Published since 1851, the founders of the New York Times were Henry

Question

Published since 1851, the founders of the New York Times were Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience.

(A) Published since 1851, the founders of the New York Times were Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience.
(B) Published since 1851, Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience, were the founders of the New York Times.
(C) Published since 1851, the New York Times was founded by George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience, and Henry Jarvis Raymond.
(D) The New York Times was founded by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience, and published since 1851.
(E) The founders being Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience, the New York Times has been published since 1851.

vishwaprakash · Answer

Published since 1851, the founders of the New York Times were Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience.

Meaning Analysis
1. New york times is published since 1851 and It was founded by HJR and GJ. GJ had no previous Journalism Exp.

Error :
1. Modifier Error: "Published since 1851" Modifies "Founder of NYT". Founders cannot be published, Modifier should Modify NYT. So we have misplaced Modifier here.

(A) Published since 1851, the founders of the New York Times were Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience.
Incorrect - Modifier Error (Discussed in Error analysis)

(B) Published since 1851, Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience, were the founders of the New York Times.
Incorrect - Modifier Error (Discussed in Error analysis)

(C) Published since 1851, the New York Times was founded by George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience, and Henry Jarvis Raymond.
Correct
1. Modifier - "Published since 1851" Correctly modifies "NYT". "Who had no.." correctly modifies "GJ"
2. Preferred Direct Speech " NYT was founded" instead of "Founders of NYT"

(D) The New York Times was founded by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience, and published since 1851.
Error - "Published" is acting as Ved Modifier instead of "Verb" (Since NYT cannot be doer of action, publishing )

(E) The founders being Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience, the New York Times has been published since 1851.
Incorrect construction, Being is used Without any hints about current ongoing action.

Option C

daagh · Answer

Two things here; the first is modification--- published since 1851 should be immediately followed by New York Times. Choice C does that steadfastly among the first three choices. Second issue is whether the relative clause starting with ‘who’ refers to George alone or both Henry and George? As per relative pronoun touch rule, ‘who’ must refer to George alone and not both. Yet again only choice C brings it out correctly.
Coincidentally, does one remember the very popular ‘ Published in Harlem” example from OG?

Harley1980 · Answer

Yep, I had a felling that I already saw this question but can't remember where. Looks like Veritas changed the names and included this question in their book.

ENGRTOMBA2018 · Answer

Published since 1851, the founders of the New York Times were Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience.

As the entire sentence is underlined, modification issues should be prominent. In the given sentence, the phrase "who had no previous..." refers to ? It can refer to either one of HJR or GJ or even to both. Without proper placement of the modifier phrase, the sentence is ambiguous.

(A) Published since 1851, the founders of the New York Times were Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience.
 Incorrect as mentioned above.

(B) Published since 1851, Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience, were the founders of the New York Times.
 Incorrect, "Published since 1851" is modifying HJR and GJ whiel it should modify The NY Times. Modification error in this sentence.

(C) Published since 1851, the New York Times was founded by George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience, and Henry Jarvis Raymond.
 Correct. Proper modification. "Published..." modifies the NY Times and "who had ..." clearly modifies GJ.

(D) The New York Times was founded by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience, and published since 1851.
 Incorrect. "and published since 1851" should be next to the NY times and not far away. Errors from the original sentence are carried over to this sentence as well.

(E) The founders being Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience, the New York Times has been published since 1851
 Incorrect. Errors similar to the ones from A. Awkward construction.

kelvind13 · Answer

I shortlisted C although dismissed it because Who refereed to only 1 person in 'C' although in the original statement it referred to both the founders.

You mentioned a relative pronoun touch rule. Could you please elaborate why Who should infact only refer to only 1 of the founders and not both?

ENGRTOMBA2018 · Answer

Let me try to explain. Pronoun touch rule mentions that any pronoun (after comma) can only refer to the closest noun (similar to "...., which...", in this case which 'usually' refers to the noun just before comma) . In this particular question, 'who' is next to GJ and should thus refer to GJ only. But even if you forget this rule, there is a blatant modifier error in (A) with "Published since 1851, the founders of the New York Times...", the phrase published since 1851 should modify the word right after the comma but in this case it modifies "the founders" and this usage is illogical .

daagh · Answer

The relevance of pronoun referring to either a single noun or a compound noun connected by a conjunction is more by logic and context than by any specific rule; The touch rule only says that the relative pronoun should touch the noun before and instances of the pronoun touching a compound subject or object are rare or nil, as far as I remember. But I will look forward to some official cases on this.

Harley1980 · Answer

In NYtimes I found examples like these: 
"Javier Hernandez and defender Hector Moreno, who both withdrew" or
"Kyle Larson and Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who both raced against"

So maybe such construction: "Javier Hernandez and defender Hector Moreno, who withdrew" is wrong or undesirable because of its ambiguity?

Hugoba · Answer

A - Published since 1851 -> this modifier is not placed properly, in this case it is modifying "the founders...".

B- Same error as A

C- No errors. This is correct.

D- "The New York Times was founded ... and published since 1851" -> This distords the meaning. Also it seems illogical saying that something was founded since 1851.

E- "The founders being Henry Jarvis and George Jones,  , the New York Times has been published since 1851" -> being is not a verb in this situation and the sentence is a fragment.

BillyZ · Answer

Official solution from Veritas Prep.

The glaring error in this question is the modifier at the beginning. “ Published since 1851 ”  cannot modify  “ the founders ” or “ Henry and George ”;  people are not published!  This illogical construction dooms answer choices A and B, but it’s remedied in  answer choice C, the correct answer . Answer choices D and E both contain distinct sentence construction errors. In answer choice E, there is no active verb in the main clause; “ being ” is  not a verb in that usage . The sentence in answer choice D leaves the “ published since 1851 ”  dangling at the end  when it should be used as a modifier to start the sentence.

spetznaz · Answer

+1 for option C. Verb-ed modifier has to modify New York Times. The relative clause modifier is mentioned in between commas after George Jones. Only C fits the bill here. Hence option C

Veljkoc94 · Answer

I see in D "and published since 1851" and see ne problem cause it can be, when you remove the unecessary modifier, like this: "Ny times was founded by a and b and piblished since 1895". Pronoun who should be able to refer to compound subject. I will check that further.

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kornn · Answer

Dear  AnthonyRitz   IanStewart   GMATGuruNY

Q1. What's wrong with choice D.?

(D) The New York Times   was   founded by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience, and published since 1851.

Essentially, choice D. reads The NY Times was founded by X and Y and   published since 1851.
I think there is nothing wrong with "  published"

Q2. Is the tense implied in "Published since 1851" also the past simple tense according to the main clause?

(C)   Published since 1851  , the New York Times   was   founded by George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience, and Henry Jarvis Raymond.

Thank you!

AnthonyRitz · Answer

A lot of people (including the book from which this is pulled) have given a lot of explanations of D that I think are not accurate. Some popular arguments that I don't accept include claims that D contains some manner of bad modifier, dangling participle, construction error, and/or parallelism fail. I don't think any of those things are true. (I hope my disagreement on this matter will not prove offensive to any of my respected colleagues. Forgive me.)

Look at the "and" -- it's a conjunction, and it creates a parallel structure. Now look at the next word. It's "published." To figure out what this is and what it's doing, look back until you find a parallel word. You have to go all the way back to "founded." So "published" and "founded" are parallel elements. Now note that "founded" is a past-tense, passive-voice verb (with the helping verb "was"). So "founded" is also a verb (in fact it is also connected to the helping verb "was"). Removing modifiers, the sentence boils down to

"The New York Times was founded and published since 1851."

Issue not clear yet? Let's cut more. To evaluate an element of the parallel structure, we can remove the other parallel element(s) -- in this case, "founded." We're left with

"The New York Times was published since 1851."

I hope it's getting more apparent what the problem is.

Here it is: The simple past verb "was published" describes an event that took place strictly in the past. But the prepositional phrase "since 1851" says that the publishing continues into the present. These two elements flatly contradict one another. It's a verb tense error, and absolutely nothing more or less. In fact, I'm not sure a sentence could ever say "  since." (But then, English is a big messy exception-riddled language, so someone will probably post a counterexample posthaste.)

If this sentence said "has been published" instead of "published" then it would be 100% correct.

"The New York Times was founded  ... and has been published since 1851." No problem.

kornn · Answer

I wholeheartedly agree with all of your explanation above.

However, I have one more thing on the correct answer:

Is the tense implied in "Published since 1851" also the   past simple tense   according to the main clause?

(C)   Published since 1851  , the New York Times   was   founded by George Jones, who had no previous journalism experience, and Henry Jarvis Raymond.

According to the attachment herein, MGMAT SC once said that the modifier takes the tense from the main clause, which is   past simple tense and not a present perfect tense   in this case. So, choice C. also contains tense error mentioned above right?

AnthonyRitz · Answer

"Published" in answer E is not past tense, because it is not any tense. "Published" in this construction is a participle. Specifically, it is a  passive  participle. (It describes something done  to  the New York Times, rather than  by  the New York Times.)

Side Note:  I am aware that some sources call these "past participles" because of their use of a form that is identical in appearance to the past tense verb form. However, I find this appellation to be a horrific misnomer, and I won't use it; regardless of what you call them, participles are not verbs, and they do not have tense. Passive -- or, ick, "past" -- participles do not have any particular or necessary connection to the timeline of the thing that is being described.

The problem with E looks to be the ugly usage of the word "being." It's true that "being" isn't a verb, but, contrary to an earlier post in this thread, answer E isn't a fragment, since the main clause is the last one and includes the verb "was." E  is  broken, though, because the first phrase is a truly terrible participle phrase modifier -- avoid the use of "being" as a participle, kids!

C does not have any errors; it's the right answer. Again, in every choice other than D, "published" is a participle, not a verb, and possesses no tense (and, therefore, no tense error).

kornn · Answer

Pardon me for asking so many questions. I really appreciate your time and patience!

MGMAT actually holds an opposite position. MGMAT says a participle takes the tense from the main clause as quoted below.
 
So, there is actually no such error on the tense of participle above?

Another example from MGMAT is attached herein.

AnthonyRitz · Answer

No, I agree that "cleaning" is wrong here.

English is messy, and perhaps I was a bit too strong in my expression.

In some cases, participles can suggest timeline. In at least as many cases, though, they simply don't. And (in my very slight defense), even in those former cases, I'd argue it's still not technically "tense" since "tense" is a characteristic exclusive to verbs. (Is this a " No True Scotsman " fallacy? Debatable...) But sure, here, it's misleading and wrong to use "cleaning" in this way. I will note, though, that the corrected example above contains no participle at all; "cleaned" is the (simple past tense) verb for the relative clause, and not a participle.

The following comes from Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participle#Forms ):

Hilariously, I don't think either of the examples Wikipedia subsequently gives are actually participles -- "were standing" is a past continuous verb, and "will have cleaned" is a future perfect verb. Several of their later examples are suspect on similar grounds. See, even scholars disagree about how to explain/describe some of this stuff! But certainly better illustrations of the point could be constructed. Here's a better one, from later in the same Wikipedia article:

IanStewart · Answer

I agree with Anthony above when he says English is messy and it can be hard to always apply rules to these situations. So instead lets ask whether the meaning of answer D is clear, or if it's ambiguous. If one answer choice in SC has an ambiguous meaning (so could mean two different things) while another does not, the unambiguous answer is the right answer (assuming it has no grammatical problems). In answer D, I find two things ambiguous. To whom does the word "who" refer? It could refer only to "George Jones", or it could refer to both "Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones". It's also unclear how to interpret the end of the sentence. You could read it to mean "The NYT was founded... and (was) published..." in which case, as Anthony points out, the implied verb would have the wrong tense (it should say "has been published"). But you could also read the sentence as is, with no implied verbs: "The NYT was founded... and (the NYT) published...", in which case the question becomes "what did the NYT publish?" With that reading, which to me seems the more natural way to read the sentence, the verb "published" is missing an object. Either way, the end of answer D is a problem, so we should look for a better answer choice.

Published since 1851, the founders of the New York Times were Henry

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Published since 1851, the founders of the New York Times were Henry

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