Person without any prior knowledge of the circumstances would

Question

Person without any prior knowledge of the circumstances would have walked into the room and  seen a stabbed man crouching on the sofa, whose clothes torn  as if he had been attacked.

A. seen a stabbed man crouching on the sofa, whose clothes torn
B. saw a stabbed man crouching on the sofa, whose clothes were torn
C. seen a stabbed man crouching on the sofa, with clothes torn
D. seen a stabbed man crouching on the sofa, whose clothes were torn
E. seen a stabbed man crouching on the sofa, whose clothes have torn

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear rohan2345 , I'm happy to respond.

I don't have a high opinion of this question. The topic is not at all like what would appear on the GMAT: rather than from an academic source, it appears to be from a thriller detective novel. Also, the structure of the SC question is very formulaic and cookbook. Split #1 : verb parallelism we have " would have walked into the room and _____ ." For correct parallelism, we need " seen ." Choice (B) is wrong. What happens after the comma: If we have the pronoun " whose ," then we are starting a full clause, and need a full verb. Choice (A) just has a participle: that's incorrect. Choice (E) has the present perfect sentence, which doesn't fit in context: that choice is wrong. (D) handles this perfectly correctly. The problem is: (C) is also perfectly correct grammatically. It's really hard to say which one, (C) or (D), is better. Whoever designed this question created a distractor that winds up being perfectly correct. This is a very poorly designed question. If this question comes from a book, then the best thing you could do for your GMAT preparation would be to soak the book in gasoline and set it on fire. Here's a high quality GMAT SC practice question. What the eye sees Does all this make sense? Mike

ImAnkitKaushik · Answer

mikemcgarry  here is "whose" referring to the sofa? 
I guess better answer would be C.

Abhishek009 · Answer

Whose can be used for people, animals or things, however here whose refers to the man

ImAnkitKaushik · Answer

If "whose" can refer to things, then how we will know that "whose" is referring to the man?
"Sofa does not have clothes" > will this help us?

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear ImAnkitKaushik , I'm happy to respond.

First of all, keep in mind that this is a low quality SC question. The grammar in this question is atrocious: this question was written by somebody who does not understand English well. It's an absolute embarrassment. The word " whose " is a pronoun, a relative pronoun. It begins a kind of dependent clause known as a relative clause, a particularly type of noun-modifying clause, and the antecedent of the pronoun " whose " is the target noun of the clause. The relationship of pronoun-antecedent is very subtle, and involves factors at many levels, as is the relationship between target noun & noun modifier. The Modifier Touch Rule is a general pattern, but it has several regular exceptions. Here, the most germane exception has to do with vital noun modifiers . Finally, my friend, remember that there is no way to arrive at GMAT SC mastery by memorizing rules. Many of the " how can we know ?" questions are not answered by rules, but by deeper reflection as well as by one's intuition for the language. A non-native speaker can begin to develop this intuition only by pursuing a rigorous habit of reading. See: How to Improve Your GMAT Verbal Score Does all this make sense? Mike

ImAnkitKaushik · Answer

Thanks  mikemcgarry

VerbalBot · Answer

Automated notice from GMAT Club VerbalBot: 

A member just gave Kudos to this thread, showing it’s still useful. I’ve bumped it to the top so more people can benefit. Feel free to add your own questions or solutions.

 This post was generated automatically.

Person without any prior knowledge of the circumstances would

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards

GMAT Sentence Correction (SC - EA only) Questions

Person without any prior knowledge of the circumstances would

Prep Toolkit

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards