Without adequate amounts of sleep, people's newly acquired skills and

Question

Without adequate amounts of sleep, people's newly acquired skills and also  new factual information may not get properly encoded into their memory circuits.

A. Without adequate amounts of sleep, people's newly acquired skills and also

B. Without the adequate amount of sleep they need, people's newly acquired skills and even

C. If they do not have adequate amounts of sleep, people's newly acquired skills and even

D. If people do not get adequate amounts of sleep, newly acquired skills and even

E. If people do not get the adequate amount of sleep they need, newly acquired skills and also

Pls clarify the usage of "amounts of sleep" ? Is sleep a countable or uncountable noun here?

gamer23 · Answer

people's newly acquired skills and also new factual information are not parallel right ?

people's newly acquired skills - adjective

new factual information - noun (if we take people's common then 'people's new factual information' doesn't make sense right ?)

GMATNinja   VeritasKarishma

AjiteshArun · Answer

kj1993  ,  newly acquired  skills   is a noun phrase.

KarishmaB · Answer

people's newly acquired skill is a noun too. The noun is 'skills' and rest everything modifies 'skills'.

Same is the case with 'new factual information'. 'Information' is the noun and everything else modifies it.

When we use ' people's newly acquired skills' and new factual information', there is a question mark on new factual information. We are clarifying that we are talking about people's skills but not clarifying that we are talking about new information people acquired. 
On the whole, it is not very clear and hence I wouldn't prefer it.

Thankfully, we have a much better option (and without modifier error) in (D)!

soumya170293 · Answer

POE of A,B,C & E

A - Redundancy ( And -Also )
B- Modifier Issue ( Without.. they  need ,  people's newly acquired skills  )
C- Same as B 
E- Redundancy ( Same as A + another redundancy  adequate  ... need

D Wins .

dcummins · Answer

A,B,C illogical modification of sleep and people's skills, not people.

E - redundancy with 'adequate' and 'need'

sankarsh · Answer

Hey Experts,
 Regarding option "A"
I understood the modifier sentence "Without adequate amounts of sleep" is trying to modify people's skill and on that basis, I can terminate this answer choice..
My main doubt is since there is no Subject-verb in this modifier, does that also lead to wrong construction?

Basshead · Answer

Without adequate amounts of sleep, people's newly acquired skills and also  new factual information may not get properly encoded into their memory circuits.

A. Without adequate amounts of sleep, people's  newly acquired skills  and also  -- Newly acquired skills need sleep?

B. Without the adequate amount of sleep they need, people's  newly acquired skills  and even  -- Newly acquired skills need sleep?

C. If they do not have adequate amounts of sleep, people's  newly acquired skills  and even  -- Newly acquired skills need sleep?

D. If people do not get adequate amounts of sleep, newly acquired skills and even  -- Correct

E. If people do not get the adequate amount of sleep  they need , newly acquired skills and  also   -- 'they need' is redundant. 'also' is not needed.

SohamS · Answer

In option D, the sentence will be "if people don't get adequate amounts of sleep, newly acquired skills and factual knowledge....The meaning gets changed right?

aarkay87 · Answer

Hi GMATNinja Thanks for the explanation. You have eliminated Option C, using the rule that a possessive noun cannot be the antecedent for subject case pronoun. However, there is an official example in which the object case pronoun has a valid possessive noun as antecedent. Link: https://gmatclub.com/forum/among-the-ob ... 82658.html Could you please elaborate that whether this rule is absolute or not? Regards Rohit

MBAB123 · Answer

Hey aarkay87 , I'm no expert but see if this helps

- As GMATninja and several other experts have pointed out, pronoun ambiguity is not an absolute rule. Referring back to a possessive antecedent is obviously allowed like you have mentioned. The problem with C is that they way it is written, they is referring to newly acquired skills and new factual information and that is what makes the option wrong. I am of the view that there are more exceptions to the rules than the rules of the english language. This is just my personal approach but I try to base things on meaning rather than thinking about grammar vs meaning . After all, the purpose of language is to communicate and every so called rule is supposed to help us understand the meaning better. Grammar is Meaning. (This is just my way but I am no expert so take it with a pinch of salt!)

GMATNinja · Answer

As Brian wisely notes below, it is not an absolute rule that a possessive pronoun needs to refer to a possessive antecedent. It's better to think about it this way: if the way the pronoun refers to the antecedent is confusing, and there's another answer choice that clarifies the issue, it's perfectly reasonable to use the decision point as a tie-breaker. For instance, say you had the following sentences:

1) Tim's dog likes to take long walks, and he often has to hurry back to the office afterwards.

2) Tim takes his dog on long walks, and he often has to hurry back to the office afterwards.

In sentence 1, it sounds like Tim's dog is hurrying back to the office. After all, the dog is performing the first action (likes) and so our brains anticipate that he's going to do the second one (has to hurry) as well.

However, in sentence 2, it's Tim who's doing both actions, and this seems perfectly logical. This isn't to say that sentence 1 is wrong -- I certainly wouldn't eliminate it in a vacuum -- but compared to sentence 2, it's less clear.

The upshot is that you wouldn't eliminate the first option because it violates a "rule," but because it's confusing compared to an alternative.

So if you see a case in which there's an element that feels less than ideal, but there isn't a better alternative -- or all the alternatives contain some other concrete error -- you'd be stuck with the less than ideal option.

I hope that clears things up a bit!

akiara · Answer

This was confusing! Amount vs Amounts please?

smbbourne007 · Answer

D. If people do not get adequate amounts of sleep, newly acquired skills and even new factual information may not get properly encoded into their memory circuits.

if Active voice, then Passive voice.

Option D has an active voice in the conditional clause and a passive voice in the "then" clause. I've read on this post that GMAT wants both clauses to maintain the same voice setting.
https://gmatclub.com/forum/starfish-wit ... 32488.html

Please clarify.

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

In that other question you linked to, the issue with the incorrect choices is not simply that two clauses use different voices. The issue is that the shift from the active voice to the passive voice results in sentence versions that don't effectively convey logical meanings.

In this question, the (D) version first uses the active voice and then uses the passive voice to effectively communicate a logical meaning. So, there's no issue with the use of different voices in different clauses. On the contrary, the use of different voices results in a well written sentence.

RonTargetTestPrep · Answer

If it's possible to write parallel verb phrases in the same voice (both active or both passive), without changing or distorting the meaning of the sentence into something unintended, then sure... but this is certainly not a hard rule. Here are a few official problems that pair active and passive verbs with the same subject: https://gmatclub.com/forum/many-of-the- ... 99980.html https://gmatclub.com/forum/rock-samples ... 13736.html https://gmatclub.com/forum/while-noble- ... 99872.html

TBT · Answer

Can someone confirm whether b and c also have pronoun issue?

B. Without the adequate amount of sleep they need, people's newly acquired skills and even

C. If they do not have adequate amounts of sleep, people's newly acquired skills and even

egmat · Answer

Hey  TBT

Happy to help.

Yes, they most certainly do!

The fundamental principle of pronoun usage is that a pronoun must refer to a noun. So, technically, "they" cannot refer to "people's". Hence, by extension, "they" is forced to refer to "skills and information" in choices B and C. So, strictly speaking, "they" has been used incorrectly in choices B and C, or, alternatively, we could say that the use of "people's" is incorrect.

Now, this rule has been flouted once or twice in official GMAT questions.    Here   's an example.

Hence, even if we apply this exception, at best the use of "they" can be labeled "ambiguous" and "awkward".

Notice how, in choice D, the use of the word "people" resolves this ambiguity, and the possessive pronoun "their" also has a clear antecedent.

I hope this helps improve your understanding.

Happy Learning!

Abhishek

KarishmaB · Answer

Other than the fact that the subject pronoun is referring to possessive antecedent (which is not that big a problem and could be acceptable on GMAT), there is pronoun issue. When a pronoun is used in an introductory dependent clause/ phrase, we expect to see its antecedent noun (subject) at the beginning of the main clause.

If they do no get adequate sleep, they (or people etc.) get tired ...
Without her dog by her side, she (or Mary etc.) struggles to sleep...

In options (B) and (C), we expect the main clause to start with 'people'. 
Without adequate amount of sleep, people get ... 
If they do not get adequate amounts of sleep, people get ...

But the subject in options (B) and (C) is 'skills and information' and hence, it doesn't work out.

ExpertsGlobal5 · Answer

Hello  TBT ,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, these options do incorrectly use the subject pronoun "they" to refer to the possessive pronoun "people's", however, this usage is no longer considered an error or tested on GMAT, so technically the error in these options is better defined as a modifier error rather than a pronoun error.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Riya1475828 · Answer

Hey  ScottTargetTestPrep  in your course on verbal, you have mentioned that we can use the pronoun to refer back to a possessive nouns. Here,  GMATNinja  is saying that we cannot refer a pronoun back to a possessive noun. Any comment here to clarify on the same?

Without adequate amounts of sleep, people's newly acquired skills and

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Without adequate amounts of sleep, people's newly acquired skills and

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