Turning away from literary realism to write romantic stories

[jnelson0612]

Hi,

My first post here at MGMAT :-)

My problem with the OA for the thread-starter question here -

D - A novelist who turned away from literary realism to write romantic stories about the peasant life and landscape of northern Sweden, Selma Lagerlöf became in 1909 the first woman and also the first Swedish writer to win

"...became in 1909..." doesn't sound alright to me. I can't point the exact grammar rule for this. But, somehow my ears tells me that it's odd ... daresay wrong.

Am I wrong in saying that it's wrong? Kindly explain.

Thanks

Hi rikky,
Welcome to the forums! There is a very important principle here: be wary of your ear. It can help you at times, but you don't want to rely on it. Instead, eliminate answers that have obviously incorrect grammar, and narrow the field.

In this case, "became in 1909" is okay--the prepositional phrase "in 1909" is just describing when she "became" the first woman and Swedish writer to win the Nobel Prize.

You have much bigger fish to fry in the other answer choices in terms of finding mistakes; focus on that first.

Thanks!

[davetzulin]

Hi,

I eliminated E based on the below comma + present participle modifier, am i correct?

E. As a novelist, Selma Lagerlöf turned away from literary realism and wrote romantic stories about the peasant life and landscape of northern Sweden, in 1909 becoming the first woman and also the first Swedish writer that won

1. The "in 1909" threw me off a bit, but I still concluded that the bolded part is a comma + present participle modifier. Am i correct in just assuming "in 1909" is a adverbial prep modifier and the bolded phrase is still fundamentally a present participle modifier? normally we would see comma + present participle, i've never seen comma + prep phrase + participle

2. Assuming that the bolded part is a present participle modifier of the previous clause, "becoming the first woman/swedish writer" does not appear to be a DIRECT result of what she did in the previous clause "turning away from literary realism, writing romantic stories".

thanks again

[SRK]

Are the choice B & C can also be eliminated because of and in the sentence.

In B, And novelist(It appears as though he is something else to say a poet and novelist)
In C, And in(same are reason as above)

Help appreciated!

[agarwalmanoj2000]

Are the choice B & C can also be eliminated because of and in the sentence.

In B, And novelist(It appears as though he is something else to say a poet and novelist)
In C, And in(same are reason as above)

Help appreciated!

I do not think that we can use "and" to eliminate option B and C.
In option B and C, "and" is used correctly to join two independent clauses.

[tim]

Dave, i'd say the surest way to eliminate E is the use of "that" when the word should be "who"..

SRK, there is nothing wrong with usage of "and" in B and C. What makes you think this is a problem?

[davetzulin]

Tim,

thanks.. i swear i'm looking too hard for complex things sometimes.

Ron,

yeah, "in 1909" is in the wrong place. i'd place it after "becoming" if i had to throw it somewhere in that modifier.

i also thought the same

As a novelist, Selma Lagerlöf turned away from literary realism and wrote romantic stories about the peasant life and landscape of northern Sweden, becoming in 1909 the first woman and also the first Swedish writer that won

but then the becoming -ing modifier is not a consequence of the previous clause.

Not to muck up the problem so much, but another example of the poor -ing modifier is always helpful for me.

[RonPurewal]

Tim,

thanks.. i swear i'm looking too hard for complex things sometimes.

Ron,

yeah, "in 1909" is in the wrong place. i'd place it after "becoming" if i had to throw it somewhere in that modifier.

i also thought the same

As a novelist, Selma Lagerlöf turned away from literary realism and wrote romantic stories about the peasant life and landscape of northern Sweden, becoming in 1909 the first woman and also the first Swedish writer that won

but then the becoming -ing modifier is not a consequence of the previous clause.

Not to muck up the problem so much, but another example of the poor -ing modifier is always helpful for me.

you are correct that the modifier is problematic in this case; that's just not the issue i was addressing. (the modifier is also problematic, for the same reason, with the current placement of "in 1909".)
in general, you shouldn't concern yourself overly with the micro-level placement of these kinds of sentence elements -- it is not something that is much (if at all) tested, because it depends so much on everything else that's going on around it. for instance, this kind of placement of a prepositional phrase might be required, if it's followed by something that can't really be broken up.

on the other hand, if these kinds of things are shifted around into positions that substantially change the meaning of the sentence, then you need to address them.

[zhongshanlh]

b) not too sure exactly why this is wrong -- i just marked this off because I did not like how the pronoun 'she' came before the subject, 'selma'.

yeah.
actually, the way the parallelism is written here, "she" doesn't mean selma.
if i say "he wrote the first half, and jim wrote the second half", then the one thing of which you can be absolutely sure is that jim didn't write the first half.

hi, Ron, experts, i have some problems in this part.
i think that in general, we always place the antecedent of a pronoun before the pronoun in a sentence.
and i know that rarely we may place the antecedent after its pronoun in a sentence.
but in the latter case, sometimes it is all right to do so and the reference of pronoun is clear and effective,while sometimes such a construction is incorrect and the reference is ambiguous.
so i am really confused about the issue, would u pls show us some examples and clarify this problem??
thank you so much!

[RonPurewal]

zhongshanlh, that's an interesting issue, and one i've never thought about before.

basically, what's going on is this: there's a big difference -- in terms of fundamental intentions -- between parallel constructions (like "a and b") and modifiers.

specifically, parallel constructions are designed to take two DIFFERENT things and place them in some sort of parallel context.
so, if you have an otherwise illogical construction like "he did x, and joseph did y" -- illogical in the sense that you should clearly put "joseph" first if he did both things -- then the resulting implication is that "he" is not joseph.

modifiers, on the other hand, shouldn't ever be talking about different things from wherever they are describing. if they did, they would fail as modifiers! the entire point of a modifier, after all, is to give more information about the same thing to which it's attached.
so, the default assumption about the pronouns in those kinds of things is the opposite. you're looking at a modifier, so, unless it's absolutely clear that the pronoun refers to something or someone else, you just go ahead and assume it's talking about whatever or whoever is described.

[zhongshanlh]

zhongshanlh, that's an interesting issue, and one i've never thought about before.

basically, what's going on is this: there's a big difference -- in terms of fundamental intentions -- between parallel constructions (like "a and b") and modifiers.

specifically, parallel constructions are designed to take two DIFFERENT things and place them in some sort of parallel context.
so, if you have an otherwise illogical construction like "he did x, and joseph did y" -- illogical in the sense that you should clearly put "joseph" first if he did both things -- then the resulting implication is that "he" is not joseph.

modifiers, on the other hand, shouldn't ever be talking about different things from wherever they are describing. if they did, they would fail as modifiers! the entire point of a modifier, after all, is to give more information about the same thing to which it's attached.
so, the default assumption about the pronouns in those kinds of things is the opposite. you're looking at a modifier, so, unless it's absolutely clear that the pronoun refers to something or someone else, you just go ahead and assume it's talking about whatever or whoever is described.

thanks for ur patient explanation Ron, however, without a specific question , i think it may be a little bit
abstract for us to understand...

so i made up the following two sentences(the second one is base on the OG12 SC25 option B, since OG source is banned here, somehow,i have to rewrite the sentence )

1.Tired on her knees, Mary stopped running.
2.Basing it on a famous legend, the writer wrote a magic novel.

IMO, in the 1st sentence, the pronoun her correctly refer to the subject of the following clause---Mary.
however, in the second sentence, according to the explanation of OG, it doesn't have a antecedent here.

so,Ron,please elaborate this issue and thank you so much.

[jlucero]

so i made up the following two sentences(the second one is base on the OG12 SC25 option B, since OG source is banned here, somehow,i have to rewrite the sentence )

1.Tired on her knees, Mary stopped running.
2.Basing it on a famous legend, the writer wrote a magic novel.

IMO, in the 1st sentence, the pronoun her correctly refer to the subject of the following clause---Mary.
however, in the second sentence, according to the explanation of OG, it doesn't have a antecedent here.

so,Ron,please elaborate this issue and thank you so much.

Unfortunately, these two examples aren't good analogies as they have different usages from the original sentences.

Tired on her knees, Mary stopped running. (opening modifier with a pronoun refers to Mary)

He wrote the first half, and Jim wrote the second half. (two different subjects with two different events; he would not refer to Jim)


Basing it on a famous legend, the writer wrote a magic novel. (the "it" here can only refer to the word "novel", so it's ok)

Try to replace the "it" in the OG12 example with a word from the main clause of the sentence. First off, there's a lot of words that you could replace "it" with, and secondly, none of them fit well into the sentence to accurately describe the meaning of the sentence.

You can study it, but how are you going to know when to eliminate a pronoun that is being misused in a sentence?

The question above makes the same error as SC 25- there's not really a great word to plug in for "it." Am I saying I can study "a pronoun", I can study "a sentence", or I can study "when to eliminate a pronoun"?

It is best to avoid, er...
Try to avoid ambiguous pronouns.

[krishnan.anju1987]

Hi,

IMO in the first statement, the noun comes immediately after the clause while in the second statement, the novel which is referred to by it comes at the end of the statement instead of immediately after the clause.

1) Tired on her knees, Mary stopped running.
2.Basing it on a famous legend, the writer wrote a magic novel.

Would be great in case someone could confirm this. :)

[jlucero]

It's still ok though. "Basing it on a famous legend" clearly refers to the writer and "it" can only take the place of the object of the sentence, "novel". This isn't the most common way to use a sentence because if there were more than one word that could take the place of "it," the sentence. Here's another example:

Prepared to punch him, Jennifer stared down the robber.

Again, the opening modifier describes the next word in the sentence and the pronoun "him" can only refer to the antecedent "robber."

[krishnan.anju1987]

So at the end of the day, in case of pronouns, the rule is that the pronoun must refer to a noun in the sentence and it must make sense without ambiguity. That should suffice for all pronouns right?

[jlucero]

That's the general rule although there are some Official GMAT questions out there where pronoun ambiguity is debatable. At the end of the day, eliminate answer choices with pronouns that violate major rules ("it" can not refer to a plural antecedent), look for other major rule violations, and then use pronoun ambiguity as a final option.