Which Vs That?

[vgan4]

Need help from experts.

In MGMAT SC guide, the statement , "Regina returned the dress to the store, which was torn at one of the seams" is corrected to "Regina returned the dress, which was torn at one of the seams, to the store".

I am confused on which vs that here. I thought that the modifier "torn at one of the seams" was an essential modifier since this information was needed on why the dress was returned to store. If so, the corrected sentence should be "Regina returned the dress that was torn at one of the seams to the store". Can you please help?

[rajanbond]

Need help from experts.

In MGMAT SC guide, the statement , "Regina returned the dress to the store, which was torn at one of the seams" is corrected to "Regina returned the dress, which was torn at one of the seams, to the store".

I am confused on which vs that here. I thought that the modifier "torn at one of the seams" was an essential modifier since this information was needed on why the dress was returned to store. If so, the corrected sentence should be "Regina returned the dress that was torn at one of the seams to the store". Can you please help?

In the first sentence which seems to be modifying the store instead of the dress. Actually torn at one of the seams is a warm-up. Your sentence will still be complete if you just wrote "Regina returned the dress to the store"

[contactshobhit]

Nice question. I also understand the placement of modifier close to dress.

Real question she has it is essential or non-essential. I also feel that its important to qualify the dress. So if a option with that would be best.

In case we don't have an option with that then go with second best...which

[tim]

Modifiers are essential if they are necessary to specify the dress; having a reason why it was returned to the store is totally irrelevant from a grammatical standpoint. In order to make this choice it would be helpful to know how many dresses there were. If there are multiple dresses, you would want to specify the torn one and would use "that". If there is only one dress, you don’t need to specify which one you are talking about, so the modifier is non-essential..

In the absence of any information to the contrary, we’ll give the author the benefit of the doubt here and accept that "which" is indeed appropriate. The GMAT would not give you both "which" and "that" as options here, because there is no way to tell how many dresses there were and thus no way to choose between the options..

[atul.prasad]

Can you then provide an explanation for the problem sentence w.r.t. to the example given in the Sentence Correction textbook

Essential: The mansion THAT HAS BEEN PAINTED RED is owned by the Lees.

I am still a little confused here, 'the mansion' as well as 'the dress' hold similar position in their respective sentences. As we do not know the number of mansions similarly we do not know the number of dresses.

Thanks n Regards!
Atul

[pranabiitkgp]

Atul ,
Firstly, the qs is what was returned and not why something was returned . So the ans of 'what' was returned is already known by the subject Regina , because she is returning this to the store . That’s why the rest is non essential.
For example -
I kicked the ball, which was passed by Ronaldo . not -
I kicked the ball that was passed by Ronaldo .

but .
Ruuny purchased the ball that was costliest in the store .

[tim]

Atul, as i mentioned before, if you don't know how many items there are (and therefore whether the modifier is essential), you have to give the GMAT the benefit of the doubt. Remember, in SC you are looking for four WRONG answers, not a correct one. If you can't pinpoint an answer choice as wrong, you have to leave it in as a potential answer. If you don't know whether you are required to use "which" or "that" in a sentence, you cannot eliminate an answer choice based solely on the presence of one of those words..