The mistakes children make in learning to speak tell linguists more

Question

The mistakes children make in learning to speak tell linguists more about  how they learn language than  the correct forms they use.

(A) how they learn language than
(B) how one learns language than
(C) how children learn language than do
(D) learning language than
(E) their language learning than do

Tough for me. Please explain in detail.

chica · Accepted Answer

Yeah, should be "C"

"DO" clearly refers to  "the correct forms"  . It is the reversed order... that makes the answer choice "C" confusing.

We can rephrase the sentence:
 
 The mistakes  children make in learning to speak tell linguists more about how children learn language than do  the correct forms  they use.

The mistakes  children make in learning to speak tell linguists more about how children learn language than Tell  the correct forms  they use. 
In other words, 
The correct forms the children use tell linguists less about how children learn language than do the mistakes they make in learning to speak..

Agampreet · Answer

This can be solved fairly easily if we are aware of subject-verb agreement.
As the sentence starts with the mistakes made by  children , the underlined part has to include  children  too as "they" could be understood as linguists or children. The only option referring to children is (C)

Another way - Parallelism. " tells linguists MORE ABOUT _______ than DO the correct forms they use. " Do is essential.
Once we identify this, its down to (C) and (D).
"Language learning" is just inappropriate English. So (C) is the OA.

sztiwari · Answer

This is tough . All the opetion with they make it ambigious since they should have a definits antecedent . In this case , it can be children/linguists. 
Option C makes it clear however the do after than makes it awkward.
I still go for C.

srini123 · Answer

IMO C

tell  linguists  more  about xyz  than   do  - "more than" and "do" for tell are required here so eliminate A,B, D

between C and E , E uses "thier" which is ambiguous, does not clearly refer to children, hence C is clear answer.

WaterFlowsUp · Answer

Bumping for review and further discussion*.

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AnirudhaS · Answer

GMATNinja  would you mind explaining how what is "do" referring to here?

than do

The mistakes children make in learning to speak tell linguists more about how children learn language  than do  the correct forms they use.

sd1713 · Answer

"Than do" means "than the correct forms tell linguists about how children learn language".

egmat · Answer

@SD1713-

Yes, the role of "do" associates with "learn." The meaning is expressing that linguists have two ways to tell how children learn a language.

1. mistakes children make
2. the correct forms they use

The sentence is clearly conveying that linguists learn more from the mistakes children make than they do/learn from the correct forms used by children.

The use of "do" brings much-needed clarity!

Cheers!
Stacey

DexterZabula · Answer

I think, the question is all about the meaning. Scrapping all non - essential elements, we can deduce the intended meaning - mistakes tell linguists more than correct forms . i.e. The linguists are interested in learning how children learn a language. While learning language, children will make mistakes and will also use correct forms. Linguists don't get much help when children use the correct form; however, linguists get greater help when children use incorrect forms, make a mistake. So, crude sentence can be written as - mistakes help linguists more than the correct forms do. which can be written in reverse as - mistakes help linguists more than do the correct forms. Now, let's articulate the sentence with non - essentials (underlined) that we removed earlier, we get - The mistakes children make in learning to speak help (tell) linguists more about how they learn language than do the correct forms they use. The only problem remaining is the ambiguous "they" which can refer to both linguists and children. Let's remove the by simply using "children" again. So, we get correct sentence : The mistakes children make in learning to speak tell linguists more about how children learn language than do the correct forms they use. Answer: C Hope it helps. Cheers

ChiranjeevSingh · Answer

Here's the   official explanation   provided by the GMAC for this question:

The sentence, as presented, is open to multiple interpretations. By far the most plausible one is that the author intends to draw a contrast between the extent to which one type of observation tells linguists about children’s language learning and the extent to which another type of observation tells linguists about that same topic. The meaning can be effectively communicated by using a parallel structure between verb phrases:  tell linguists more about  ...  than do , in which the pro-verb  do  serves as a concise substitute for  tell linguists  ...  about .

Option A:  This is ambiguous. It could mean either (1) the mistakes tell linguists more about how children learn language than the correct forms tell them about that topic or (2) the mistakes tell linguists more about how children learn language than they tell about the correct forms children use. The plural noun most immediately preceding the pronoun  they  is  linguists  rather than  children . This could make the pronoun appear, hypothetically, to refer to the linguists, so it would be better to repeat  children  instead of using the pronoun.

Option B:  This has the same ambiguity that answer choice A has.

Option C:  Correct. Here,  the correct forms they use  is prefaced with the verb  do , which functions in this context as a pro-verb having  tell linguists  as its antecedent. This makes it clear that the mistakes tell linguists more than the correct forms tell them. Repeating  children  instead of using a pronoun removes any apparent doubt about whose language learning this is referring to.

Option D:  This has the same ambiguity that answer choice A has.  Learning language  is also unclear–it could be interpreted as meaning  how to learn language  rather than  how language is learned .

Option E:  Although there is little doubt that  their  means  the children’s , the structure makes this technically vulnerable to an uncharitable or joking interpretation according to which  their  has  linguists  as its antecedent. For greater formal precision, it would be better to clarify this by saying  the children’s  instead of  their .

The correct answer is C.

Please note that I'm not the author of this explanation. I'm just posting it here since I believe it can help the community.

walterwhite756 · Answer

It can be solved easily if you just choose an option in which "they" is not used since it can't have clear antecedent between linguists and children. Further, if you think which two entities are being compared, in this case "the mistakes" and "the correct forms", then pretty easily option C stands out.

The mistakes children make in learning to speak tell linguists more

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The mistakes children make in learning to speak tell linguists more

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