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mikemcgarry, would the following be correct in this case (had it been an option)?

The state of California contains 58 counties, of which some have a population less than 10,000.

I realize that the post is old and I might be bothering you Thanks in advance!

Dear mohit2491

I'm happy to respond.

My friend, your version is awkward and not at all how a native speaker would phrase it. I guess it's grammatically correct, but that's beside the point. The version that would be 100% correct in every respect is:

The state of California contains 58 counties, some of which have a population less than 10,000.

Does this make sense?
Mike
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Hi Can you please tell me why 'B' is wrong?

sarathgopinath Quoting again what Mike said,

The word "which" is a relative pronoun. It introduces a subordinate clause and acts as the subject of that clause. Thus, the word "which" always needs a 100% bonafide full verb following it. If there were an option with a full verb after "which", that would be correct ---- that's what many test-takers would expect, and the fact that this option is not available is part of what is tricky about this question. It would be perfectly correct to say -----
The state of California contains 58 counties, some of which have a population less than 10,000.
That's completely correct, but not an option here. You see, choice (B) has "which" + [participle}, which is never a legitimate structure. The structure in (C), with the ordinary pronoun "them" + [participle] ---- that is a legitimate structure: an absolute phrase, discuss in the link in that first post.


Please give Kudos if this helped you.

this is an important grammar issue and pattern in SC in gmat; it is called absolute phrase. Test takers must know this.

Independent or Dependent, A clause will always have a subject & a verb.

Here C is correct because ...., some of them (referring noun counties) + ing modifier - A noun + noun modifier

The state of California contains 58 counties, of which some of them have a population less than 10,000.
(A) of which some of them have -redundant nouns
(B) some of which having -having is wrong
(C) some of them having -Correct
(D) some of them have -creates a run on sentence
(E) some of which to have -to have is wrong

mikemcgarry,

will you pls suggest what is wrong with option A ?

mikemcgarry
The following is the explanation given by magoosh to why option A is incorrect.

The word “which” is a relative pronoun, and this means two important things. First, “which” begins a subordinate clause that, like any clause, must have a full [noun] + [verb] structure. Second, the pronoun “which” itself is the subject of this subordinate clause.
Choice (A) has a bonafide verb, “have”, but it gets in trouble with the second rule — it has a double subject, the word “which” and the phrase “some of them”

But I am confused here what if "which" here is acting as a subordinating conjunction and not a relative pronoun? I read that to differentiate between a relative pronoun and a subordinate conjunction is to check whether who, which, etc are the subject of sentence, if there's another subject present then they act as subordinating conjunction and not relative pronoun so why is A incorrect?

Can I use a clause as a subgroup modifier. If I can't then what is the difference between an absolute phrase and a subgroup modifier. Both have a noun+noun modifier structure.

The state of California contains 58 counties, of which some of them have a population less than 10,000.

(A) of which some of them have
(B) some of which having
(C) some of them having
(D) some of them have
(E) some of which to have

This one is an excellent question, but i am still not sure why Option-C is ok, while B is not.
"some of them having" is acting as an absolute phrase modifying the whole clause, i am 100% convinced with this , but why "some of which having" cannot serve the same purpose.
I searched on web & GC , but couldn't find any relevant info, may someone help on this plz?