Thai village crafts, as with other cultures, have developed through

Regarding whether "Thai" is an adjective or a possessive there, nationality descriptions could be either:

-Chinese exports rose 10% last month --> that's "the exports of China" as a possessive

-Chinese food is delicious --> Chinese is an adjective there describing a type of food

Then for the rest...I'll just circle back to the notion that Sentence Correction is more about good strategy and decision-making (and reading comprehension) than about getting deep in to the weeds of grammar. Which is to say 1) I'd be punching way above my weight class if I tried to get into a pages-long discussion about all the different permutations this problem could have taken...and while in my first year or so of teaching the GMAT that kind made me feel a little like a fraud ("how can I teach SC without knowing all these little angles on grammar?") I'm 100% convinced now that it's a feature and not a bug, because 2) whenever you find yourself past page 1 of a Google search for a grammatical concept, or on your 5th or 6th GMAT Club reply trying to figure it out, you're almost certainly missing a much more repeatable strategic component that's really at the heart of what they're testing.

Here like I said the presence of "those of" in two answer choices told me that it looks like they're testing a possessive comparison/modification - something I *know* the GMAT tests frequently so when I see that I make it a primary decision point - and once I identified that "Thai" looks like it's being used as a possessive, that's the whole game.

GMATNinja egmat VeritasKarishma daagh gmatexam439 chetan2u

Though the best answer is E , isnt grammatically option E unsound?
"thai village crafts, like those of other cultures..."
now those is a pronoun referring back to a noun. Now i know "those" refers back to "crafts" but "crafts" has adjective "thai village" so isnt this a compound noun??? and if we be literal and replace "those" with " thai village crafts" it makes no sense...
how can we drop " thai village" from crafts ???

Aditya

If you say that the noun 'crafts will become a compound when you attach an adjective to the term, then you are getting confused that the "Thai village," is another noun. However, please note that its part of speech is here an adjective. Like when we say "oil price," don't mistake that there are two nouns such as oil and price. Oil is an adjective here. 'The Thai village crafts' is not compound but at best, it is a plural noun.
Please revisit the definition of a compound noun and verify. Secondly, if the Thai village crafts is a compound noun, where is the co-coordinating conjunction between them? You cannot have a compound noun without the use of coordinating conjunction.
Secondly, having already said that 'those' refers to the crafts, you should not again unnecessarily change it to 'Thai village crafts."

daagh thank you for the response. I will definitely look up the definition of compound noun.

But the primary doubt I have is how can we drop the adjective from the noun ?? As you said this " Thai village crafts" is in its entirety a plural noun...so accordingly shouldn't "those" refer back to "Thai village crafts "

This doubt persists because in an official SC question , an answer choice was wrong because the pronoun replaced the entire (adj+noun) and not just the noun.

Please explain...sorry for the trouble..

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Relative pronouns and pronouns should refer to back to just a precise noun, not a phrase nor a theme.



Cn you please provide the question and the choice for the above ?

daagh GMATNinja chetan2u EMPOWERgmatVerbal
VeritasKarishma
Please explain my doubts.I know m missing something very feeble but still i want to make things clear.

1)
A)
Thai village crafts, as with other cultures, have developed through the principle that form follows function and incorporate readily available materials fashioned using traditional skills

we can write it as:
As it is the case with other cultures, thai village crafts have developed..........

so where is comparison becoming illogical?
means how cultures are being compared to craft ,i am not able to get.
does not it is the case stand for action of development ?

B)ok here did is wrong
but if had been
Thai village crafts, as have those of other cultures[so as crafts of others cultures have developed,thai village crafts have deloped], have developed through the principle that form follows function and incorporate readily available materials fashioned using traditional skills

will it be correct?

i read in explanation for above sentence to be correct,
have developed of main clause should come first.
meaning
Thai village crafts have developed, as have those of other cultures[so as crafts of others cultures have developed,thai village crafts have developed], through the principle that form follows function and incorporate readily available materials fashioned using traditional skills

can some one explain me this logic?

C)Thai village crafts, as they have in, have developed through the principle that form follows function and incorporate readily available materials fashioned using traditional skills

ok here they refers to thai village craft
so how it is wrong. thai village craft may be something like sufi music which may developed through same way in all cultures.
also
suppose they refers only to crafts
will it make sense then?

Thai village crafts, as crafts have developed in other cultures, have developed through the principle that form follows function and incorporate readily available materials fashioned using traditional skills

or here also we need to main verb-have developed first .

This construction is still a problem.

First, the phrase "As it is the case" is clunky and confusing. What does "it" refer to?

Also, the OA makes it clear that we're comparing crafts in Thai villages to crafts in other villages. This example appears to compare "cultures" to "crafts."

Last, when you see that an SC question is testing your understanding of comparisons, don't feel obligated to prove that every incorrect answer has an illogical comparison. If two sentences offer similar comparisons and one of them is clearer and more concise than the other, that option is objectively better. No need to overcomplicate things.


Still problematic.

Because the first clause, "Thai village crafts have developed" can theoretically stand on its own, it initially sounds as though the sentence is communicating the following: "Thai village crafts have developed, and the crafts of other cultures have also developed." It's not until we get to the modifier beginning with "through" that we see that author wishes to convey how the respective crafts have developed, not that they have. Put another way, while the comparison isn't necessarily wrong, the sentence is confusing and requires the reader to double-back to make sense of it. Thus, there's no way this could be the best option.


As Brian notes above, the use of "they" creates confusion in a way that "those of" does not.

Here's another example: "Amy's dogs are sharing a giant chocolate bar, while they frolic in Sandy's basement." In this example, "they" is referring to Amy's dogs, and it's her dogs that are running around in Sandy's basement. Contrast that example with: "Amy's dogs are sharing a giant chocolate bar, while those in Sandy's basement frolic." The phrase "those + preposition" indicates that we're referring to different dogs. Amy's dogs are eating chocolate, and the dogs in Sandy's basement are running around.

In other news, please do not feed your dogs chocolate. You could, however, feed chocolate to certain food-obsessed GMAT verbal experts...

I hope that helps!

Hi, can somebody explain to me why they used the present perfect “have developped” and not the present perfect for passive tense “ have been developped”, taking into consideration that “crafts” can not do the action??

Posted from my mobile device

have developed is used in the sense of have evolved here.

Nothing is wrong with E as:
Thai village crafts , like thai village crafts of other cultures , xxx

I have seen GMATNinja sir explanation on some of the sentences in which the option was rejected based on similar reason.
but here E seems correct.

Please share your comments GMATNinja GMATRockstar EducationAisle chetan2u EMPOWERgmatVerbal

Here, "those" is referring to the noun "crafts." The words "Thai" and "village" are adjectives describing the crafts, so the meaning here is we are comparing THAI crafts to the crafts of OTHER CULTURES. Other cultures wouldn't have "Thai village" crafts, because those crafts presumably are only made in villages in Thailand.

In short, there are no black and white rules for whether a pronoun (like "those") should refer only to the noun or to the noun and its modifiers. It depends on the context of each unique sentence. Here's a similar example to illustrate that point:

"Thai village crafts sold on the black market are cheaper than those sold in stores."

In this case, it makes a lot more sense for "those" to refer to "Thai village crafts," since we are logically comparing the "Thai village crafts sold on the black market" to "Thai village crafts sold in stores."

Can you argue that "those" could technically just refer to "crafts"? Sure, but remember that on the GMAT, you never have to look at a sentence in a bubble and decide whether it is right or wrong. Instead, you have to compare your options and decide which one is best.

Back to (E): it certainly makes no sense to compare "crafts" to "other cultures." And because "other cultures" is written out, it's clear as day that "those" refers to "crafts of other cultures," not "Thai village crafts of other cultures" (which makes no sense at all). The logical meaning is clear enough, and by POE we're stuck with it!

Thai village crafts, as with other cultures, have developed through the principle that form follows function and incorporate readily available materials fashioned using traditional skills

(A) as with
(B) as did those of
(C) as they have in
(D) like in
(E) like those of

As we are comparing nouns here, we need to use “like” and not “as”. Eliminate A, B, and C.

As we are comparing Thai "village crafts” with the “village crafts” of other cultures, we need to use “those of”
E is correct.

In (E) the antecedent for "those of" is "Thai village crafts" which is not correct, since its a whole world and we can't take just "village crafts" from it?

AndrewN

lakshya14, see if this helps while you wait for Andrew's reply.

I think your point is very contextual. We don't have a better option here and pronoun ambiguity isn't an absolute rule. This option is much, much clearer than the other options. Could this be made better? I don't know, probably? To me, the meaning comes out pretty clearly and it makes sense for those to refer back to village crafts.

The correct answer is E.

Rajasthan village crafts, as with other cultures, have developed through the principle that form follows function and incorporate readily available materials fashioned using traditional skills.

There is a comparison between 'Rajasthan Village crafts' and 'crafts of other culture', and therefore, we need to introduce 'like those of' before other cultures.