sayantanc2k wrote:
No, I am unable to cite an example from
OG in which a relative pronoun modifier "which......" skips the nearest grammatically eligible word.
That's what I expected. As I mentioned in my post above, GMAT has been pretty consistent (and
very frequent) in testing
which. That's the reason we have
elaborately covered this topic in our book.
Quote:
I have refrained from commenting on the book Nirvana, and agree with Chetan in that it is inappropriate to judge a whole book from one example.
Reiterating, this example is
perfectly fine, insofar as its intent to depict the usage of
which is concerned.
Quote:
Nevertheless, my question remains:
The restrictive modifier "that" is used to define or identify a particular item in a group (hence the name restrictive).
Restrictive: The dog that barks never bites. We are defining only that dog that barks from the whole group of dogs.
Non-restrictive: The dog, which barks, never bites. We have already identified the dog; "which barks" says something more about that already identified dog.
Similarly let us consider your example:
The Independence-war of America that was fought between 1775-83 resulted in "American Enlightenment".
If there were many independence wars of America, then using the restrictive "that" would be alright to define the one that took place between 1775 and 1783. However there was only one Independence war of America, and to determine that we do not need external knowledge: the capitalization of Independence depicts that already the war has been identified. In such case I do not agree that we still require to use the restrictive modifier"that".
Not sure if you went thru my posts above. GMAT does
not explicitly test this concept: There has
never been a question (in my knowledge) in which the
only difference between two given options hinges upon the ability to distinguish between
this aspect (
restrictive/non-restrictive).
In fact, one could even argue that if test takers were to apply
this aspect to choose an option, they might end up choosing the
wrong option.
OG-16, #75:
Many house builders offer rent-to-buy programs that enable a family with insufficient savings for a conventional down payment to move into new housing and to apply part of the rent to a purchase later.The reason I have specifically cited this example, is because there are other options in this sentence that use
which. Meaning-wise, I would argue that
which actually makes
more sense here (from a
restrictive/non-restrictive point of view). It is very clear that this sentence is not interested in mentioning
all the programs offered by
all the builders; the sentence is already
qualifying (restricting) the programs by using the phrase
Many house builders offer rent-to-buy programs.
Clearly it is a characteristic of
all such qualified programs that these programs enable a family with insufficient savings to apply part of the rent to a purchase later.
So, the usage of
which (from a
restrictive/non-restrictive point of view) would have been more appropriate.