SC - Affording strategic proximity to the Strait of Gibralta

[shaw.s.li]

Affording strategic proximity to the Strait of Gibraltar, Morocco was also of interest to the French throughout the first half of the twentieth century becuase they assumed that if they did not hold it, their grip on Algeria was always insecure.

a) if they did not hold it, their grip on Algeria was always insecure
b) without it their grip on Algeria would never be secure
c) their grip on Algeria was not ever secure if they did not hold it
d) without that, they could never be secure about their grip on Algeria
e) never would their grip on Algeria be secure if they did not hold it.

I understand the correct answer is b, because it is the "best" answer, but I'm wondering if there is a pronoun agreement error in the sentence.

The first "they" in the question sentence seems to be referring to the French, which I believe is singular. Is this actually an error on the GMAT part, because I was hung up on that throughout this question.

I've put that "they" in bold.

[RonPurewal]

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.

--

as for your question -- no, "the french" is plural. it refers to french people in general.
it's a lot like "the americans" or "the canadians" ... except you can't say "the frenches", so the plural form has the same appearance as the singular form.

here are 2.7 million more examples, courtesy of google:
http://www.google.com/search?client=saf ... 8&oe=UTF-8

--

also note the same issue in the problem at this link, with "the oneida" instead of "the french":
greatly-influenced-by-the-protestant-missionary-samuel-t648.html

[shaw.s.li]

Thanks for both clarification!

[RonPurewal]

Thanks for both clarification!

sure thing

[martelena]

I see why B is correct, it is obviously superior to other choices. But I’d like to understand completely what is wrong with D.
I see that "without that" should be "without it" to refer to Morocco. But is it all?

Is "could never be secure" wrong? Why?
And I also read somewhere that "secure about" is the wrong idiom, is it true?

Thanks in advance

[martelena]

Can anyone answer my question, please? (posted above)

[RonPurewal]

I see why B is correct, it is obviously superior to other choices. But I’d like to understand completely what is wrong with D.
I see that "without that" should be "without it" to refer to Morocco. But is it all?

it's not ok to use "that" as a standalone pronoun.
it's only ok to use "that" is a pronoun in a parallel comparison, e.g., the economy of country x is stronger than that of country y.

Is "could never be secure" wrong? Why?

it has the wrong meaning.
the intended meaning of the sentence is that their actual grip would never be secure -- but this wording seems to indicate that they, themselves, would never have secure feelings about that grip (regardless of the strength of the grip itself).

And I also read somewhere that "secure about" is the wrong idiom, is it true?

remember that there's no such thing as "the wrong idiom" (a wording that wrongly suggests that there is exactly one correct version of any idiom).
there are correct idioms and incorrect idioms, but there will rarely be exactly one way in which something can be written.

this idiom can be correct, if it refers to secure feelings that someone holds about something. for instance, even after becoming millionaires, the Smiths still did not feel secure about their finances is a perfectly correct sentence.

[RonPurewal]

Can anyone answer my question, please? (posted above)

don't do this -- i.e., don't post a message that says "please answer my question".
this is called "bumping" the thread; it brings the thread up to the most recent position in the folder.

the problem, of course -- besides the fact that "reminder posts" are obnoxious, rude, and unprofessional -- is that we answer the posts strictly in order from oldest to newest. therefore, if you post a message, with no content, that says "please answer this post", then you are moving the thread to the LAST place in the queue.

please be patient -- we will get to all of the threads. if you make posts like this one, you're just making yourself wait longer.

thanks.

(i answered your post, above -- check it out.)

[rishabh26jain]

I have two doubts.

1) In Option (E), are the tenses OK ?

If they did not hold it....

2) Is option (E) wrong because of the pronoun "it" ??

Thanks.

[saptadeepc]

Ron, I have very little idea on why exactly are other options incorrect.

Please correct me if I m wrong somewhere.

a) if they did not hold it, their grip on Algeria was always insecure
-- "it" refers to Morocco, which is incorrect.
insecure has a different meaning than "not secure", which means not safe.

b) without it their grip on Algeria would never be secure
-- Correct answer.
qq on this -- does "it" refer to Morocco or "their interest in Morocco".

c) their grip on Algeria was not ever secure if they did not hold it
-- pronoun ambiguity. "it" at the end could refer to Algeria or Morocco.

d) without that, they could never be secure about their grip on Algeria
-- we cannot use "that" as stand alone, as you said.

e) never would their grip on Algeria be secure if they did not hold it.
-- again "it" at the end is ambiguous.

Please correct me if any of the analysis is incorrect.

[jnelson0612]

Hi saapta,
You've done some pretty decent analysis. The other important point is that we need to use the verb "would"; if X happens Y "would" be less secure, not "was" or any other verbs.

[tim]

rishabh26jain, tenses in E are technically wrong, but the correct way to use the verbs in E would involve a super-complicated verb tense that the GMAT never tests you on. The tenses actually would be correct if it were not for the "they assumed that" part that pushes this conditional into the hypothetical past. The pronoun "it" is definitely a problem, but there is plenty more that is wrong with E as well. Those are the issues you should focus on rather than worrying about the tenses any further.. :)

Saptadeepc:

"insecure has a different meaning than "not secure", which means not safe."
Actually, "insecure" has several meanings. I wouldn’t rule out A on these grounds..

"does "it" refer to Morocco or "their interest in Morocco"."
This one really should be obvious. If it isn’t, you may want to go back and take a look at how the sentence is structured, what the sentence means, and whether you are purposely making this one more complicated than it needs to be..

[thanghnvn]

Ron, experts, member, pls, help

in general English I see 2 structures

if X did happen, Y did

if X did happen, Y would do

but inhere you said that the first structure is incorrect and so A and E is wrong. Dose this mean gmat dose not permit the first structure ?

gmat permits that when the verb in the if clause is in past simple, did, the second clause must be "would do"

Is my thinking correct?

[tim]

i can't think of any sentences that correctly use either of your two structures. can you provide examples of the structures you propose so we can evaluate them properly?

[thanghnvn]

on gmat, we have only 3 patterns

if do, then will do/can do
if did, then would do/could do
if had done, then would have done/could have done

is my thinking correct?

and, so, in the above sentence, a,c,d, e do not fix any pattern and are wrong.

is my thinking correct?