That every worker: MGMAT CAT

[gmatalongthewatchtower]

what about 'they' in C. There is NO ANTECEDENT!
Please somebody help me with this...I don't get this.

"they" refers to "investment banks".

this is an acceptable construction - pronoun coming before antecedent, when the pronoun is in an initial modifier and the antecedent is in the main clause.
this is NOT acceptable if the pronoun is in the main clause and the antecedent is in a modifier that follows.

examples:
Although he had studied for hours, Thom failed the test --> acceptable
He failed the test, although Thom had studied for hours --> incorrect

Ron.....I am not sure about the second example.

Is this incorrect:- Even though Margaret worked hard, she failed ?

I would agree that "He failed the test, although Thom had studied for hours" is a clear fails "ear test" but "Although Tom had studied for hours, he failed the test" is passes "ear test".

I think that we speak similar sentences on a daily basis. I am not sure if there is any such rule. Can you please shed some light ?

Thanks
Voodoo Child

[tim]

Ron's "incorrect" example is incorrect because the "although" clause should go before the main clause and not after. To shed some additional light, you seem to be relying heavily on the "ear test", which is something you should never do in SC..

[george.kourdin]

For me A and D ontain " which is why" ... that's the reason I have eliminated these.

Please le me know if this is correct.

Thanks

correct. if you attribute these modifiers to the immediately preceding noun (as you must do for "which"), then the sentences don't make sense.

nicely done.

hopefully i am not bumping a dinasaur thread here, but anyways...

is this which-rule really that strict and it must hold 100% of the time? in other words, we have to make sure that the antecedent makes sense in every case when which is used, even when its paired with why? i am asking because i am aware of the rule, but to me it did not even occur to check the antecedent because i thought that the use of which is completely fine.

it seems like in this case <which is why> takes on a different kind of meaning and refers to the whole clause, rather than the noun that immedeatly preceeds it and that seems fine. its not like we have a sentence structure where <which> defines a specific noun within the sentence i.e. "Emily likes apples, which are only available in the spring".

[jnelson0612]

George,
There's some good discussion of the "which" rule in this thread: post31368.html#p31368
Check out Ron's post.

There are exceptions to the rule but the good news is that they do not show up often.

[rocsid.g91]

Although I fully agree that Investment Banks may be replaced by the pronoun "they", I think it is incorrect to say that Investment Banks consider it important.
Investment banks, according to me, cannot consider anything. To consider something is a human activity. One can apply to Investment banks, one can resign from an Investment Bank, one can be hired into an Investment Bank, but an Investment bank cannot consider it important that...

I would find it correct only if the sentence said,
Because they consider it important that all of their employees have a clean criminal record, hiring professionals of investment banks require each job applicant to undergo a stringent background check

If Investment banks could consider, then I believe that they could feel any sort of emotion, such as,
Because they are happy to pay people enormous salaries, investment banks invariably get the best professionals on-board.
But the above statement is clearly incorrect.

Any thoughts to counter my explanation?

[messi10]

Hi rocsid,

In an ideal world, you are probably right.

However, if you are right then I have been hearing wrong things all my life.

I think referring to a group or an entity in that way has been acceptable ever since I have known English. In fact, the example you have used about enormous salaries also sounds ok.

Regards

Sunil

[rocsid.g91]

Thanks Varun. But I don't think Investment banks can be used to represent a group of people. Investment banks are just a group of well..... banks.

Can someone from the Manhattan faculty address the issue I have raised?

Siddharth

[jnelson0612]

Thanks Varun. But I don't think Investment banks can be used to represent a group of people. Investment banks are just a group of well..... banks.

Can someone from the Manhattan faculty address the issue I have raised?

Siddharth

Sunil is right. Investment banks can be used to represent a group of people; a collective group of people run an investment bank. If all the people working in the bank suddenly vanished the bank could not continue to exist without replacing those people.

In this particular sentence, you could replace investment banks with other groups of people, such as schools, book clubs, or Boy Scout troops, and this construction may seem a bit more logical to you. For example:
"Because they consider it important that their employees are qualified, schools require their applicants to possess teaching degrees." Does this look any better to you? I'm wondering if it's the "investment banks" that is throwing you here.

[palak.sinha]

Hi...i had a confusion...whether the dependent clause needs to modify the following subject or not...

for eg..
As she was leaving,Evelyn's purse was stolen.

The above statement is mentioned correct.

So in this question whether because....needs to modify banks or not

Thanks

[jnelson0612]

Hi...i had a confusion...whether the dependent clause needs to modify the following subject or not...

for eg..
As she was leaving,Evelyn's purse was stolen.

The above statement is mentioned correct.

So in this question whether because....needs to modify banks or not

Thanks

You would have a problem in the sentence you propose because the pronoun "she" has no noun to refer to. "Evelyn's" is functioning as a possessive; we do not have "Evelyn" in the sentence for "she" to refer to. May I ask where you saw that this sentence is correct?

[shashankjohri]

the use of "have" with "all" is wrong in choice C. I think this is a typo error, but C is correct answer.

[tim]

i'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here..

[NL]

Dear Ron,
Do you have a better approach for this question?

My approach seemed pretty dumb: I had to read the whole of each choice, then eliminated because I saw only one “split” that is the whole structure.

When I reviewed, I saw another possible clue to narrow the choices more quickly: the idea presents a reason (for doing a thing), so the answer is likely to be C or E.
Is that good enough to keep this reasoning in mind and apply for similar problem (to which I don’t see any split except the whole structure)? :)

[JacobW468]

@Stacey, you did a great job explaining why "consider it important" is an OK construction here. My question is, how can we be sure to catch this during the test? I've reviewed this problem a few times and always eliminate answer choice C for the same reasons. "it" clearly has no antecedent, but it's OK. For any other pronoun, that would be enough for us to move on to other answer choices.

Do you have a recommendation on how to proceed?

[gmaty00]

Sorry for bumping an old thread.

But I don't understand the "ambiguity" of "they" in choice E, the official explanation says the "they" could refer to either applicants or investment banks. But isn't it strange that applicants would require clean criminal records of their employees? So I think it's pretty unambiguous that "they" refers to banks?

Thanks.