The Rorschzch test is gaining new respect as a diagnostic tool because

IMO C ; that might not emerge in other procedures or in weeksof ordinary interviews

ll sentence “unlikely to emerge in X or in Y” is parallel and idiomatic

The Rorschzch test is gaining new respect as a diagnostic tool because it takes only one hour to expose behavior and thought processes that may be unlikely to emerge in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviewing.

Can anyone tell me ,To what 'that" is referring to ?
is it only thought process ?

The that refers to behavior and thought processes. It cannot refer only to thought processes, as that would leave behavior undefined. That is, if we force the that to refer only to thought processes, we'll end up with a meaning error:

The Rorschzch test is gaining new respect as a diagnostic tool because it takes only one hour to expose
(a) behavior
and
(b) thought processes that may be unlikely to emerge in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviewing.

The meaning of the sentence cannot be that behavior (in general) is exposed by the test.

Hi Ayush, D says:

....that may not emerge under (other procedures or) weeks of ordinary interviews.

under weeks of ordinary interviews is incorrect usage; it should be: in weeks of ordinary interviews.

The Rorschzch test is gaining new respect as a diagnostic tool because it takes only one hour to expose behavior and thought processes that may be unlikely to emerge in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviewing.

(A) that may be unlikely to emerge in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviewing (other procedures or ordinary interviewing, not parallel. Eliminate)
(B) whose emergence is unlikely in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviews (whose is used as a singular IMO, not correct)
(C) that might not emerge in other procedures or in weeks of ordinary interviews (other procedures or ordinary interviews +1, That +1. Correct)
(D) that may not emerge under other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviews (under is idiomatically incorrect)
(E) unlikely not to emerge during weeks of ordinary interviewing or in other procedures (ordinary interviewing or other procedures. not parallel. Eliminate)

Hi, using POE, I left with option C and D. However I marked the option D because "might" is the past tense of "may", while author is using simple present on this question. If it is not because of "emerge in" and "emerge under", how I can eliminate the option with "may" and "might" ?

how is that referring to the two entities ?

"I gave her red and white roses that I bought at the flower shop." - What did I buy at the flower shop? Roses. What kind of roses? Red and white roses.

You might say, "Well, how do we know that you didn't give her 1) white roses that you bought at the flower shop and 2) red (whatever that means)." Well, yes, technically that is a possibility, but it doesn't make any sense.

We have something similar in choice (C):

Is it possible that the diagnostic took takes only one hour to expose 1) thought processes that might not emerge in other procedures/weeks of interviews and 2) behavior? Technically, yes, but that interpretation doesn't make much sense.

More importantly, even if that were an issue, there would be no way to avoid it! You could make the same argument for all five answer choices, so we don't need to worry about this while analyzing the options.

This question tests parallelism with ‘or’.
We are used to seeing parallelism with ‘and’ most of the time and therefore the ‘or’ might go unnoticed.

We can see that for the sentence to maintain parallelism, it has to say ‘in other procedures or in weeks’

(A) that may be unlikely to emerge in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviewing
(B) whose emergence is unlikely in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviews
(C) that might not emerge in other procedures or in weeks of ordinary interviews
(D) that may not emerge under other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviews
(E) likely not to emerge during weeks of ordinary interviewing or in other procedures -> alters the meaning

The only Option that observes this rule is Option C.

We might use POE and narrow it down to Options C and D.

In Option D, notice how it has ‘under’ which is idiomatically incorrect. Eliminate.

Option C is the best option.

Hope this helps!

How does A have parallelism error? Isn't the preposition "IN" implied after "or"?
Please advise. Thanks.

Sure, the parallelism in choice (A) doesn't look so bad:

"... behavior and thought processes that may be unlikely to emerge in (1) other procedures or (2) weeks of ordinary interviewing." - We have a parallel list of nouns, and both of those nouns make sense when preceded by "... unlikely to emerge in".

However, there is another way to interpret the parallelism in choice (A):

"... behavior and thought processes that may be unlikely to emerge in other (1) procedures or (2) weeks of ordinary interviewing." - In this case, "other" modifies both "procedures" AND "weeks".

So the problem with (A) is that the meaning is open to interpretation. In choice (C), the addition of the word "in" before "weeks" eliminates that ambiguity.

Another vote in favor of (C) over (A) is that, as explained in this post, "might" is a more logical option than "may". Also, there's no reason to use "that may be unlikely to emerge" instead of the more concise "that might not emerge".

None of those reasons are silver bullets, but when we compare the differences between (A) and (C), (C) emerges (haha) as the better choice.

I hope that helps!

Dear AjiteshArun GMATNinja GMATGuruNY DmitryFarber MartyTargetTestPrep,

Does the above observation only apply to "may NOT"?

OA : It MAY someday be worthwhile to try to recover uranium from seawater, but at present this process is prohibitively expensive.

IMO, the above sentence does not imply any permission at all.
"may" (like "might") implies possibility.

I thought "may" can mean two things:

The sentence talks about a test that is gaining new respect. Why is it gaining respect? Because it exposes certain behavior and processes that other procedures may not be able to expose.

There are no major grammar or meaning issues in the sentence. However, the sentence has the following two quality issues:

1. Redundancy: “may be” and “unlikely” are redundant. Either you say “may not” or “is unlikely”.
2. Since the word “weeks” is a noun, one can consider it parallel to “procedures”. In such a case, it’d mean “other weeks of ordinary interviewing”. Not a logical idea. To clarify that “weeks” is parallel to “other procedures”, we need to repeat the preposition “in”.



A. that may be unlikely to emerge in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviewing
Incorrect. For the reasons mentioned above.

B. whose emergence is unlikely in other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviews
Incorrect. This option has the second issue of option A. In addition, “whose emergence” means “emergence of behavior and processes”. I don’t think we put it like this in standard English. The correct way to communicate this idea is “behavior and processes may emerge”.

C. that might not emerge in other procedures or in weeks of ordinary interviews
Correct. “May not” and “might not” are generally used interchangeably. However, in some contexts, “may not” be considered equivalent to “does not have the permission”. Thus, some books recommend using “might not” over “may not” in situations in which we are talking about chances, not permission.

D. that may not emerge under other procedures or weeks of ordinary interviews
Incorrect. This option has the second issue of option A. In addition, the use of “may not” is not preferred, as explained above.

E. likely not to emerge during weeks of ordinary interviewing or in other procedures
Incorrect. For the following reasons:

1. Currently, the construction is “This test takes one hour to expose behavior and processes likely not to emerge…”. To convey the meaning more clearly, we need a relative clause modifier “that are likely not to emerge”.
2. “emerge during an activity” is different from “emerge in an activity”. The former means that the “emergence” happened at the same time as the activity while the latter means that the “emergence” happened inside the activity. The latter makes more sense in this context.
3. Here, “other procedures” seems to talk about procedures other ordinary interviewing. However, in the given context, it makes much more sense to talk about procedures other than the Rorschach test.

Sure, it's definitely possible to use "may" without implying permission. (And I probably should have mentioned that in my earlier post! Sorry, I was lazy about that.)

In this particular question, we get to choose between an option ("may") with two possible interpretations and an option ("might") with only one interpretation. The phrase "may not emerge" certainly seems like it could imply permission, so at the very least the reader has to think about it before realizing that permission doesn't apply in this context.

By using "might", choice (C) avoids causing the user to do a double-take. In other words, the meaning is a bit more clear in choice (C), so that's a vote against (D). Combining that with the preposition difference described in this post, we see that (C) is the better choice, even though we don't have a smoking gun here.

I hope that helps clarify!

Dear GMATNinja, GMATNinjaTwo, VeritasKarishma, MartyTargetTestPrep, TheGMATCo

I am a little confused by B and C.


#1 whose
I read the whole thread, some say the use of whose is incorrect because whose can only refer to people or animate things, I don't agree, whose can refer to non animate things, an example from MANHATTAN guide: the town whose water supply was contaminated.

#2 parallelism.

I don't think this question intends to meant "other weeks of ordinary interviewing", it just two things are parallel, procedures and weeks of ordinary interviewing, so I think the parallelism in B is correct.

honestly, I have no idea what's the problem in B.


I did not pick up C, because I thought the parallelism both "NOT in X or in Y" and "Not in X or Y" are correct, while in C, it says might not emerge in X or in Y, why not might emerge NOT in X or in Y,

genuinely need experts' help.

have a nice day

Can someone give a good reason to eliminate option E.+
I didn't eliminate it on solid grounds .