In late 1997,the chambers inside the pyramid

[RonPurewal]

thanghnvn, i can't tell what your question is.

please help me out here -- phrase your question in a way that (a) is much more concise, and (b) ends with a question mark.

thanks.

[thanghnvn]

MY question is

in some sc problems , a pattern is considered inferior and wrong while in other sc problems, that pattern is in the oa.

this means gmat test us ability to find the best choice not the absolute grammar rules.

is that right?

[RonPurewal]

MY question is

in some sc problems , a pattern is considered inferior and wrong while in other sc problems, that pattern is in the oa.

this means gmat test us ability to find the best choice not the absolute grammar rules.

is that right?

i think that's a bit extreme, but there's some truth there.

specifically:

* many problems test criteria that are relative, not absolute -- you're right about this.
on the other hand, that's not really GMAC's fault; that's in the nature of language itself.
see, some things are definitely absolute criteria. for instance, a subject and verb either (a) agree or (b) don't agree; there's no relative quality there. and so on.
on the other hand, some things are relative. for instance, there's no "ideal" parallelism in all sentences; there's just constructions that are more or less parallel than others. there's no sentence that is by itself "concise" in an absolute sense; instead, there are sentences that are more, or less, wordy than other sentences.

on the other hand, i don't know if your statement about "inferior" constructions is necessarily true. there are some inconsistencies in GMAC's treatment of language; however, i don't think i've seen many (if any) instances in which they've flat-out contradicted themselves.

[ericyuan0811]

you would say "due to [noun]" or "because [clause]", but not "because of [noun]"

as for B/C/D on the question, they all break the parallelism with the "and fungus..." part at the end of the sentence..

hi instructors

can i eliminate (D) because "raising the humidity" incorrectly modify "tourists" ?

thanks~

[RonPurewal]

ericyuan0811, yes, that's a valid reason to eliminate that choice.

[tkotw79]

Hello,

I am not sure if my understanding of this grammatical part relating to pronouns is correct

since tourist is the object of a prepositional phrase - moisture exhaled by tourists- the pronoun "them" in this case or any pronoun for that matter cannot refer to the object of a prepositional phrase.

Could you also post some examples as well if pronoun can refer back to the object of the prepositional phrase.

Thanks and Rgds

[RonPurewal]

any pronoun for that matter cannot refer to the object of a prepositional phrase.

Not true.
See, for instance, the correct answer to OG13 #7 (can't reproduce here).

Don't overcomplicate the issue of pronouns. With pronouns, all you have to think about is ...
... What thing/person/idea the pronoun want to stand for?
... Is there a NOUN for that thing/person/idea?
... Do the pronoun and noun match (in terms of singular/plural)?
If the answers to the last two questions are "yes" and "yes", then the pronoun is fine.
That's all.
As you can see here, adding unnecessary complexity will just make easy decisions hard, and will often lead to incorrect conclusions.

[satish.polumati]

Hi ,

Any opinion on the tense sequence in option D. It says, Tourists were exhaling moisture, which had raised ....

Where as the correct option says " the moisture exhaled by tourists had raised the humidity.." geting rid of the tense problem.

[RonPurewal]

Hi ,

Any opinion on the tense sequence in option D. It says, Tourists were exhaling moisture, which had raised ....

That construction is in choice C, not choice D.

In any case, yes, "were exhaling" is problematic, as it suggests that the tourists were exhaling moisture at the time when the chambers were closed (= the timeframe of the sentence). Good catch.
"Moisture exhaled by tourists" is moisture that has been exhaled by the tourists at some point before (or during) the timeframe of the sentence, so that's ok here.

[BernardK777]

In the original question posted, is the use of ",which" correct in answer choice A? I thought that the ",which" modifier is referring to moisture, and thus, it should be touching "moisture".

Also, can you list the exceptions for which a noun modifier does NOT have to touch the noun it modifies?

Thank you!

[RonPurewal]

In the original question posted, is the use of ",which" correct in answer choice A? I thought that the ",which" modifier is referring to moisture, and thus, it should be touching "moisture".

Yes, this is one of the things that's wrong with choice A.

[RonPurewal]

Also, can you list the exceptions for which a noun modifier does NOT have to touch the noun it modifies?

Thank you!

Not a good way to think about this. Most things modifying nouns don't have to be directly adjacent to those nouns. (In OG Diagnostic #50, there are ten words between "...that will xxxx" and the noun that it describes.)

The fact that "which" is so severely restricted is, in fact, the entire reason why "which" is notable!
Most modifiers have more flexibility. If all modifiers were constrained in this way, then most descriptive sentences would become impossible to write.

[BernardK777]

Ron,

Thank you for your response! So is the ",which" the only notable modifier type that we should evaluate strictly to see if it is touching the noun it's modifying? Or are there other notable modifiers that we should pay special attention to as well for this rule?

Thanks!

[RonPurewal]

The same principle applies to
___, who/whom/whose ...

It also applies to modifiers that have little words in front of who/whom/whose/which. E.g., it applies to
___, to which ...
___ of which ...
___, to whom ...
___, each of whom ...
___, because of which ...
and so on.

[RonPurewal]

And don't forget that these modifiers are allowed to refer to either of 2 structures:
1/ A noun;
2/ A noun + preposition + other noun. (E.g., The picture of my father, which is in a wooden frame, sits in the center of the table.)