1000 SC

[amrinder]

Researchers are finding out that plastics are taking more time to deteriorate than they originally seemed.

A) They originally seemed.
B) they seemed originally
C) it seemed that they would originally
D) it originally seemed
E) it originally seemed they would

[dbernst]

Amrinder,

My general "take" is that this question, similar to many questions that we see on the Forum, is not written well enough to function as an Official GMAT problem. That said, I'll do my best to answer your post. The sentence is comparing the current knowledge of researchers to the previous knowledge of research. Thus, the researchers are now discovering that plastics actually take more time to deteriorate than the researchers originally thought that plastics would take to deteriorate. Since the pronoun "they" in the original sentence and in choice B could incorrectly refer to plastics, it is ambiguous. Eliminate choices A and B.

By moving the adverb "originally," Choice C alters the intention of the original sentence by incorrectly questioning when the plastics would deteriorate rather than when the researchers believed information different from their current knowledge. Eliminate C.

Finally, choice E, by including the clause "they would [take to deteriorate]," correctly completes the comparison. In contrast, the comparison in choice D is ambiguous. Eliminate D.

Thus, if I were forced to choose, E would be my selection, but this answer is definitely the "cream of the crap."

-dan

Researchers are finding out that plastics are taking more time to deteriorate than they originally seemed.

A) They originally seemed.
B) they seemed originally
C) it seemed that they would originally
D) it originally seemed
E) it originally seemed they would

[aagar2003]

can somebody pls help with the following doubts:

Questions related to relative pronouns:

(1) Is there ambiguity regarding the antecedents (researchers vs plastics) for the relative pronoun 'they' in all options except D?
(2) THEY should refer to Researchers, IT should refer to Plastics (non-human). Correct?


Others:
(3) Seemed already implies conditional sense. Isn't "would" redundant?
(4) When do I use "initially" vs "originally"?

My take was (D) on this one but OA is (E). :-(

[gmatwork]

What is "it' referring to in the above question?

I have another question. Sometimes the sentence structure goes -

It is estimated that X is Y years old.

This is grammatically correct but is that's the case then what is 'it' referring to? Does a pronoun always need to have an antecedent in a sentence?

[jnelson0612]

What is "it' referring to in the above question?

I have another question. Sometimes the sentence structure goes -

It is estimated that X is Y years old.

This is grammatically correct but is that's the case then what is 'it' referring to? Does a pronoun always need to have an antecedent in a sentence?

In this case "it" is functioning as the subject of the sentence, and you are right; this structure is okay because "it" is not actually functioning as a pronoun.