Source MGMAT Test Municipal governments are beginning to

Question

Source MGMAT Test

Municipal governments are beginning to confront the growing pension liabilities; this leads local politicians throughout the country to become increasingly vocal about restraining costs and limiting services.
the growing pension liabilities; this leads
their growing pension liabilities; leading
the growth in their pension liabilities, which leads
their growing pension liabilities, leading
their growing pension liabilities, that leads

I have couple of questions here :

Please explain why each choice is wrong?
And in the MGMAT explanations I see "Additionally, “the growing pension liabilities” in the 1st part of the sentence is incorrect in its use of the article “the,” as the pension liabilities were not referenced earlier in the sentence. "

Can you please explain what eactly do they mean? why is this usage wrong?

bakfed · Answer

Municipal governments are beginning to confront the growing pension liabilities; this leads local politicians throughout the country to become increasingly vocal about restraining costs and limiting services.
the growing pension liabilities; this leads
their growing pension liabilities; leading
the growth in their pension liabilities, which leads
their growing pension liabilities, leading
their growing pension liabilities, that leads

After reviewing the question, I went with (D).
In (A), it's not really clear what "this" is referring to. At least I didn't feel convinced with what "this" means.
In (B), the usage of semicolon is incorrect. A semicolon is used to separate two independent clauses, but have some sort of connection with each other. Each sentence should be able to stand alone. However, with the semicolon separating these two sentences, the second sentence cannot stand alone because it lacks a subject.
In (C), I believe there's a subject/verb agreement error. The word "leads" after which should be "lead", since the "which" sentence is modifying a plural noun - liabilities.
In (D), everything's fixed, with "leading..." modifying the previous sentence.
In (E), the usage of comma + that is awkward and unnecessary. Again, the word "leads" should be "lead".

This is my own opinion. What's the OA?

acer2knight · Answer

OA is D it is ....can some one please explain the explanation given??

bakfed · Answer

acer2knight, I've seen that type of explanation before (use of "the" and "their" in this case). Honestly, I think that's pushing the explanation a bit too far, but of course they're professionals, I can't argue with that. However, I highly doubt that, at the end of the day, the answer will lie between the usage of "the" and "their", such as in this case. But to answer your question, I'm not quite sure as to the explanation of the usage of "the" in this case by the MGMAT folks...

gaurav107 · Answer

Sorry for opening a old thread..

I have a specific question about this SC.

In the solution to this problem MGMAT says "The plural pronoun “their” is properly used to refer to the plural antecedent “municipal governments,” and the verb “leading” is parallel to the verb “beginning” in the non-underlined portion of the sentence."

How is verbs leading and beginning parallel?

How is verbs leading and beginning parallel?

daagh · Answer

gaurav107 wrote

I can see a valid point in Gaurav’s poser.

Parallelism is required to be maintained in two - part sentences connected by a coordinator. On the contrary, in simple sentences, You may not compare two verbs or subjects and such kinds of symmetrical //ism may not be a critical issue. Maybe list //ism or series will matter.

After all ‘ beginning ’ is part of the verb ‘are beginning’, while  leading  is not a verb, but a simple present participle doing its normal job of modifying; So any attempt to parallelize two essentially different parts of speech will amount to pseudo //ism. You can in fact see that  leading  will not even pair with  restraining  costs, or with  limiting  services, in which cases, both the  ing verbals  are essentially gerunds.

A kudo each to bakefed and Guarav (his maiden post and kudo) for their through dissection.

Source MGMAT Test Municipal governments are beginning to

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