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

In option C, "they" refers to Thai Village crafts and thus it is illogical since Thai village crafts have not developed in other cultures.
1. In "Thai village crafts", Thai and Village are modifiers(adjectives) that modify crafts, but when we use "they" as in option C, "they" refers to the entire phrase "Thai village crafts" and CANNOT refer only to Crafts

2.Whereas in option E, "those" acts as a pronoun and refers ONLY to crafts?
Thai village crafts = village crafts of Thai
I can understand that those can refer ONLY to crafts if we used village crafts of THAI, but I wasn't very sure in the current format-"Thai village crafts"

-Like the poetry of Bruce Willis, that of Chuck Norris is flowery and pretty. -- here that refers to poetry
-Like Bruce Willis' poetry, that of Chuck Norris is flowery and pretty. -- here that refers to poetry

I understand that the term "that" in above examples of Bruce Willis refers to poetry, but wasn't very sure about Thai village crafts.

AjiteshArun , GMATNinja , MagooshExpert , GMATGuruNY , VeritasKarishma , DmitryFarber , ChiranjeevSingh , RonPurewal , VeritasPrepBrian , other experts -please enlighten

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 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 .

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.

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.

A. as with : Incorrect. crafts are wrongly compared to other cultures. the comparison is between rajasthan crafts and crafts of other cultures.
B. as did those of : Incorrect. 'did' displays a wrong meaning. had it been 'as have those of other cultures', this option would have been okay.
C. as they have in : Incorrect. 'they' don't introduce a new entity. 'that' and 'those' do.
D. like in : Incorrect. 'like' is a preposition and a preposition cannot be followed by a preposition phrase.
E. like those of : Correct. The comparison is correct here.

I wanted to understand the usage of 'as' vs 'like'

Manhattan SC books says like cannot be used if it follows a prepositional phrase/clause. So here wouldn't 'as' be a better usage? What's wrong with 'C' ?

Im sorry to ask an irrelevant question like this, but can anybody explain for me the grammar used in this part of the sentence : " that form follows function and incorporate readily available materials fashioned using traditional skills" . why does the word "follows" got the "s" and also the "fashioned using" part. Thanks a lot

Can someone please explain why option C is incorrect here?

I marked E but was a bit confused between C and E. I thought 'Thai village crafts have developed' could be parallel to 'as they (crafts) have (developed - omitted for ellipsis effect) in'.

GMATNinja
Im sorry but i still have difficulty with comparisons even after watching your videos. kindly help.
Now my first choice is Option D . Also option E uses those of which is a clause following like which is incorrect. Kindly help. thank you

Yeah really good question. I'd read it this way - it's not as much (at least to me) about the difference between "they" and "those" as pronouns, but more that (E) (and also (B)) add the word "of." And taken together, "those of" we know is a possessive construction. *That* is what would trigger me to go back and look for the possessive "Thai village crafts" and make sure that I'm matching possessive to possessive (as opposed to carrying the entire construction over to "they.")

One thing that's worked really well for me and for students I've worked with is letting the answer choices alert you to potential errors and lack-of-clarity issues. In a vacuum I don't know that I'd initially see a problem with "they"...but as soon as I see "those of" in a couple answer choices that's a huge signal that possessive comparison/modification is in play here, so *then* I'm looking super carefully for that. (E) makes it really clear that Thai village crafts and village crafts of other countries are separate. In (C) I can see where even if it's not wrong it could be seen as confusing. Consider this as another version:

Thai food, like it is in other Asian countries, is generally spicy but milder options are available.

Are we saying "Thai food" in other Asian countries? Or just "food" in other Asian countries (so Chinese food, Laotian food, whatever)?

But if you say:

Thai food, like the food in other Asian countries, is generally spicy but milder options are available.

It's really clear that we're including all those different native cuisines.

Anyway...to me I don't know that I'd immediately read (C) and think "clarity/meaning error!" But in comparison with (E) I can see where (E) is much clearer than (C) could be, so if you ask me to make the decision then that's what'll be on my mind.

(Also I have to check out some of this Bruce Willis / Chuck Norris poetry now!)

VeritasPrepBrian - Thanks for your prompt response.

*That* is what would trigger me to go back and look for the possessive "Thai village crafts" and make sure that I'm matching possessive to possessive (as opposed to carrying the entire construction over to "they.") ---> That of and Those of are both possessive construction.

1. Also, you have mentioned that "Thai village crafts" is possessive -->, In my opinion, Thai village's craft is possessive and Thai village craft is just a noun(craft) with two modifiers(adjectives) - Thai and village. Did you simplify(by calling "Thai village crafts" possessive) it to show that both the structures work in the same way in case of that of and those of constructions ?

So did you mean that in case of That of and Those of both the structures -" Thai village crafts" and " Thai village's crafts" are same?


2. Thai Village's crafts --> If we use the pronoun "they", then "they" will refer to the entire phrase "Thai Village's crafts"
, whereas using their(possessive) we can refer to Thai village's
and using those we can refer to crafts?

3. Thai village crafts --> If we use the pronoun "they", then "they" will refer to the entire phrase "Thai Village crafts"
, whereas using those we can refer to "crafts"? (But "their" WON'T work because there is no possessive here? )

4. Thai food, like it is in other Asian countries, is generally spicy but milder options are available.-- This sounds illogical as the pronoun "it" refers to Thai food

Thai food, like that of in other Asian countries, is generally spicy but milder options are available. -- can the Pronoun "that of" refer to the noun food here?

Thai food, like the food in other Asian countries, is generally spicy but milder options are available. -- No pronoun used here, so it's okay

The pronoun "IT" refers to same pronoun whereas "That of" or 'Those of" refers to a copy ?

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 ???

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 ?

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.

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