The fanatical, young group of girls have been waiting in the concert

Hi,

@marus: This sentence needs careful reading. Read the portion “by the time tickets go on sale.” This suggests a future action. We know that the tickets are not up for sale yet. They will be sold some time in the future.

This understanding helps us in eliminating choice E as it is written in the present perfect tense and hence leads to inconsistency in tense in the sentence.

With choice E, the sentence reads: The fanatical, young group of girls has been waiting in the concert line the whole night by the time the tickets go on sale.
The present perfect tense “has been waiting” denotes an action that has already begun in some time in the past and is continuing in the present as well. It renders the sense that the group of girls has already begun to wait in the line for the tickets which will be sold sometime in the future. This is not the logical intended meaning of the sentence.
The logical intended meaning of the sentence is that By the time the tickets will be up for sale, these girls will have been waiting in the line already.

Take this example: By the time Joe appears for the exam, he will have been completely prepared. The sense of the sentence is that by the time Joe will appear for the exam, he will be completely prepared.
However, we do not if he is completely prepared in the present or not. The sentence says nothing about the present. It talks about a situation that is yet to happen.

We cannot say: By the time Joe appears for the exam, he has been completely prepared. “has been prepared” suggests that Joe is already prepared in the present and it does not relate to the event that will take place in the future, i. e. appearing for the exam.

In the very same way, the original sentence is also talking about a situation that is yet to happen. Hence we must use future tense to correspond the related event with that future event only. Again, understanding the intended logical meaning of the sentence is the key here to use the correct verb tense knowledge.

Choice C correctly conveys the logical intended meaning of the sentence: The fanatical, young group of girls will have been waiting in the concert line the entire night by the time the tickets go on sale. This choice clearly says that by the time the tickets will be up for sale, the girls will already be standing in the line from the previous night.
Say for example if the tickets will be sold on February 3, the girls will already have been standing in the line from the night of February 2.

Hope this helps.
Shraddha

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+1 for C.

The fanatical, young group of girls have been waiting in the concert line all night by the time the tickets go on sale. --> Highlighted portion means that the ticket were not on sale till now, are not on sale now, instead will be on sale in future. So no "has", "have", or "had" will fit the suit, instead future tense "will" might serve the intended meaning of the sentence.

a) have been waiting in the concert line all night

b) will have been waiting in the concert line each night --> Incorrect, changes meaning, who goes to concert "each night" ?

c) will have been waiting in the concert line the entire night --> Correct, rectifies the Verb-Tense error, and conveys the intended meaning

d) had been waiting in the concert line all night

e) has been waiting in the concert line the whole night

Hence, C.

Good question though!
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Dear experts, I completely understand that the meaning of the sentence get's altered if we choose option E in this question, but isn't option c grammatically incorrect?

How can "have been" refer to a singular subject "group".
Is it that when such questions arise Meaning >>> Grammar?
IMO, such questions won't come on actual GMAT. What is the source of the question?

Kindly throw some light on this to resolve my confusion.
daagh GMATNinja sayantanc2k carcass

The tense of the verb is in question. Its future perfect continuous. The structure will be 'will have been waiting'.

Hence, the answer choice [C] is accurate. [B] has the same verb structure but changes meaning.

Regards,
A

Responding to a pm:

E is incorrect because it doesn't fit in the sentence.

The group has been waiting in the concert line the whole night by the time the tickets go on sale.

'by the time the tickets go on sale' implies a point in time, say the tickets will go on sale at 8:00 am. The group has been waiting the entire night by 8:00 am does not make sense.

The question is based on tenses: Present perfect continuous 'has been waiting' refers to a period. He has been waiting for 2 hrs.
Future perfect continuous 'will have been waiting' refers to a period and then a point in time. He will have been waiting for 2 hrs by the time his turn comes. At the point when his turn comes, he will have been waiting for 2 hrs. Since this question involves a period of time and a point 'by the time tickets go on sale', it needs future perfect continuous.

The correct answer is C here.

Reason:

Consider tense and tone of given sentence. It tells that by the time tickets go on sale, girls will have been already spent entire night in the queue.

a) have been waiting in the concert line all night >> no will, wrong tense
b) will have been waiting in the concert line each night >> each night, wrong
c) will have been waiting in the concert line the entire night >> correct
d) had been waiting in the concert line all night >> had?, wrong tense
e) has been waiting in the concert line the whole night >> wrong tense

Refer to the use of 'present perfect continuous' and 'future perfect continuous' tenses above. Also, refer to a grammar book for complete description of various tenses. It's important for GMAT.

I completely understand that the meaning of the sentence get's altered if we choose option E, but isn't option c grammatically incorrect?

Dear Shraddha (@egmat), I learnt in our course that SV should agree in number, but this question completely alters that. Please help.

How can "have been" refer to a singular subject "group".
Is it that when such questions arise Meaning >>> Grammar?
IMO, such questions won't come on actual GMAT. What is the source of the question?

Dear experts, kindly throw some light on this to resolve my confusion.

Option C neatly sidesteps the whole singular/plural issue by opting for a verb that doesn't change with the subject. The first thing to do here is recognize that the verb in option C is not have been. It is will have been waiting. Try switching from a singular subject to a plural subject in a sentence that has a will and check whether there is any change in the verb. You'll find that the verb remains the same.

1. Future perfect continuous
1a. He will have been waiting...
1b. They will have been waiting...

Things could, of course, change if we switch to a different tense.

2. Present perfect continuous
2a. He has been waiting...
2b. They have been waiting...
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just compare the sentences ...

group of girls has done a thing..

group of girls have done a thing..

if you are still not able to recognise the difference


the singular plural thing just go through the basics..

i made it just by going through the sentence,,,

I don't think that marus had doubt about singular-plural form of verb.

Read the original question again

Well the term 'Group of *anything*' always employs singular. Lemme explain why. When we said 'The fanatical, young group of girls', it refers to a group of collectives which share a single property and needs to be considered as singular. The group of people, The group of dogs... all of them employ singular terms.

Please refer to the 'Collective Nouns' section under GMAT Grammer Book!
https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-grammar-ebook-by-gmat-club-free-this-book-will-be-102387.html

Lemme know if you need more help

Regards,
A

Picked E.
Eliminated ABC based on SVA. Eliminated D, because there was not another past tense verb in the sentence to merit the use of past perfect. E didn't really make sense, so I was not surprised to have missed it. According to the following grammar site, singular nouns can use the future perfect construction "will have", so BC can't be eliminated based on SVA
https://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/futureperfect.html

Responding to a pm:



"by the time the tickets go on sale."

implies that we are talking about a time in future - the time when the tickets will go on sale.

"had been waiting" is past perfect continuous. It is used in situations in which an action was happening in the past for a while but was over before another action in the past.

Here, we need a continuous action that will get over in the future. Hence, we use "will have been waiting".

The easiest error to spot is the SV agreement error in A and E: "Young group...have?" A and B are out
Next Verb Tense: because the sentence is talking about a future condition, you need "will" D and E are out

That leaves C as the correct answer!

Thanks !
But the "Group of Girls" does not mean a singular verb ?

Can some one please explain it , I could not understand it at all .

I chose E because it looked present continuous to me and as group is singular I chose E how come "Will have been" is correct?
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I would go with option C.

The future perfect continuous has to be used in this sentence to convey the correct meaning.
Although B uses the correct tense , it alters the meaning of the sentence.
the young group of girls will not be waiting every night but just for one night to get the tickets.

The correct answer is actually C here. Not sure why you eliminated C on the basis of SVA. This sentence uses "will have been waiting", which I think is future perfect continuous. Oh boy..I thought these kind of tenses are not tested on GMAT. Can some expert help.