The recent amendments to the rules governing professional baseball

Question

The recent amendments to the rules governing professional baseball, like  those governing professional gymnastics, were motivated  by a desire to make the sport more interesting to watch.

(A) those governing professional gymnastics, were motivated

(B) those to the rules governing professional gymnastics, were motivated

(C) those to the rules which govern professional gymnastics, were motivated

(D) the amendments to the rules governing professional gymnastics, have been motivated

(E) the amendments governing professional gymnastics, were being motivated

sudarshan22 · Answer

+1 for   B  .

(A) those  governing professional gymnastics , were motivated

(B) those  to the rules governing professional gymnastics , were motivated -->   Correct , Maintains parallel construct

(C) those  to the rules which govern  professional gymnastics, were motivated

(D)  the amendments  to the rules governing professional gymnastics,  have been  motivated

(E)  the amendments  governing professional gymnastics,  were being  motivated

Hence,   B  .

daagh · Answer

The recent amendments to the rules governing professional baseball, like  those governing professional gymnastics, were motivated  by a desire to make the sport more interesting to watch.

(A) those governing professional gymnastics, were motivated

(B) those to the rules governing professional gymnastics, were motivated

(C) those to the rules which govern professional gymnastics, were motivated

(D) the amendments to the rules governing professional gymnastics, have been motivated

(E) the amendments governing professional gymnastics, were being motivated

The first point is that the use of simple past is inapt because actions or their impacts that permeate from the past into the current, the use of present perfect is the more appropriate choice. It doesn't matter as much when the actions happened as to whether their impact is still being felt. 
A, B, C, and E fall to this nuance. See, the amenedments are to the rules and not to the sports as such.

D for me.

skovinsky · Answer

Hi!

Scanning through the choices, we can see that there are two big issues in this question:

1) the comparison at the beginning; and
2) the verb tense at the end.

Regarding the comparison, all comparisons must be both logically and stylistically parallel. In the original sentence, we compare "recent amendments to the rules governing baseball" to "those governing professional gymnastics"; in other words, we're comparing amendments to rules, which is illogical. Eliminate (A).

Scanning the choices:

B) compares amendments to "those to the rules", i.e. other amendments - all good!

C) compares amendments to "those to the rules", i.e. other amendments - all good! However, (C) changes "governing" to "which govern", disrupting the parallelism of the sentence (the first part of the comparison has "governing") - eliminate (C).

D) compares "the amendments" to "the amendments" - all good!

E) compares "amendments to the rules" to "amendments governing professional gymnastics" - the amendments don't govern, the rules do - eliminate (E).

Now let's scan (B) and (D) for another difference. (B) ends in "were motivated" and (D) ends in "have been motivated". Are there any clues in the original to make us think this is an ongoing action? No, in fact we have two reasons to believe that the action is discrete:

1) "the recent amendments" is all in the past; and
2) the original sentence uses "were motivated".

Changing the verb to "have been motivated" changes the meaning of the sentence, a big no-no in SC. Accordingly, eliminate (D) and choose (B)!

Bunuel · Answer

KAPLAN OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

Like marks the comparisons, this time between the amendments to the rules governing baseball and those to the rules governing gymnastics. The trick in the sentence is that there are three pieces to the comparison: the first is the amendments, the second is the rules, and the third is the sport. The first sentence parallels only two: "those governing gymnastics" parallels the sports and the rules (implied by "those") but not the amendments. Eliminate (E) as well because it parallels the first and third pieces but drops the second, the rules. You can look at the final verb in the choices to eliminate (D); were is better than have been since the action has been completed and have been suggests that it's still happening. The only difference between (B) and (C) is rules governing or rules which govern. The options seem more or less equal, but since the initial piece of the comparison mentions rules governing, the second piece needs to parallel that structure. (B) wins.

An 800 test taker is careful not to exclude or add items when working with comparisons. She knows that the objects of the comparison must always have grammatical structures that are perfectly consistent with each other.

Rv7622 · Answer

D is the correct answer. All of the others are in simple past tense. That tense is inappropriate because the sentence is about something in the past, whose effects are felt in the present day.

raphou · Answer

Can someone explain why D is false?

Thanks

mayursurya · Answer

The recent amendments to the rules governing professional baseball, like those governing professional gymnastics, were motivated by a desire to make the sport more interesting to watch.

(A) those  governing professional gymnastics , were motivated

(B) those  to the rules governing professional gymnastics , were motivated

(C) those t o the rules which govern  professional gymnastics, were motivated

(D)  the amendments  to the rules governing professional gymnastics, have been motivated

(E)  the amendments  governing professional gymnastics,  were being motivated

This is a Comparison Question, and there are two issue in this problem one is :

Comparison issue and second one is verb tense issue.

In this type of question one has to look non underlined portion as well tome it parallel with underlined portion.

in A and E are out due for not maintaining proper comparison, "to the" missing in both options.

In E used being incorrectly, usage of  being  is rarely found in GMAT or bare minimum.

In C use of Which is Incorrect which changes the sentence structure.

In D changing the verb to have been motivated changes the sentence meaning.

with this understanding we can eliminate A, E C, D and select option B.

Request experts to correct me if I'm wrong in my understanding.

VKat · Answer

Hello Gmat team,

In option B, 'those' refers to amendments. 
My query is - I eliminated all options having 'those' because as per me, 'those' refers to 'recent amendments' and not only 'amendments'.

Is it not correct to take adjective too with the noun while using pronoun ?

Please let me know what I am doing wrong.

VerbalBot · Answer

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The recent amendments to the rules governing professional baseball

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The recent amendments to the rules governing professional baseball

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