can somebody help me out with this question?

[jnelson0612]

Hi Ron

Could you please tell me when do we use the pronoun "ones" as used in the choice.

I am clueless

Is the "ones" in option e correct?

Could u share a few examples in which we can use ones

Thanks, Dhiraj

Hi Dhiraj,
The use of "ones" in answer choice E is actually not correct. You can see some discussion on this earlier in the thread.

"ones" is not likely to be in a right answer on the GMAT. I would generally use "those" rather than "ones" if I need to compare plural verbs.

[xyq121573]

i have several questions,please help!
1)if i rewrite A as below:
Only seven people this century have been killed by the great white shark, the man-eater of the movies"”fewer than those killed by bee stings.
is it right?
2)in C, i know that which can refer to the movie,the man-eater of the movie or the great white shark,but can which refer to seven people if we ignore the problem that which can't refer to humans? As you can see, in this sentence which is too far away from seven people...
3)in D,a number is an appositive of seven,but in this sentence seven acts as an adj., so i think a number should be the appositive of seven people;HOWEVER,it's nonsense. So D is wrong. Am i right?
thks a lot~~

[thanghnvn]

Only seven people this century have been killed by the great white shark, the man-eater of the movies"”less than those killed by bee stings.

a. movies"”less than those
b. movies"”fewer than have been
c. movies, which is less than those
d. movies, a number lower than the people
e. movies, fewer than the ones

when the "comparison phrase" such as "less than.." is at the end of sentence, this phrase can modify preceding verb/clause or modify a noun/number in the clause. we should identify this clearly to realize the error. Ron said we can not just grammar before understanding the meaning.

if the comparision is between noun and noun, the "comparison phrase" at the end of sentence can modify the subject of the preceding clause. This is NOT NORMAL because noun modifier normally should touch or close to the noun. This abnormal is acceptable in this kind of question.
in this question, "less than..." modifie " only seven peple". This ilustrates what I said above.

I write the above thing because I think that the full understanding of this kind of structure helps us a lot on similar questions.

is my thinking correct? Ron, manhantan experts, pls comment

[thanghnvn]

maybe I am wrong

in b, the oa,
"fewer than..." still modifies the previous clause and associate with the subject of that clause. this situation is similar to "comma+doing'
I learn gmat, making my english better.
"making..." modifies previous clause and associate with "I"

[jlucero]

i have several questions,please help!
1)if i rewrite A as below:
Only seven people this century have been killed by the great white shark, the man-eater of the movies"”fewer than those killed by bee stings.
is it right?

No. Read Ron's initial post for why these aren't parallel.

2)in C, i know that which can refer to the movie,the man-eater of the movie or the great white shark,but can which refer to seven people if we ignore the problem that which can't refer to humans? As you can see, in this sentence which is too far away from seven people...

Which must refer to the word directly in front of it. Therefore, "which is less than those killed by bee stings" MUST modify movies.

3)in D,a number is an appositive of seven,but in this sentence seven acts as an adj., so i think a number should be the appositive of seven people;HOWEVER,it's nonsense. So D is wrong. Am i right?
thks a lot~~

Correct.

[jlucero]

Only seven people this century have been killed by the great white shark, the man-eater of the movies"”less than those killed by bee stings.

a. movies"”less than those
b. movies"”fewer than have been
c. movies, which is less than those
d. movies, a number lower than the people
e. movies, fewer than the ones

when the "comparison phrase" such as "less than.." is at the end of sentence, this phrase can modify preceding verb/clause or modify a noun/number in the clause. we should identify this clearly to realize the error. Ron said we can not just grammar before understanding the meaning.

if the comparision is between noun and noun, the "comparison phrase" at the end of sentence can modify the subject of the preceding clause. This is NOT NORMAL because noun modifier normally should touch or close to the noun. This abnormal is acceptable in this kind of question.
in this question, "less than..." modifie " only seven peple". This ilustrates what I said above.

I write the above thing because I think that the full understanding of this kind of structure helps us a lot on similar questions.

is my thinking correct? Ron, manhantan experts, pls comment

That's good reasoning. It's impossible to have that last modifier talking about anything other than "seven people". This sentence is also different than most SC sentences b/c it contains the rarely used dash. For more info on it, check out:

http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/dash.html

[thanghnvn]

Thank you Lucero

[jlucero]

Sure thing.

[HanzZ]

Hi Ron,

sorry if this has been already discussed. I am wondering if my understanding is right:

- fewer than (..the number of people who..) have been killed by bee stings.

My understanding is that the part in the bracket (the number of people who) has been left out as it is understood. Is my understanding right?

Thanks!

Your understanding is indeed right! :-)

---
Hello,

If you explicitly write out 'the number of people who' in the sentence. Would it still be parallel though? I mean in that situation the left hand side is a complete sentence but the right hand side is a clause.

Thanks a lot!

[RonPurewal]

There's no need to try to "restore" constructions that seem to be "missing". All you have to do is
1/ find the things that are compared (= the parallel structures)
2/ see if they match.
If they match, you're good. If they don't, the choice is wrong.

That's really all there is here. Worrying about "omissions" is needless over-complication -- especially because the sentences usually can't be written properly as single sentences if you try to put all those words in there.

[vijitgpt]

Hi Ron,

In this question you mentioned that as we are following parallelism and there is that/those after dash,we should follow the same structure after the dash( ie. have been).

My doubt is for parallelism,we need a parallel indicator such as and/or/but etc.Here the 2 clauses are connected my dash(could be a comma but as we want more emphasis we are using dash here).

I am not able to understand how two clauses connected by dash(or comma) need to be parallel.

Thanks,
Vijit

[sunruiapply]

Hi, ron
please see this prep question:
Today’s technology allows manufacturers to make small cars more fuel-efficient now than at any time in their production history.
A. small cars more fuel-efficient now than at any time in their
B. small cars that are more fuel-efficient than they were at any time in their
C. small cars that are more fuel-efficient than those at any other time in
D. more fuel-efficient small cars than those at any other time in their
E. more fuel-efficient small cars now than at any time in
OA is C, as we see, "those any other time" is in the parallel structure, however, there is just "small cars", please help me, thank you in advance

[RonPurewal]

Hey sunruiapply,

I went back and edited that post. That post is 4.5 years old; in the intervening time, we've greatly simplified our treatment of parallel structure.

See the new version.
post24907.html#p24907
This new treatment may make your question here into a non-issue. If so, great. If it's still an issue, please post again.

(NB: I've also edited out the quote from your post, in order to retain consistency in the discussion.)

Thanks.

[HanzZ]

1. can I say?
guys
on the bb team
are taller than
on the soccer team.

no.
if you have a comparison between two different nouns (or pronouns), then both of them should appear explicitly.
since this sentence is a comparison between "guys..." and other guys, you have to have a noun/pronoun to represent the other guys.
e.g.
the guys on the basketball team are taller than those on the soccer team

---
Hello Ron,

First thank you very much for all your replies to all my questions here or in other posts. They have been very helpful.

Second, I have a question here regarding the your comment (in some other post) that 'pronoun must refer to the ENTIRETY of the noun phrase serving as an antecedent'. If so, in the example above, why 'THOSE' doesn't stand for the guys on the basketball team, but just 'the guys'?

Third, if the sentence reads:

Only seven people this century have been killled by GWS, fewer than those have been killed by bee stings. -> Is it considered parallel?

[Edit: funny enough regarding my above question I encounter your post here:
the-number-of-people-flying-first-t5600-60.html
I think that's the reason why this might not be correct but it's indeed hard to articulate the reason .
I feel it will be correct if it reads "fewer than those who have been killed...', however, this way the parallelism is destroyed so either way it's incorrect]

(sorry for mumbling here, but please correct me if the thinking process is wrong)

Thanks again!

[RonPurewal]

Second, I have a question here regarding the your comment (in some other post) that 'pronoun must refer to the ENTIRETY of the noun phrase serving as an antecedent'. If so, in the example above, why 'THOSE' doesn't stand for the guys on the basketball team, but just 'the guys'?

That only goes for pronouns that can stand alone, like it, he, she, they, and so on.

That of and those of NEVER stand for the entirety of the noun+modifiers.
In fact, that's the entire reason why that of and those of even exist in the first place -- because they DON'T stand for the noun+modifiers. They stand only for the noun itself, thus allowing sentences that compare two different things without a need to write out all the words all over again.