SC: A study by the Ocean Wildlife Campaign

[kuppa_anil]

A study by the ocean wildlife campaign urged states to undertake a number of remedies to reverse a decline in the shark population, which includes the establishment of size limits for shark catches, closing state waters for shark fishing during pupping season, and requiring commercial fishers to have federal shark permits.
A. which includes the establishment of size limits for shark catches, closing
B. which includes establishing limits to the size of sharks that can be caught, closing
C.which include the establishment of size limits for shark catches, the closing of
D. including establishing size limits for shark catches, closing
E. including the establishment of limits to the size of sharks that are caught, the closing of

I chose D just as guess and the OA is indeed D.
Why is not C??
Please provide OE.

Moderator Note: the part in red above indicates a modification of the original post, which originally had the word "established", a typo.

[sanyalpritish]

A,B,C are all out because the use of "which" modifies the population.
D is right because it is // including,closing and requiring

[kuppa_anil]

A,B,C are all out because the use of "which" modifies the population.
D is right because it is // including,closing and requiring

Thanks for the answer. I have one doubt here.
If in a sentence we have:
-------------------- <word>,which/that..............
then the clause after the comma modifies the word??

To restate what I have said above:
If in a sentence we have which/that after comma , does the clause after which/that modify the word preceding comma?
Can I have the above rule as a blind rule?
I have my GMAT on Monday.. Any suggestions/advice are welcome.

[jerly_vivek]

Most of the time which refers to the word(noun) immediately before comma, but that is not always the case.
At times which may refer to the whole noun phrase before comma.
There are couple of such examples in OG-12

[RB_51273]

There are several posts where that/which has been explained well by Ron.You have to look for those.

[RonPurewal]

If in a sentence we have which/that after comma , does the clause after which/that modify the word preceding comma?
Can I have the above rule as a blind rule?

see this post:
post37236.html#p37236

the more general principle is that essential modifiers (i.e., modifiers that are NOT blocked off by commas) have more freedom of placement than do nonessential modifiers (i.e., modifiers that ARE blocked off by commas).

note that "which" modifiers are ALWAYS nonessential modifiers (i.e., it's not okay to use "which" without a comma), while "that" modifiers (if "that" is a relative pronoun) are ALWAYS essential modifiers.
so, the pattern i articulated in that post fits this general principle quite well.

[vicksikand]

Option D is posted incorrectly. The correct wording is:
D) including establishing size limits for shark catches, closing

Can a moderator fix the original post?

[danielpatinkin]

Fixed! Good eye!

[singh.ashutosh]

Hi Ron,
Sorry to bump in the old thread but I have a query regarding "including". In one of your study-halls you mentioned that "including" modifies the immediately preceding noun (before comma) but here in this sentence the immediately preceding noun is "shark population", which doesn't look like the correct noun to be modified. On the contrary if I treat "including" as a normal VERB-ing modifier then it makes sense but imo "including" can't modify the whole phrase. Could you please suggest what am I missing here.
Thanks.

[rajankishore.gupta]

In one of the post, RonPurewal stated the following:


whenever i've seen a "which" that refers to "X + preposition + Y" rather than just Y, it has ALWAYS been the case that X was singular and Y was plural (or X was plural and Y was singular), and the verb had a form that matched X and didn't match Y.

post31162.html


If we apply this construction in the current question, "WHICH INCLUDE" in option C shud be fine. Please suggest. As the modifier is introducing examples of REMEDIES, WHICH shud refer to plural "a number of remedies", and Thats is what it is doing. However, the parallelism in option C shud be the deciding factor in dropping this option.

Experts, please suggest.

[messi10]

whenever i've seen a "which" that refers to "X + preposition + Y" rather than just Y, it has ALWAYS been the case that X was singular and Y was plural (or X was plural and Y was singular), and the verb had a form that matched X and didn't match Y.

post31162.html


If we apply this construction in the current question, "WHICH INCLUDE" in option C shud be fine. Please suggest. As the modifier is introducing examples of REMEDIES, WHICH shud refer to plural "a number of remedies", and Thats is what it is doing. However, the parallelism in option C shud be the deciding factor in dropping this option.

But in this case, it needs to skip a lot of things in the middle to get to "a number of remedies" i.e this entire part: "to reverse a decline in the shark population". Your point is valid in that "a number of remedies" is the only plural object that "which include" can modify but will be a very confusing sentence to interpret.

Regards

Sunil

[RonPurewal]

In one of the post, RonPurewal stated the following:


whenever i've seen a "which" that refers to "X + preposition + Y" rather than just Y, it has ALWAYS been the case that X was singular and Y was plural (or X was plural and Y was singular), and the verb had a form that matched X and didn't match Y.

post31162.html


If we apply this construction in the current question, "WHICH INCLUDE" in option C shud be fine. Please suggest. As the modifier is introducing examples of REMEDIES, WHICH shud refer to plural "a number of remedies", and Thats is what it is doing. However, the parallelism in option C shud be the deciding factor in dropping this option.

Experts, please suggest.

"including" can also refer to NOUN + MODIFIER.

[alicegmat]

Hi Ron,

Does including have to be preceded by a comma after the noun (or noun phrase) that it refers to?
Eg. I play all sports, including tennis, rugby, and baseball. - correct.

I play all sports including tennis, rugby, and basketball. (Omits the comma before including)
Is this construction correct?


Also in an X of Y construction followed by including, what does including modify? (Cases in which including can modify both X of Y and Y grammatically)

Eg. (clause)...generations of actors including A and B.

Does including modify generations of actors or actors?

[mist4u]

Could someone please explain what is the error in answer choice E?

I was confused between D and E.

[RonPurewal]

Also in an X of Y construction followed by including, what does including modify? (Cases in which including can modify both X of Y and Y grammatically)

Eg. (clause)...generations of actors including A and B.

Does including modify generations of actors or actors?

could be either, depending on the situation -- basically, you have to use common sense to make that distinction.

e.g.
Books from hundreds of different authors, including the Harry Potter series, were sold at the library's annual book sale.
--> here, "including the Harry Potter series" modifies the whole noun+modifier, "Books from hundreds of different authors".

Books from hundreds of different authors, including my own brother, were sold at the library's annual book sale.
--> here, "including my own father" modifies just "(hundreds of) different authors", i.e., my brother is one of the authors.