While recognizing that lying often facilitates social ineractions, psy

Question

While recognizing that lying often facilitates social interactions, psychiatrists are seeking to determine when  they become destructive and which kinds of mental problems they can signal .

(A) they become destructive and which kinds of mental problems they can signal
(B) they become destructive and the mental problems that are signaled by them 
(C) it becomes destructive and what are the kinds of mental problems they signal
(D) it becomes destructive and the mental problems that are signaled by it
(E) it becomes destructive and which kinds of mental problems it can signal

GMATPrep Code  :  VSC002161

EducationAisle · Accepted Answer

Let's first look at E: While recognizing that lying often facilitates social interactions, psychiatrists are seeking to determine two things:

(ei)  When it becomes destructive  and 
(eii)  Which kinds of mental problems it can signal

Looking at D: While recognizing that lying often facilitates social interactions, psychiatrists are seeking to determine two things:

(di)  When it becomes destructive  and 
(dii)  the mental problems that are signaled by it

Basically the  two things  comprise a  list  and from  parallelism perspective  , these two elements should be  structurally similar  .

Just by  looking  at the construct of D and E, it should be clear that (ei) and (eii) are  structurally similar  (  when...  and  which....  are two  question  like statements), while (di) and (dii) are  not  structurally similar (  when....  and  the mental problems...  ).

Grammatically  speaking, both (ei) and (eii) are  clauses  . On the other hand, while (di) is a clause, (dii) is  not  a clause. Hence, (di) and (dii) are  not  structurally similar.

saikarthikreddy · Answer

Records from ancient Athens indicate that each year young Athenian women collaborated to weave a new woolen robe  with which  they dressed a statue of the goddess Athena and that this robe depicted scenes of a battle between Zeus ,Athena's father and giants.

I have a doubt regarding the two questions i have posted.In both of these questions which is not modifying a noun and does not follow a noun.
Can experts shed some light on this concept.Thanks !!

daagh · Answer

Example 1: You find which in an IC and that IC is conjugated by a fanboy conjunction. Therefore structurally there cannot be a modified noun before the word. Second, ‘which’ is an adjective that modifies the noun, kinds, a noun that follows the interrogative pronoun rather than precedes it. 
2. This is a flipped sentence of ‘Athenian women collaborated to weave a new woolen robe, which they dressed a statue of the goddess Athena with. For all practical purposes, ‘with which’ and ‘which’ mean the same thing. It may therefore be seen that, ‘which’ actually stands for the noun robe.

skamal7 · Answer

dagh,
 1. Can you explain me in simpler terms why in the posted question, which is not preceeded by a noun there. I am not able to understand what is a fan boy conjuction and IC in your statement..Can you explain in simple terms ..
 2.Can you also explain here the pronoun it refers to what and can you help in eliminating the answer choices in the question

rrkan · Answer

I am not able to understand the subject for becomes. Is it lying or social ineractions. Looks like lying
can somebody explain

plumber250 · Answer

Hi Rrkan,

It has to be 'lying' - 'social interactions' is a plural and so would need a plural word to replace 'it' - since all 5 options have the singular 'it' then this can not be what is being tested.

James

Bluelagoon · Answer

When i read this question. i can straightforward eliminate A. What's 'they' referring too. It's social ineractions or psychiatrists. Both doesn't fit into the meaning of the sentence. Eliminate A,B and C. I eliminate D because it's in passive voice and because we have E which is written in active voice without any grammatical error. Hence i pick E.

Gmatbuster21 · Answer

Can someone explain the difference between D and E. I cannot see any fault with D.

neojoker · Answer

Just because D is in a passive voice does not automatically eliminate it. Does anyone else have any explanation why D is incorrect? The answers above have not sufficiently explained why D is incorrect.

souvik101990 · Answer

Yes, passive voice DOES make it incorrect. Passive voice alone does NOT eliminate an answer choice, but when it tires to sit parallely with an active voice, it surely is wrong.

Have you read  EducationAisle  's post above?

apolo · Answer

Subject-Verb Agreement, Parallelism

' lying ' is the reasonable subject for 'become destructive', so the pronoun should be ' it ' and verb should be ' becomes '. 
Further, the two items that  psychiatrists are seeking to determine  should be stated in  parallel structures .

a.  they   become  destructive and which kinds of mental problems  they  can signal

b. they   become  destructive and  the mental problems  that are signaled by  them

'the mental problems' is not parallel to 'when they become'

c.it becomes destructive and what are the kinds of mental problems  they  signal

Also the inversion in the second part is not necessary.

d.it becomes destructive and  the mental problems that are signaled by it

second part is not parallel to  'when it becomes destructive '

e.it becomes destructive and which kinds of mental problems it can signal   Correct!

pronouns and verb agree with 'lying'. Also, ' when it becomes  ...' is parallel to ' which kinds of  ...'

GMATDemiGod · Answer

I have a quick question about the official explanation

It says that E is correct because parallelism and that 'which' is an interrogative pronoun that is parallel with When.

Is When and Which both parallel elements? I did not think When was interrogative.

Danishv · Answer

This surely does not debate about when and which are interrogative pronouns or not. Sentence strictly demands two parallel structure. : < lying> ; structure < verb> and :

abhishekdadarwal2009 · Answer

While recognizing that lying often facilitates social ineractions,psychiatrists are seeking to determine when they become destructive and which kinds of mental problems they can signal.

a. they  become destructive and which kinds of mental problems  they  can signal
b. they  become destructive and the mental problems that are signaled by  them  
c. it  becomes destructive and what are the kinds of mental problems  they  signal
d. it  becomes destructive  and the mental problems  that are signaled by it
e. it  becomes destructive and which kinds of mental problems  it  can signal
 The subject is lying and the verbs refering to it is 'it' while the choices that refers to it as 'they' are incorrectly refering to interactions so we eliminate A,B abd C.
Option D is distorting the intended meaning of the sentence and thus is eliminated.We are left with ption E which is the correct free of grammatical errors and if conveying the correct meaning of the sentence.

gzimmer · Answer

I thought that which had to refer to the word directly in front of it...I guess i misinterpreted that rule? I wanted to pick E based off of what sounds best... but I went with D b/c of what I guess is a misunderstood rule associated with "which"

gzimmer · Answer

I thought that which had to refer to the word directly in front of it...I guess i misinterpreted that rule? I wanted to pick E based off of what sounds best... but I went with D b/c of what I guess is a misunderstood rule associated with "which"

arjittak · Answer

It cannot be D because of lack of parallelism and use of passive voice (to be avoided in GMAT).
So the clear answer is E, which rectify both these issues.

Sent from my A0001 using  GMAT Club Forum mobile app

ankujgupta · Answer

How does lying becomes a subject here. Social interactions can perfectly be subject here. Experts please explain

gzimmer · Answer

ankujgupta , I am not an expert, but the following has helped me improve my SC score dramatically. While it is so important to look at rules (ex: parallelism, comma structure, etc.), I would argue that it is more important to ask yourself, "does this make sense?" EX: "does it make more sense that social interaction could become destructive and cause mental problems, or does it make more sense that lying could become destructive and cause mental problems?" Lying=Bad, so I'm going to go with lying as the subject.... if this doesn't make sense, reverse the structure: "psychiatrists are seeking to determine when they become destructive and which kinds of mental problems they can signal, while recognizing that lying often facilitates social interactions" that generally helps me to identify what is wrong with structure.....automatically, i am thinking lying has to be the subject, when i reverse struct....If that doesn't jump out to you, here is an explanation: the word after "that" is the subject b/c social interactions will not facilitate lying, but lying might facilitate/make it easier to have social interactions.

Not sure if that makes sense, but I thought I'd share the "aha" moment for me.

Not sure if that makes sense, but I thought I'd share the "aha" moment for me.

While recognizing that lying often facilitates social ineractions, psy

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GMAT Sentence Correction (SC - EA only) Questions

While recognizing that lying often facilitates social ineractions, psy

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