The Confederate general Stonewall

[ganile]

The Confederate general Stonewall Jackson led a feared army that idolized him; they all mourned his ironic death from "friendly fire."

A.him; they all mourned his

B.him; they mourned his

C.him; it mourned his

D.him; it mourned their

E.him, it mourned his

SRC MGMT.

MGMT says A is wrong because The plural "they" is supposed to refer to "army." Like many collective nouns, "army" is singular. Furthermore, "all" is unnecessary.
However, I think both A and C are correct ..but C slightly changes the original meaning ..and A sort of put emphasis on each and every individual of the army? Ron, Please let me know what do you think about it?
Or Am I missing something?

[jnelson0612]

Again, the biggest issue here is that the GMAT regards "army" as SINGULAR. You cannot use "they" to refer to army, even if "they" is followed by "all". An army is singular and is thus an "it"; therefore, we have to rule out A and B. The semicolon is used correctly here since we have independent clauses on either side of the semicolon, leaving us with C and D. Since Stonewall Jackson is a singular person, the army must have mourned "his" death rather than "their" death. Thus, the answer is C.

[mehtamaulikd]

Again, the biggest issue here is that the GMAT regards "army" as SINGULAR. You cannot use "they" to refer to army, even if "they" is followed by "all". An army is singular and is thus an "it"; therefore, we have to rule out A and B. The semicolon is used correctly here since we have independent clauses on either side of the semicolon, leaving us with C and D. Since Stonewall Jackson is a singular person, the army must have mourned "his" death rather than "their" death. Thus, the answer is C.

On the same lines is police singular or plural...as per my reasoning it is singular...

[jnelson0612]

On the same lines is police singular or plural...as per my reasoning it is singular...

Unfortunately "police" would be plural. For example:

The police are at the scene of the crime.

We would not say:

The police is at the scene of the crime.

[vinaykumarreguri]

Answer C

[tim]

Exactly. Just as Jamie said..

[cavalli27]

Sorry this thread has been idle for a while but i make mistakes between singular & plural sometimes-

You say police is plural so why is "Jury" singular?

reference: Because of the highly sensitive nature of the court proceedings, the jury has been sequestered to prevent the leaking of information to the press.

Can you explain pls?

Thanks!

[tim]

When a group operates as a unit to accomplish a single task, we think of it as a collective noun and treat it as singular. If you are unsure, it is usually safer to assume something is singular. That said, police is more the exception than jury, so you should not be asking why jury is singular but why police is plural. I would say that's because the police force has a lot of different individuals accomplishing a lot of different tasks to keep the community safe.

[cavalli27]

Thanks tim! cant wait to get done with this stupid gmat test- its such a pain ! LOL - in the real business world i dont know who would trick you so much (not with singular/plural but gmat stuff in general) and if they did youd just say "STOP PLAYING GAMES" !

[tim]

I totally understand! Good luck with the test!

[ElizabethS105]

The singular/plural split makes complete sense to me.

However, I don't like that the second part of the sentence is an independent clause since the pronoun refers to the first sentence. "It all mourned his ironic death from "friendly fire."" - "It" does not have an antecedent in this sentence. The sentence has a subject and verb but it is not a clear independent clause.

Can you shine some light on this?

[gursher1]

Q: The Confederate general Stonewall Jackson led a feared army that idolized him; they all mourned his ironic death from “friendly fire.”
Correct Choice: him; it mourned his

I got the question correct, however, I have a confusion. I understand the IC; IC construction is required to connect two independent clauses. Also as per my understanding, a dependent clause has a Subject and a Verb but It conveys only a partial meaning or in other words, it is dependent on another independent clause to convey complete meaning.

My question is that in the correct answer choice the IC starts with it, which refers to a collective noun army. But if we take this IC alone without the first IC it does not make much sense. I.E. if we say "it mourned his ironic death from "friendly fire". we do not know who mourned? Since we do not who it refers to when we take this clause independently can we not call this clause a dependent clause?

Based on this Question can one conclude that pronoun clauses are independent clauses? if yes then does that mean clauses that start with (which, that, who, whom, it, its, they, them, this, that, these and those are all independent clauses)

To conclude how could one be sure if a clause that starts with a pronoun or has a pronoun as a subject is an independent clause or not? Could it be that if the pronoun is referring to a subject of another IC that means that the clause that contains the pronoun is an IC?

I truly appreciate the help.

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Good logic. Your weakness is the following sentence

a dependent clause has a Subject and a Verb but It conveys only a partial meaning or in other words, it is dependent on another independent clause to convey complete meaning.

This isn't true because of the vagueness of the phrase 'partial meaning'. Since all words in a sentence contribute to meaning, the meaning of sentence will be partial whatever words we leave out. Take this sentence: "The apple, which was red, was on the table." You probably correctly identify 'which was red' as a dependent clause, but note that it's still giving some meaning. If we left it out then we wouldn't know something about the apple. So I suggest you shelve the idea of meaning and dependent clauses.

Actually, for GMAT it's better to think in terms of modifiers and core when analyzing sentences. Think of the "core" of the sentence as being 'The apple was on the table.', and the phrase 'which was red' as giving some extra information about the apple.

Further, when we're assessing semicolons, consider whether the sentence could stand alone (although I think you're doing this already). I could say 'The apple was on the table.' just fine as a complete sentence, but I couldn't say 'which was red'.

As for pronouns, remember that in GMAT SC we only see one sentence, so that the antecedent of the pronoun needs to be present in that sentence. No such rule is needed for ordinary English. Clearly I can use a pronoun to refer to something from a different sentence, meaning that a sentence such as 'He was a good worker.' is totally fine as a grammatical construction. The real issue is whether the meaning is clear. Obviously words like 'which' or 'whom' are governed by stronger rules - you couldn't use one of these to refer to a noun across a semicolon.