Skywalker18 wrote:
While depressed property values can hurt some large investors, they are potentially devastating for homeowners, whose equity—in many cases representing a life's savings—can plunge or even disappear.
(B) they can potentially devastate homeowners in that their - Repeated pronouns are presumed to have the same antecedent. In this case, the antecedent for "their" is homeowners, while for "they" it is "property values". For that reason, there is an ambiguity.
Q-In a sentence, should all plural nouns refer to the same antecedent? Similarly, all singular nouns refer to the same antecedent?
Good question! Though I'm not sure that you'll like my answer much.
In most cases, you're right: it seems like a bad idea to use a repeated pronoun to refer to two different antecedents, especially if the repeated pronouns are very close to each other. And in this particular sentence, I think you're right that the pronouns are ambiguous -- and there's obviously a better version in another answer choice.
The trouble is, I think it's dangerous to consider this an absolute rule. Imagine, for example, a long, wordy sentence like this one:
Wilbur ate four dozen burritos on Saturday, mostly because they were relatively small and filled with his favorite ingredient, roasted caterpillars; because they are high and protein and low in fat, caterpillars are considered a delicacy in many parts of the world.
(That might be the most ridiculous sentence I've written this week, though there are a couple of species of caterpillar that truly are tasty...)
Anyway, I'd argue that "they" is perfectly clear in both cases, even though "they" refers to two different antecedents. Technically, there might arguably be some ambiguity here, but it doesn't get in the way of the meaning or clarity of the sentence, and I don't think the GMAT would have a problem with the sentence (other than the content, maybe).
More broadly:
pronoun ambiguity isn't an absolute rule, anyway. So you're right to be SUSPICIOUS of repeated pronouns, because they easily could cause ambiguity. But be a little bit careful not to turn it into a rigid rule, because it seems entirely possible that repeated pronouns could correctly refer to different antecedents, depending on the context. And I suspect that if we look hard enough, we'll find a few correct answers on official GMAT questions with "they" (or "it") referring to two different antecedents.
I hope this helps!