identify the core sentence (the skeleton / main clause) when you're looking at a longer and/or more complex SC sentence.

This is the main skeleton of the sentence in choice C: (just the clause after "but")
in a 1991 report, moderate alcohol consumption, and particularly of red wine [...] caused [wine sales] to begin to grow again
That doesn't make sense!
The [b]1991 report[/i] said that moderate consumption of alcohol correlates with a lower risk of heart disease. The 1991 report most certainly does NOT say anything about a rebound in wine sales (...nor could it possibly say any such thing; the jump in sales came AFTER the report!)

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29 Oct 2022, 14:35

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Rickooreo

Can I say options B and D are wrong because of the following :
Option B: heart disease with a moderate alcohol consumption ?? heart disease cannot have characteristics of moderate alcohol
Option D: "a 1991 report with moderate alcohol consumption" ?? same logic as above

No. The identities of the two things that were linked in the 1991 report are perfectly clear: /1/ reduced risk of heart disease and /2/ moderate alcohol consumption.
Because this aspect of the sentence's meaning is both obvious and straightforward, it is not affected by deliberately wrong 'alternative' readings of the sentence with absurd meanings.

If a sentence has one reasonable interpretation and one ridiculous/absurd/insane interpretation, it has ONE interpretation—not two! Such sentences are NOT ambiguous!

The test works this way because it HAS to.
You can figure this out yourself, by just considering the consequences either way. If the existence of an obscure, anti-common-sense, counterintuitive reading of a sentence actually made the sentence 'ambiguous' (and therefore wrong), then the entire SC section would devolve into a bunch of stupid trick questions!
If the test worked that way, then, even if you understood a sentence perfectly on the first read AND had no trouble spotting errors... you would still have to go back and try to find any other possible parsing of the sentence, as though you were some kind of AI bot reading computer code! No respectable institution would want scores from a test like that—especially not a business school.

The way the test actually DOES work, on the other hand—always focused exclusively on common-sense interpretations of sentences that accord with real-world knowledge—is very well aligned with the actual nature of the work that MBA grads do.

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29 Oct 2022, 14:45

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So... what IS the problem in B and D? Actually, both of those choices have the same main issue. The problem in each lies in this modifier:

B/ ...moderate alcohol consumption, particularly red wine...

D/ ...moderate alcohol consumption, in particular red wine...

"In particular" means, essentially, "especially" / "more specifically". For this type of modifier to work, the thing that follows "in particular" or "particularly" must be a specific example of the more general concept or category that's being modified (found before the comma).

In these two examples, that means "red wine" has to be an example of some more general thing before the comma for that modifier to work.
...and that's why B and D don't work.
"Red wine" is an example of ALCOHOL (NOUN). But neither of these choices contains the NOUN "alcohol" anywhere. "Alcohol" is an adjective in both B and D, describing "consumption"—and red wine is definitely not a type of consumption.

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11 Nov 2023, 10:01

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