ajv wrote:
The interior minister --
subject/nounexplained --
-ed verbthat --
beginning of a subordinate clauseone of the best characteristics of
the village’s planning proposal --
noun phrase was --
verbthat --
beginning of a subordinate clauseit --
pronoun referring to the village's planning proposal@
did not detract
from the project’s overall benefit by being a burden on the development budget.
although the pronoun, it, is referring to the village's planning proposal (possesive?) the option C cannot be ruled out as pronoun antecedent is not an absolute rule in GMAT
GMATNinja can you please help?
(C) is the correct answer to this question, so you're right that it can't be ruled out
.
You're also right that pronouns CAN sometimes refer to possessive nouns (check out
this official question for an example). There is no ironclad rule saying that a pronoun can't refer back to a possessive -- it's just a bit rare for the correct answer to be constructed like that, so you can be on your guard when you see it in an answer choice.
However, the possessive noun/pronoun issue is not at play at all in answer choice (C) for this question.
Consider this example:
Chloe's car was a piece of junk, so she decided to walk to the party.
Here, the pronoun "she" clearly refers back to Chloe, NOT to the car (a car is not going to walk to a party!). This is an example of a pronoun referring back to a possessive noun because "Chloe" is the one WHO POSSESSES the car. The GMAT might frown on this construction, although as we said earlier, it's not always considered a definite error.
Compare that to this example:
Chloe's car was such a piece of junk that it was constantly falling apart.
In this sentence, we still have a possessive noun ("Chloe's"). However, the pronoun doesn't refer back to the Chloe -- instead, it refers back to the noun "car." "Car" is the thing that IS POSSESSED, and "Chloe's" is just providing us a description of the car. The GMAT would be 100% fine with this construction, because the pronoun isn't referring back to the actual possessive noun.
So, you have to determine whether the pronoun refers to a noun that
possesses something (which is
sometimes--but not
always--an issue) or to a noun that
is possessed (not an issue at all).
Here's (C):
Quote:
The interior minister explained that one of the best characteristics of the village’s planning proposal was that it did not detract from the project’s overall benefit by being a burden on the development budget.
In this sentence, the meaning and context clearly point to "planning proposal" as the antecedent for the pronoun "it" -- the "it" refers to the thing that
is possessed ("planning proposal"), NOT the possessive noun ("village's"), and this construction is totally fine.
I hope that helps!