Yellow jackets number among the 900 or so species of the

The above sentence has the following errors in its underlined part.
The word THEY stands out to me while reading this sentence. "They" being a plural relative pronoun needs to refer to plural antecedent. The plural antecedent existent in the sentence are: wasps, Yellow jackets or species.
None of them make any sense.
2. Where is referring back to Society, which isn't a physical space. Where needs to refer to a physical space, and not to any situation, circumstance et al.

A goes out because of the above mentioned reason.
This looks fine. NO pronoun ambiguity. Consisting(Present Participle) adjectival phrase modifies the "society"
The descriptors of the wasp society are in parallel form, and consisting properly modifies society.
Not the best place to place WHICH. Which can't modify the entire preceding clause. It modifies the most eligible preceding noun. "Wasp" in this case. Not the eligible referent.
Two reasons to eliminate this:
1. Parallelism isn't proper. Three parallel elements: highly cooperative (Adjective), organized(Adjective) and it consists of almost all(Clause) Three elements not parallel.
2. living in a society...refers to the entire preceding clause/Subject of the preceding clause. This particular reference isn't at all required here.
B is the best choice, which uses a construction named "Appositives"

GMATNinja

The usage of relative pronoun 'which' whenever appears to modify incorrectly/ambiguously, has always been highlighted in the official guide explanations.

But while i was going through the explanation of this very question , the official guide didn't not identify the usage as incorrect. (It just didn't address 'which' for options C and D)

The little i have understood about the usage of 'which' is that it modifies preceding Noun or sometimes even far of nouns, but it does not modify the entire clause.

As per me, I would have eliminated 'which means ' on the basis of usage and abiguity.

Could you please Explain for this little finding of mine in regard to the Official Guide?

For starters, the official guide explanations were written years -- and often a couple of decades -- after the original question was created. So the OG explanations often aren't a great reflection of the question-writers' intent, and in general, it's worth taking those explanations with a grain of salt.

In this case, the test for whether "which" is correct is twofold:

1) Is the modifier beginning with "which" reasonably close to the noun it modifies?
2) Does the verb in the modifier agree in number with the noun it describes?

With that in mind, take another look at the relevant portion in (C): "Yellow jackets number among the 900 or so species of the world’s social wasps, which means they live in a highly cooperative and organized society." The verb "means" is singular, so we know that the phrase beginning with "which" needs to modify a singular noun. But there aren't any singular nouns that "which" could possibly modify, so (C) is incorrect. (D) has the exact same problem.

And yes, you're correct that in most cases, "which" should modify the nearest noun. That's not a strict rule, though: as long as "which" modifies a nearby noun, it can be OK -- but the modifier needs to actually make sense and adhere to basic subject-verb agreement rules. And in (C) and (D), it simply doesn't.

I hope that helps!

Actually, GMAC allows "where" to be used for societies, https://gmatclub.com/forum/many-population-studies-have-linked-a-high-salt-diet-to-high-rates-of-49782.html.

E)
"Living" implies that this is happening right now -- or during the timeframe of the sentence, whenever that might be -- but not necessarily at other times.
"That live" implies a general/permanent fact.
This sentence is clearly trying to give a general description of the way wasps live, so "that live" is better. -- Ron

Hello Everyone!

This is a tricky question, so let's dive in! To start, here is the original question with any major differences between the options highlighted in orange:

Yellow jackets number among the 900 or so species of the world's social wasps, wasps living in a highly cooperative and organized society where they consist almost entirely of females—the queen and her sterile female workers.

A. wasps living in a highly cooperative and organized society where they consist almost entirely of
B. wasps that live in a highly cooperative and organized society consisting almost entirely of
C. which means they live in a highly cooperative and organized society, almost all
D. which means that their society is highly cooperative, organized, and it is almost entirely
E. living in a society that is highly cooperative, organized, and it consists of almost all

After a quick glance over the options, there are a couple things we can focus on:

1. wasps living/wasps that live/which means they/which means that/living (Modifiers)
2. How each options ends (Punctuation/Pronouns/Meaning)

Let's start with #1 on our list: Modifiers. We first need to determine if the word "which" is necessary, and then check to make sure the modifiers don't screw up meaning:

A. wasps living in a highly cooperative and organized society where they consist almost entirely of --> OK (Clear the modifier is referring back to "social wasps," and giving more detail about them.)

B. wasps that live in a highly cooperative and organized society consisting almost entirely of --> OK (Also clear the modifier is referring to and giving more information on what "social wasps" are.)

C. which means they live in a highly cooperative and organized society, almost all --> WRONG (Starting the phrase with "which" means it must modify THE ENTIRE PHRASE before the comma, and that's not what it should be modifying. It should only modify "social wasps.")

D. which means that their society is highly cooperative, organized, and it is almost entirely --> WRONG (Again, starting a modifier with the word "which" means it must modify THE ENTIRE phrase before the comma, and not just "social wasps.")

E. living in a society that is highly cooperative, organized, and it consists of almost all --> WRONG (The -ing modifier must modify THE ENTIRE PHRASE before the comma, and that's not what we're trying to modify here.)

We can eliminate options C, D, & E because they use the wrong kinds of modifiers for the sentence.

Now that we have it narrowed down to only 2 options, let's tackle any issues with meaning, modifiers, and punctuation. To make problems easier to spot, I've included the non-underlined portions of the sentence:

A. Yellow jackets number among the 900 or so species of the world's social wasps, wasps living in a highly cooperative and organized society where they consist almost entirely of females—the queen and her sterile female workers.

This is INCORRECT because we have a vague pronoun! It's not clear what "they" is referring to: yellow jackets, social wasps, society, species? If a pronoun isn't 100% clear, that's a big red flag on the GMAT that this is likely an incorrect choice.

B. Yellow jackets number among the 900 or so species of the world's social wasps, wasps that live in a highly cooperative and organized society consisting almost entirely of females—the queen and her sterile female workers.

This is CORRECT! It uses modifiers correctly, and there are no problems with pronouns, punctuation, or meaning here!


There you go - option B is the correct choice!


Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.

Hello EMPOWERgmatVerbal! Quick question: I learned that WHICH refers to the immediate preceding noun. Why is this "which" modifying an entire phrase?
Thanks!

Hello mekhdi!

Another way of looking at these modifiers is to read for meaning. Here are options C & D with the entire sentence worked in:

C. Yellow jackets number among the 900 or so species of the world's social wasps, which means they live in a highly cooperative and organized society, almost all females—the queen and her sterile female workers.
The problem with this is that by starting a phrase with "which means," it suggests a cause/effect relationship between the two phrases. This sentence says that yellow jackets are highly cooperative and organized BECAUSE they are a type of social wasp - which isn't exactly true. They just happen to be that way.

D. Yellow jackets number among the 900 or so species of the world's social wasps, which means that their society is highly cooperative, organized, and it is almost entirely females—the queen and her sterile female workers.
Again, this one suggests that yellow jackets are cooperative and organized BECAUSE they are a type of social wasp, which is not true - they just happen to be that way.

I hope that helps! The problem lies more in the fact that the modifier says "which means," and that creates a bit of a meaning problem.

Please help! Is the first sentence "Yellow jacket......" the legendary Nominative absolute or absolute phrase that can be added in front or at the end of the sentence to modify WASP? That is why the sentence is not a run on and not making "...social wasp, wasp..." weird?

No. That is the main subject-verb pair. The second wasps that you see is the one that is a modifier (for social wasps).

Yellow jackets number among the 900 or so species of the world's social wasps, wasps that live in a highly cooperative and organized society consisting almost entirely of females—the queen and her sterile female workers.

GMATNinja I still don't understand how "A" is wrong because pronoun ambiguity doesn't really seem to be an issue here. Whereas in B, "wasps that live in a highly cooperative and organized society consisting almost entirely of" I feel the sentence is a bit awkward -" organized society consisting of.."

kritikumari, I don't think the they (plural) is ambiguous. It's wrong, because the actual meaning is that it is the society (singular) that consists.

I have a doubt regarding the Official Answer.

(B) wasps that live in a highly cooperative and
organized society consisting almost entirely of - Isn't "that" supposed to refer to singular noun? Here, neither 'wasps' nor 'yellow jackets' is singular.

Hi JustAboutDone,

That is singular when it points to a noun after it (that question, that book). This type of that has a plural form, those (those questions, those books).

In wasps that, however, the that is a relative pronoun. As a relative pronoun, that cannot be replaced by those. So we cannot go with something like wasps those live.

The first issue with (E) is the parallelism, as described in this post (and others).

Yes, we can use ", and" to connect two independent clauses. But if that's the case here, the first of those independent clauses is: "Yellow jackets number among the 900 or so species of the world's social wasps, living in a society that is highly cooperative, organized." See the problem there? We would need to replace the comma between "cooperative" and "organized" with an "and" (just as you'd write "Tim likes to eat pizza and bagels," not "Tim likes to eat pizza, bagels").

The other problem with (E) is the "-ing" modifier, "living in a society..." What does that modify? At first glance, it seems to modify the entire preceding clause ("Yellow jackets number..."). Are we trying to say that just yellow jackets live in such societies? Nope -- we're trying to say that social wasps in general live in such societies.

I hope that helps!

[quote="DLMD"]Yellow jackets number among the 900 or so species of the world's social wasps, wasps living in a highly cooperative and organized society where they consist almost entirely of females—the queen and her sterile female workers.


A. wasps living in a highly cooperative and organized society where they consist almost entirely of

B. wasps that live in a highly cooperative and organized society consisting almost entirely of

C. which means they live in a highly cooperative and organized society, almost all

D. which means that their society is highly cooperative, organized, and it is almost entirely

E. living in a society that is highly cooperative, organized, and it consists of almost all


This is a question based on Modifiers and Pronoun usage.

Options C and D can be ruled out because they contain a modifier beginning with the relative pronoun ‘which’. The relative pronoun refers to the noun immediately before it. The noun immediately before the underlined portion begins is ‘wasps’, so the meaning conveyed by Options C and D is that wasps means that they live in a highly …… The two options also contain a Subject-Verb disagreement – “which means” – if the relative pronoun does refer to wasps, the verb should be ‘mean’ and not ‘means’. There is no logic in these sentences, so Options C and D can be eliminated.

Option E contains an ambiguous pronoun – it. There is no noun that the pronoun ‘it’ can logically refer to in Option E or the entire sentence, so Option E can also be eliminated.

Option A also has an ambiguous pronoun – they. This pronoun could refer to wasps but then the meaning conveyed would be - wasps living in a highly cooperative and organized society where wasps consist almost entirely of females. This makes no sense, so Option A can also be eliminated.

Option B has a modifier – “wasps that live in a highly cooperative and organized society consisting almost entirely of….” - to provide more information about how yellow jackets are social wasps. Option B does away with the pronoun so there is no confusion created by an ambiguous pronoun.
Therefore, B is the most appropriate option.

Jayanthi Kumar.

nobody cares why there is ""consisting" not "consisting of" in option B

Well, choice (B) actually does have "consisting of." There are just a couple modifiers stuck in the middle ("almost entirely"), and that's totally fine!