In many nations, criminal law does not apply to corporations

[dianapaolasanchez]

In many nations, criminal law does not apply to corporations, but in the United Stated today, a corporation commits a crime whenever one of its employees commits a crime, if the employee acted [/u]within the scope of his or her authority and if the corporation benefited as a result.

A. a corporation commits a crime whenever one of its employees commits a crime, if the employee acted
B. a corporation is committing a crime whenever one of its employees committed a crime, if those employees were acting
C. corporations commit a crime whenever one of its employees does, on the
condition that the employee acts
D. corporations commit crimes whenever an employee of those corporations commit a crime, if it was while acting
E. the corporation whose employees commit a crime, commits a crime, whenever the employee acted

I think the answer is C, it is the right answer?

[RonPurewal]

In many nations, criminal law does not apply to corporations, but in the United Stated today, a corporation commits a crime whenever one of its employees commits a crime, if the employee acted [/u]within the scope of his or her authority and if the corporation benefited as a result.

A. a corporation commits a crime whenever one of its employees commits a crime, if the employee acted
B. a corporation is committing a crime whenever one of its employees committed a crime, if those employees were acting
C. corporations commit a crime whenever one of its employees does, on the
condition that the employee acts
D. corporations commit crimes whenever an employee of those corporations commit a crime, if it was while acting
E. the corporation whose employees commit a crime, commits a crime, whenever the employee acted

I think the answer is C, it is the right answer?

there are major problems with all five of these answer choices.

is this a GMAT PREP SOFTWARE problem? if so, could you please post a screen shot of the problem, to verify its origin?

thanks.

[dianapaolasanchez]

Yes it is a question of GMAT PREP software question number 10 test 2.

[andersoninlondon]

In my opinion, the choice C is not the best answer choice here in the problem.
its employees should be their employees because the referent of the possesive noun is corporations.

[cfaking]

agreed
infact B,C,D are clearly OUT

In my opinion, the choice C is not the best answer choice here in the problem.
its employees should be their employees because the referent of the possesive noun is corporations.

Ron, how to kill E here?
is it because of "a corporation"--More generalized
better than "the corporation"-More Specific?

also A follows parallelism

[RonPurewal]

agreed
infact B,C,D are clearly OUT

In my opinion, the choice C is not the best answer choice here in the problem.
its employees should be their employees because the referent of the possesive noun is corporations.

Ron, how to kill E here?
is it because of "a corporation"--More generalized
better than "the corporation"-More Specific?

ugh. this is one of the most horrible official problems i've ever seen; the arbitrary transition from present tense to past tense (which happens in all five choices) is disgusting.

the biggest problems with (e):

* the modifier "whose employees commit a crime" is set off by only one comma. this is never acceptable; a modifier must be set off by either 2 commas or 0 commas (unless it begins or ends the entire sentence).

* unacceptable shift of meaning: the original context is that the corporation commits a crime if ONE of the employees commits a crime, but this sentence describes a crime committed by multiple employees

* another unacceptable shift of meaning: you can't change "if" to "whenever"

* "whenever" is not parallel to "...and if"

[kamalsinghy]

Hi Ron,

This is an official problem, so definitely we should get atleast one takeaway from this problem. Anyway I got it right because rest of the other options were eliminated because of grammatical reasons and logical predications.

But I am facing in correct option A. "a corporation commits ...whenever one of its ...commits, if". Here we are giving reason why a corporation commits crime by using "whenever", then again 'if' clauses have been added(underlined and non-underlined portion of ifs). I am able to take out something from correct answer.

--Kamal

[manassingh]

I narrowed to A and E by process of elimination. What is the OA ? Is it A ?

[RonPurewal]

I narrowed to A and E by process of elimination. What is the OA ? Is it A ?

yes.

[tuftsv]

can someone pls explain that in C, can we use "on the condition that" to replace "if"?

also, how can we interpret the meaning of the sentence in A by using "acted" rather than present tense? is it the conditional clause?
thanks a lot.

[violetwind]

I guess we can eliminate to the right answer this way:

The non-underlined portion at the end of this sentence shows us the clue that both"company" and "employee" should be singular. Based on this clue, we can exclude all the choices except A.

[RonPurewal]

can someone pls explain that in C, can we use "on the condition that" to replace "if"?

this is unclear, since that construction does not appear in the correct answer.
this is a largely accepted construction in written english, but i would not endorse it for use on an official problem until we see gmac's actual approval. (there are no official answer keys to these problems, so, unfortunately, it's impossible to find out where gmac stands on this particular idiom from this problem.)

also, how can we interpret the meaning of the sentence in A by using "acted" rather than present tense?

the simplest way to analyze this issue is to note that this verb must be parallel to "benefited", since both of those actions are simultaneous.
the context, i guess, is that the action (and the benefit) already took place before the action is brought to court and charged as a crime; hence the difference in tenses. however, since there is a clear requirement for parallelism with "benefited", you don't really have to analyze this.

[phuonglink]

hi,
I would like to ask a gramar point here. When using "noun" + who/whom/which/whose...
Should we use "the" or "a" before a noun?
For ex: In (E) should we use "the corporation whose" or "a corporation whose"?
Please kindly elaborate.

[RonPurewal]

hi,
I would like to ask a gramar point here. When using "noun" + who/whom/which/whose...
Should we use "the" or "a" before a noun?
For ex: In (E) should we use "the corporation whose" or "a corporation whose"?
Please kindly elaborate.

this actually has nothing at all to do with the modifier following the noun; it's a fundamental issue of "a/an" vs. "the".

this is not an issue i've ever seen explicitly tested in an official problem. i would hypothesize that they refrain from testing this issue in order to avoid explicit prejudice against test takers from east asian countries (in which the languages generally don't include articles), but the reasons are, at the end of the day, unimportant -- what matters is that it is extremely unlikely that this issue will be tested.

nevertheless, if you want to read about the issue on your own -- mainly for the purpose of improving your own english writing ability -- you should go ahead and google topics such as "a/an vs the" and "use of articles in english".
this is a very nuanced concept, whose full treatment is MUCH too broad for this forum (especially because it is at best tangentially relevant to the gmat). but the internet is your friend on things like this.
here's a starting point:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/540/01/

[phuonglink]

thank you Ron, it helps.