Nine months after the county-GPrep SC

[Anon]

Nine months after the county banned jet skis and other water bikes from the tranquil waters of Puget Sound, a judge overturned the ban on the ground of violating state laws for allowing the use of personal watercraft on common waterways
A same
B of their violating state laws to allow
C that it violates state laws that allowed
D that it violated state laws allowing
E that state laws were being violated allowing

The source is Gprep Test 2
I figured out that I need to choose between C-D-E
Can someone please explain what are flaws in these options and how can we select right choice.
OA is D

Thanks in advance!

[RonPurewal]

choice (e) is TOTALLY wrong. if you can't kill choice (e) quickly, you should read through a large number of correct answers to SC questions in the official guides, just for the purpose of internalizing the writing style of the correct answers.
i can't overestimate the importance of becoming comfortable with the writing style of the gmat. in the same way you can classify language as 'shakespearean' or 'faulkner-esque' at a glance, you can also classify language as to whether you might see it on the gmat. once you achieve a certain degree of this familiarity, choice (e) and its ilk will begin to look ridiculous.

the formal reasons why choice (e) is wrong: 1, it uses the passive voice for no good reason whatsoever, and, 2, more importantly, it says only that state laws were being violated; it doesn't at all indicate the crucial fact that the ban violated the state laws. that's baaaaaadd bad bad.

choice (c) is wrong because the tenses don't make sense. 'violates' is in the present tense, but 'allowed' is in the past tense. either one of these tenses could potentially make sense individually, but the combination is absurd: you can't violate (present tense) a law that used to allow something (past tense). if you're going to violate the law in the present tense, then whatever part of the law was violated had better carry over into the present tense.
interestingly, all 3 other tense combinations make sense: violates/allows, violated/allows (if the law is still in effect), and violated/allowed (if the law is no longer in effect).

choice (d) circumvents this issue altogether by employing the participle form (-ing). despite its name (it's formally called the "present participle"), this form is NOT necessarily a present-tense construction; rather, it has no inherent tense at all, and merely adopts the tense of whatever verbs in the sentence do have a tense. therefore, in choice (d), 'allowing' takes place in the past tense, simultaneously with 'violated'.

[shobujgmat]

what is the wrong with A pls clarify.

its writing is poor but ramatically what is the red light

[RonPurewal]

what is the wrong with A pls clarify.

its writing is poor but ramatically what is the red light

* unidiomatic: you can't write "on the grounds OF _____". you should use that.

* there's also no pronoun, or any other reference, to indicate what violated the state laws. (you might not notice this sort of thing in a standalone sentence, because the meaning is pretty obvious, but note the contrast with choices (b), (c), and (d), all of which do contain appropriate references.)

[gmathanoifall2010]

what is the wrong with A pls clarify.

its writing is poor but ramatically what is the red light

* unidiomatic: you can't write "on the grounds OF _____". you should use that.

Ron, as I see in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 5th Ed,
The Idoms" on the grounds of", "on the grounds that" are both right.

In A, is the phrase" the state laws to allow" wrong?

[mschwrtz]

1) The Longman dictionary you cite is more descriptive than prescriptive, as is appropriate for a language-learners' dictionary. The GMAT is certainly not afraid of prescription.

2) There seems to me to be an idiomatic difference between grounds of and ground of.

3) I don't know if grounds of or ground of might be terms of art in law, but in nontechnical use ground of seems suspect.

4) Having said all that, I would be surprised by a GMAT question that required threading this particular needle. I would expect to see this awkward idiom used only in wrong answers that had more serious flaws. That's what we get here. A and B, the two answers that use ground of, are wrong, but their biggest problems are elsewhere.

[vjsharma25]

Can someone explain the usage of "it" in the correct answer choice?

It seems somewhat awkward to have "it" in the middle of the
sentence,even though it is in correct choice,without a referent.

Generally "it" is used to start a sentence to state a fact or general truth(without a referent).Isn't it?

[RonPurewal]

Can someone explain the usage of "it" in the correct answer choice?

It seems somewhat awkward to have "it" in the middle of the
sentence,even though it is in correct choice,without a referent.

Generally "it" is used to start a sentence to state a fact or general truth(without a referent).Isn't it?

hmm?
"the ban" is a perfectly good antecedent for that pronoun.
i.e., the judge overturned the ban because it (= the ban) violated state law.

[arindam.gupta1]

I have a question on the OA.

In choice D, isn't allowing modifying the subject 'it', which refers to the noun ban. If it does then how does the sentence makes sense as it says the ban was enforced by the country to keep jet skis and other water bikes away from the tranquil waters of Puget Sound and then the judge overturns the ban as the ban allows the use of personal watercraft on waterways. Doesnt it contradic itself?

Pls clarify

[RonPurewal]

I have a question on the OA.

first --
OFFICIALLY CORRECT ANSWERS ARE CORRECT!
do not question officially correct answers!
far too many students on this forum make the mistake of questioning the correct answers; please note that doing so is a complete waste of your time and effort. i.e., exactly 0% of the time that you spend posting "isn't this official answer wrong?" is productive, and exactly 100% of that time is wasted.

"is this correct?" is NEVER a productive question to ask about one of GMAC's correct answers -- the answer is always yes.
"is this wrong?" / "is this X type of error?" is NEVER a productive question to ask about one of GMAC's correct answers -- the answer is always no.

instead, the questions you should be asking about correct official answers, if you don't understand them, are:
"why is this correct?"
"how does this work?"
"what understanding am i lacking that i need to understand this choice?"

this is a small, but hugely significant, change to your way of thinking -- you will suddenly find it much easier to understand the format, style, and conventions of the official problems if you dispose of the idea that they might be wrong.

--

In choice D, isn't allowing modifying the subject 'it', which refers to the noun ban.[/quote]

no. it modifies the noun directly in front of it, i.e., "laws".

[vinny4nyc]

choice (c) is wrong because the tenses don't make sense. 'violates' is in the present tense, but 'allowed' is in the past tense. either one of these tenses could potentially make sense individually, but the combination is absurd: you can't violate (present tense) a law that used to allow something (past tense). if you're going to violate the law in the present tense, then whatever part of the law was violated had better carry over into the present tense.
interestingly, all 3 other tense combinations make sense: violates/allows, violated/allows (if the law is still in effect), and violated/allowed (if the law is no longer in effect).

Hi Ron
I wanted to clarify whether I interpreted your answer on Point C correctly. This statement is wrong because of mixed tenses.
So if we had the statement rephrased as
that it violates state laws that allow
Would this make answer choice C correct over D . I understand D is the right answer but want to know if Simple present tenses (as in my rephrased answer) would make more sense over Ing form i.e. Ans choice D.

[RonPurewal]

choice (c) is wrong because the tenses don't make sense. 'violates' is in the present tense, but 'allowed' is in the past tense. either one of these tenses could potentially make sense individually, but the combination is absurd: you can't violate (present tense) a law that used to allow something (past tense). if you're going to violate the law in the present tense, then whatever part of the law was violated had better carry over into the present tense.
interestingly, all 3 other tense combinations make sense: violates/allows, violated/allows (if the law is still in effect), and violated/allowed (if the law is no longer in effect).

Hi Ron
I wanted to clarify whether I interpreted your answer on Point C correctly. This statement is wrong because of mixed tenses.
So if we had the statement rephrased as
that it violates state laws that allow
Would this make answer choice C correct over D . I understand D is the right answer but want to know if Simple present tenses (as in my rephrased answer) would make more sense over Ing form i.e. Ans choice D.

that sort of thing would also be correct.

you will never be faced with a situation in which 2 (or more) answer choices are correct.

[vinny4nyc]

Thanks

[RonPurewal]

Thanks

you're very welcome.

[Levent-g]

Hi Ron,
referring to Vinny’s analyis, would you agree that C has a more a meaning issue rather than a tense issue, because grammatically the verb "violates" refers to the noun "ban" whereas "allow" refers to another noun "law". As you indicated in your explanations above that those verb tenses could even differ if the meaning would be different.

Thanks