So dogged were Frances Perkin's investigations of the garment industry

Hi Valyria,

Both her and Frances Perkins’ are possessives. However, we should not worry too much about this issue.

Hi experts,

I read through the replies but I was not able to find why anyone didn't ask the question of her referring to possessive Frances Perkins, how can "her" refer to possessive Frances Perkins?

Hi Sajal12,

What is the rule you're trying to apply here (both her and Frances Perkins’ are possessives)?

How can we use "her"? Shouldn't this qualify as a pronoun error as the antecedent is Perkins' investigations and not Perkins herself?

Hi Sidharth003,

Are you thinking about the "a possessive noun can't be the antecedent for a subject or object pronoun" rule? That "rule" is a problematic one, at best.

Quick recap:
1. Clinton's experience worked against her. ← Her is an object pronoun here.
is the same as
2. Clinton's experience worked against Clinton.

3. Clinton's experience ended up weakening her candidature. ← Her is a possessive pronoun here.
is the same as
4. Clinton's experience ended up weakening Clinton's candidature.

Some (very few!) people think that sentence 1 is not possible, but even they wouldn't have a problem with sentence 3.

5. So dogged were Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry, so persistent her lobbying for wage and hour reform... ← Her is a possessive pronoun here ("her lobbying").

Here, Frances Perkins’ is a possessive (notice the apostrophe) and investigations is what we are really talking about (her investigations). It's the same thing with her lobbying. The her that we see before lobbying is the possessive her, not the object her.

Important: Even though that "rule" hasn't been broken here, we should try not to apply it, as there just isn't enough evidence that the GMAT follows it.

Ceratin key points has to be kept in mind presistence should be for her lobbying
(A) and her lobbying for wage and hour reform was persistent,
this isn't right meaning she was continously presistent not infrequent presistance

(B) and lobbying for wage and hour reform was persistent, so that
Similar issue as A and so that provides ambigious meaning

(C) her lobbying for wage and hour reform persistent, that
i[color=#f26c4f] went with my year for eleminating this i know how much Gnat plays with ear i haveno better reasoning as A [/color]

(D) lobbying for wage and hour reform was so persistent,
Tis was the closest runner up investigation was not lobyied for hence i eleminated

(E) so persistent her lobbying for wage and hour reform, that
It nails the meaning and correct use of so
hence IMO E

egmat
EMPOWERgmatVerbal
EducationAisle
AjiteshArun

Please help me with Answer Options C, D, and E. I have posted my reasons but I am not sure. I am struggling with the concept of ellipsis. Please suggest resources that can help in address the issue.

So dogged were Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry, and her lobbying for wage and hour reform was persistent, Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt recruited Perkins to work within the government, rather than as a social worker.

We have a parallelism marker here "and". Hence we should have 2 elements that are parallel to each other.
Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry ( Noun Phrase) and her lobbying for wage and hour reform was persistent, (Clause). These two are not parallel to each other. Also, we need "that" in the sentence. For these 2 reasons A is incorrect.

Here again we have a Parallelism marker "and". So we should have 2 elements that are parallel to each other. Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry ( Noun Phrase) and lobbying for wage and hour reform was persistent (Maybe this is a clause. I am not sure. The subject is missing). But clearly, this is not parallel. Also, the use of "so that" seems incorrect here. We use "so that" order that to talk about purpose. And hence the use of "so that" changes the meaning.

( How are these two elements connected together?
So dogged were 1. Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry,
2. her lobbying for wage and hour reform persistent
There is no connector (and) here.

Please help me understand the exact issue in Option C.



How are these two elements connected together?
So dogged were 1. Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry,
2. lobbying for wage and hour reform was so persistent,
Incorrect because missing "that". Also, the main two parts of the sentence are not connected to each other. Please let me know whether my reasoning is correct.

"so dogged.....so persistent...., that..."
I did not almost realize that ellipsis is at play in Option E. Please help me understand how is the ellipsis correct in Option E.

I understand the question is testing the concept of Parallelism and the use of the idiom "So x that Y"

egmat
EMPOWERgmatVerbal
EducationAisle
AjiteshArun

Hi Experts
My doubt is around the use of ellipsis. In the sentence below, since 'were' is not present in the preceding portion of the sentence, is it ok to avoid using 'were' just on the basis that 'was' i.e. the singular version of 'were' is mentioned in the preceding portion? In other words, or more generally, is is the concept of ellipsis not dependent on verb number (singular or plural) as long as the verb implied is the same?

Thank you

Of all the wild animals in their area, none was more useful to the Delaware tribes than the Virginia white- tailed deer: it was a source of meat, and its hide was used for clothing, its antlers and bones were used for tools, and its sinews and gut were used for bindings and glue.

Hi sidship21,

Both you and sonalchhajed2019 have asked some really good questions. Ellipsis is a vast topic, and I can't claim to understand it (I've tried!), but I'll try my best to answer your questions.

1. Some of the posts on ellipsis on GMAT Club address extremely strict ellipsis, where the words that are understood must be present in the sentence in exactly the same form. We need to understand that this is just a subset of ellipsis.

2. Similarly, what you see in your example is also a subset of ellipsis where separate (but similar) elements are joined while omitting a word in the element(s) after the first. That word is usually a verb, as it is in your example. Once the first element is out of the way, the word(s) omitted in the other elements do not need to agree with the one in the initial element.

3. The "missing" and is something we've seen in other GMAT questions as well. There are some good posts in that thread on that topic.

Thank you for your reply. As you correctly pointed out the topic of ellipsis is quite difficult to understand.

I am also realizing that as I move towards the higher difficulty questions I am coming across a lot of expectations. ( I have read in a lot of posts - That most of the grammar stuff posted that we consider as rules are not rules but rather preferences. )

And for these higher-level questions, we have to rely on meaning. But I find it very difficult to understand the intended meaning. This topic of meaning is very subtle.

Can you suggest how can I get better at this? And what to do in the questions where the standard rules (preferences) do not apply. I am sure even after studying all the Official Questions there will be quite a number of exceptions to the standard preferences that I would not know about.

Please guide. AjiteshArun Thank you for all your explanations.

While this does not seem to be an official question, singular/plural is not an issue with ellipsis.

For example, following would be correct:

Peter is better off than his brothers.

This is equivalent to:

Peter is better off than his brothers (are).

Thanks a lot AjiteshArun and EducationAisle !

So dogged were her investigations of the garment industry, and so persistent her lobbying for wage and hour reform, that she was first recruited by Gov. Al Smith, and later by Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt, to work within New York State government, rather than against it.

excerpt from NYT article

Option E should have had an 'And'.
Weird question.

Answered it wrong anyways. Didn't expect it from an OG source.

Request moderators to lock this question.

How I tackled this question :

So dogged were FP's investigation -- Inverted Sentence
The next part should also be in sync. It should not be direct

Moreover, So X That Y is clear from the statement. Now break it in C vs E. C is direct and not goes with the structure of the sentence

We see that the first nonunderlined portion is the following:

So dogged were Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry,

That wording is an inverted version of the following:

Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry were so dogged,

We can now tell that what follows must at some point include a "that," so that we have.

Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry were so dogged ... that ....

or as we see in the question

So dogged were Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry ... that ....

Scanning the sentence versions, we see that only (B), (C), and (E) include "that." So, we can eliminate (A) and (D).

The next thing that we can use to eliminate a choice is "so that" in (B).

Notice that neither of the following make sense.

Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry were so dogged ... so that Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt recruited Perkins to work within the government, rather than as a social worker.

So dogged were Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry ... so that Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt recruited Perkins to work within the government, rather than as a social worker.

We don't need a second "so." Thus, the "so" in "so that" has no logical function and makes the (B) version illogical.

We are left with (C) and (E).

Here are the (C) and (E) versions.

(C) version: So dogged were Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry, her lobbying for wage and hour reform persistent, that Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt recruited Perkins to work within the government, rather than as a social worker.

(E) version: So dogged were Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry, so persistent her lobbying for wage and hour reform, that Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt recruited Perkins to work within the government, rather than as a social worker.

In the (C) version, we have an absolute phrase, "her lobbying for wage and hour reform persistent." That phrase should modify the clause that appears before it, but notice that the fact that "her lobbying for wage and hour reform" was "persistent" is a different topic from the topic of how dogged her investigations were. So, it doesn't make sense for that absolute phrase to modify that clause.

In contrast, in the (E) version, "so persistent her lobbying for wage and hour reform" expresses a SECOND REASON why "Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt recruited Perkins to work within the government."

So, we have two reasons, Francis Perkins' investigations were so dogged and her lobbying was so persistent, why Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt recruited Perkins to work within the government.

Now, (E) may seem odd because there's no verb in "so persistent her lobbying for wage and hour reform." However, that wording is OK because the "was" is understood. In other words, "were" in the first clause is understood to be repeated as "was" in the second clause even though "was" is not written.

So, the beginning of the (E) version is basically the equivalent of the following:

Frances Perkins’ investigations of the garment industry were so dogged, and her lobbying for wage and hour reform were so persistent

We don't need "and" or a second verb though because of how the (E) version is written in the question.

Thus, the correct answer is (E).

Yes, the (E) version uses types of wording we're not accustomed to seeing, but the clear errors in all the other versions force us to consider (E) and see that perhaps it works even without "and" or a verb in the second clause.