Please help with pronoun

[ashish1354]

Heirloom tomatoes, grown from seeds saved from the previous year, only look less appetizing than their round and red supermarket cousins, often green and striped, or have plenty of bumps and bruises, but are more flavorful.
A. cousins, often green and striped, or have plenty of bumps and bruises, but are
B. cousins, often green and striped, or with plenty of bumps and bruises, although
C. cousins, often green and striped, or they have plenty of bumps and bruises, although they are
D. cousins; they are often green and striped, or with plenty of bumps and bruises, although
E. cousins; they are often green and striped, or have plenty of bumps and bruises, but they are

i don't understand why b) is wrong and OA is e)

Please explain the rule about pronoun after semicolon and pronoun's antecedent

Please explain what does they in D) & E) refer to in context of the rule.... thanks

[jnelson0612]

What is the original source of this question? Please let us know, and then we can help.

[jp.jprasanna]

I think the source is from Source: Scoretop.com - taken from this line: regarding-pronouns-t1302.html

Q :Heirloom tomatoes, grown from seeds saved from the previous year, only look less appetizing than their round and red supermarket cousins, often green and striped, or have plenty of bumps and bruises, but are more flavorful.

Correct Answer:

E. cousins; they are often green and striped, or have plenty of bumps and bruises, but they are

My questions is with the non underlined part :
Heirloom tomatoes, grown from seeds saved from the previous year, only look less appetizing than their round and red supermarket cousins

here the verb is "grown" right why is it enclosed between commas? If i drop that part between the comma then the 1st half of the sentence will not have a verb and the semicolon is not justified in the correct ans!

Also shouldn't the sentence be written :
Heirloom tomatoes grown from seeds...... , only look........
No comma between tomatoes and grown...

Could you please help me understand the sentence structure...

[tim]

a pronoun after a semicolon can refer to an antecedent before the semicolon; in fact, this is one of the most common uses of a semicolon on the GMAT. if you see a semicolon, see if there is a pronoun after it that refers to something in the first half. in this case, "they" refers to "heirloom tomatoes"..

the verb in the first half is "look"; "grown" is a modifier..

[jp.jprasanna]

a pronoun after a semicolon can refer to an antecedent before the semicolon; in fact, this is one of the most common uses of a semicolon on the GMAT. if you see a semicolon, see if there is a pronoun after it that refers to something in the first half. in this case, "they" refers to "heirloom tomatoes"..

the verb in the first half is "look"; "grown" is a modifier..

Thanks Tim.

[tim]

glad to help..

[rustom.hakimiyan]

a pronoun after a semicolon can refer to an antecedent before the semicolon; in fact, this is one of the most common uses of a semicolon on the GMAT. if you see a semicolon, see if there is a pronoun after it that refers to something in the first half. in this case, "they" refers to "heirloom tomatoes"..

the verb in the first half is "look"; "grown" is a modifier..

Tim, to add on to this:

The first part of the sentence has a pronoun "their" but it's antecedent (heirloom tomatoes) doesn't come till after the pronoun. Is it OK if the antecedent doesn't precede the pronoun and comes after it?

[RonPurewal]

The first two words in the entire sentence are "heirloom tomatoes", so I don't understand your question. Could you please clarify?

Thanks.

[rustom.hakimiyan]

The first two words in the entire sentence are "heirloom tomatoes", so I don't understand your question. Could you please clarify?

Thanks.

I went through this sentence again and I have absolutely no clue what I was trying to ask. It makes completely sense that "they/their" is referring to the "heirloom tomatoes".

I think that I was trying to pose a different question: Can the pronouns come BEFORE the antecedent?

Ex: They are taste but heirloom tomatoes are expensive...?

Can "they" refer to "heirloom tomatoes" in this example?

[RonPurewal]

Check out #72 in the 13th edition OG. (Don't quote it here.)

Most pronouns will come after the corresponding noun, of course. (If you're going to refer to something, then, in most cases, you need to have mentioned it already!)

If the reference is absolutely unmistakable, though"”as in the problem cited above"”it's possible for the pronoun to precede the noun.

[gmatkiller_24]

can I eliminate A,B,C, D based on parallelism?

per what the sentence tries to convey, plenty of bumps and bruises should be parallel with green and striped to show that "Heirloom tomatoes" only look less appetizing than ....

only E successfully convey that parallelism

[RonPurewal]

the parallel elements are "are" and "have", not those.

[Binit]

Hi Ron,

this is one of the few Qns, I faced so far, where ';' wins. Normally, if first-half of the sentence has subject and verb, a semicolon is possible but it doesn't guarantee as the later-half may work as a modifier too.

Here, it was bit easy to trace the difference coz the later-half CANNOT modify COUSINS (as cousins are said to be red and round, they can't be green and bruised). So, a semicolon was necessary.

Please put some light on the ideal strategy for semicolons.

~Binit.

[RonPurewal]

i don't understand what you are asking.

the point is that a semicolon should be preceded by a complete sentence, and also followed by a complete sentence. if either part is not a complete sentence, the semicolon is being misused.

there's no mysterious or magical "strategy" otherwise.

[RonPurewal]

...and semicolons can also be used, in place of commas, to separate the elements of a list.
this isn't done at random; it's done when the elements of the list are long, or when those elements themselves contain commas (in which case the sentence might be impossible to read without semicolons).

e.g.,
The players were separated into three groups of four: A, B, C, and D; M, N, O, and P; and W, X, Y, and Z.
in this sentence, trying to separate the elements with commas would clearly be a bad idea.