Wisconsin, Illinois, Florida, and Minnesota have begun to enforce

Question

Wisconsin, Illinois, Florida, and Minnesota have begun to enforce statewide bans  prohibiting landfills to accept leaves, brush, and grass clippings .

(A) prohibiting landfills to accept leaves, brush, and grass clippings

(B) prohibiting that landfills accept leaves, brush, and grass clippings

(C) prohibiting landfills from accepting leaves, brush, and grass clippings

(D) that leaves, brush, and grass clippings cannot be accepted in landfills

(E) that landfills cannot accept leaves, brush, and grass clippings

daagh · Accepted Answer

The template of the idiom is  ‘prohibit x from doing y ’; Choice c is correct-  ‘prohibiting landfills from accepting leaves, brush, and grass clippings’

sudish · Answer

@ Capricorn369 :

Let's look at the first part of the sentence:
'Wisconsin, Illinois, Florida, and Minnesota have begun to enforce statewide bans'
This part can stand on its own and hence it's an independent clause.

The next part of the sentence in options D and E are:
'leaves, brush, and grass clippings cannot be accepted in landfills' and
'landfills cannot accept leaves, brush, and grass clippings'
Both these sentences are independent clauses as well and as such, can stand on their own.
The first part of the sentence does not require the second part to complete its meaning. Hence, the second part is non-essential and is therefore a non-restrictive clause.

Now, we know that we use 'that' only when the clause is restrictive. If the clause is non-restrictive, we use 'which' so that the clause acts as subordinate to the main clause.

Had the options D and E been of the form:
'prohibit landfills from accepting leaves, brush and grass clippings.'
they would have been correct because the latter part would have then acted as a restrictive clause required to complete the meaning of the main clause and could have been aptly joined to the main clause using 'that'.

Hope this is clear now!

daagh · Answer

Because A is not  ‘prohibit from’  but ‘ prohibit to’

lawschoolsearcher · Answer

This is an example that tests correct idiomatic expressions.

Rule:
RIGHT: PROHIBITS X FROM Y
WRONG: PROHIBITS THAT
WRONG: PROHIBITS X TO Y

Using this rule, we can quickly eliminate A, B.
D & E can be eliminated because C is better and crisp. It has the correct idiomatic expression that the author is trying to use in his sentence structure.

vivesomnium · Answer

yes, it is prohibit from, ban on and forbid to..

sudish · Answer

Here's the explanation:

ban and prohibit mean the same thing, but in this context, their usage is different and hence they complement each other.
Here, the sentence is actually trying to say that Wisconsin, Illinois, Florida and Minnesota do not accept leaves, brush and grass clippings in their landfills.

Option A uses an incorrect idiom. The correct idiom is 'prohibit ... from' and not 'prohibit ... to'. Hence incorrect.

Option B suffers from a similar error. 'Prohibiting that' is incorrect usage.

Options C  is the clearest answer choice here. It correctly uses the idiom 'prohibiting ... from'. Hence this is the correct answer.

Options D and E are both incorrect because they do not have a clear meaning due to the usage of 'bans that'.

Hope this helps!

Capricorn369 · Answer

@sudish - why usage of 'bans that' is incorrect? Can you illustrate?
Cheers!

Gau0809 · Answer

Got it.
But what is exactly wrong with D & E?
Are the words Ban and prohibit redundant?
E.g. We say that 
"In Gujrath, the government has enforced a statewide ban on liquor" or do we say
"In Gujrath, the government has enforced a statewide ban prohibiting the liquor"

egmat · Answer

Hello Gau0809 , I am not sure if you still have this doubt, but here are my two cents anyway. :-)

Choice D and E are incorrect because the phrase ban that A does B is incorrect. The word ban must be followed by prohibit or any word equivalent to the same as we see in the case of the second example that you have stated in your post. The expression ban that A does B or ban that A is done by B is incorrect. Hope this helps. :-)

Thanks. Shraddha

Skywalker18 · Answer

Wisconsin, Illinois, Florida, and Minnesota have begun to enforce statewide bans  prohibiting landfills to accept leaves, brush, and grass clippings .

(A) prohibiting landfills to accept leaves, brush, and grass clippings -- prohibiting landfills to accept is incorrect ; usage of prohibit -
 - X is prohibited from doing Y
 - It is prohibited to do Y

(B) prohibiting that landfills accept leaves, brush, and grass clippings - prohibiting that is incorrect

(C) prohibiting landfills from accepting leaves, brush, and grass clippings - Correct

(D) that leaves, brush, and grass clippings cannot be accepted in landfills - ban that .. is incorrect expression

(E) that landfills cannot accept leaves, brush, and grass clippings - same as D

Answer C

BooRadley · Answer

From the Manhattan Forum (Ron's explanation):

To use the word 'ban' correctly, you have to say that the ban prevents (or prohibits, or proscribes, or criminalizes, or one of the many other words carrying the meaning of 'puts off limits') something. You can't say 'a ban that X does Y'. So that does it for the last two choices.

As an alternative construction - possibly the most common construction, actually - you can say a ban ON (NOUN). This construction could theoretically be used here, but (1) it isn't, and (2) it would be difficult to introduce it into this particular sentence without some seriously awkward phrasing.

A and B are done in by poor idiomatic usage. As far as A, you can't say 'X is prohibited TO (verb)', although you can say the related 'It is prohibited to (verb)'. You have to say that X is prohibited FROM (verb)ing'. And B should look really, really wrong to just about any native writer/speaker of English.

That leaves C.

warrior1991 · Answer

generis   GMATNinja   chetan2u   egmat   MentorTutoring

How can we ban landfill in option C?? Landfill is not a person or a living thing who can do any activity .

Am I wrong here ??

AndrewN · Answer

Hello,  warrior1991 . No, you are not wrong in pointing out this oddity of the English language. Strictly speaking, landfills cannot  do  anything, but the sentence at hand is no different from saying something like  Since the outbreak of COVID-19, many re-opened restaurants will allow only so many customers in at a time.  Of course,  restaurants  are no different from landfills in their capacity to perform actions, but this sort of anthropomorphizing occurs commonly in the language, and for no logical reason other than that we understand that the  people  who work at these places perform the action(s) in question. If we read everything literally, we would conjure up some amusing images with sentences like  "Hurry up! The store shuts in ten minutes"  or  "I'll miss my flight!"  (No, it is the airplane that will be missed. The act of flying is beyond human capability.)

- Andrew

sssanskaar · Answer

Although I got this question correct with the help of idioms, I need a clarification on this:

(C) prohibiting landfills from accepting leaves, brush, and grass clippings

How can a policy or a ban prohibit ban a landfill? Shouldn't the sentence be like : prohibiting citizens to dumb xyz in the landfills?

AndrewN · Answer

Hello,  sssanskaar . This issue seems to be drawing a lot of attention, as you can see from the responses above. For my part, I offered an explanation  here . (I agree that the sentence could be better written.)

- Andrew

jarbit · Answer

I understood the reason behind using the idiom here but from a meaning point of view, isn't option C saying that Landfills cannot accept leaves, brushes, and so on. Does it make sense? How can a landfill act like a human? Or probably I am getting the wrong vibe here.

MBAB123 · Answer

Hey jarbit , I had a similar thought but ignored it as there were clear grammatical issues in the other options. But after seeing your comment, I gave it some more thought. Think about a couple of examples where non-human entities do human-like actions - 1. The tsunami will trap you. 2. The tornado will not let you pass. I know the above examples are easier to digest than the landfills one, but the thing is that the tsunami is not intentionally trapping you like a human would. It just is, it's the nature of that particular Tsunami. Perhaps, the states are trying to build/modify landfills in such a manner the landfills can no longer accept leaves, brushes, etc. I realise it's not the best reasoning but might make the choice more acceptable to you. Hope this helps!

Foi2Evei2 · Answer

Hi experts  GMATNinja   egmat   AndrewN

I have a doubt on 'bans prohibiting....' Why doesn't it consider as redundant? As I understand, both 'bans' and 'prohibit' are the same meaning.

I thought it is redundant so I select (E)

AndrewN · Answer

Hello,  Foi2Evei2 . Yes, the  verbs  "ban" and "prohibit" mean the same thing, but  prohibiting  in this sentence is used as an adjective to modify  bans . You might say it is a quite fitting description of a ban, in fact, similar to saying  games played ,  races run , or  paintings painted . Others have commented on how answer choice (E) is idiomatically unsound. Do those explanations make sense to you?

- Andrew

Wisconsin, Illinois, Florida, and Minnesota have begun to enforce

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Wisconsin, Illinois, Florida, and Minnesota have begun to enforce

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