The gyrfalcon, an Arctic bird of prey, has survived a close

[Gellar]

Ron,

I've found one case from PERP. As you mentioned above, is "will soar to a level more than one-third higher than " also right? the OA is B.

If current trends continue, by the year 2010 carbon emissions in the United States will soar to a level more than one-third higher than were those in 1990, according to official projections.
(A) Same
(B) will soar to a level more than one-third higher than that
(C) would soar to a level more than one-third higher than it was
(D) would soar to a level more than one-third higher than those
(E) would soar to a level more than one-third higher than they were
[/quote]

[Anon]

one concern about parallelism: should choice "its numbers are now five times greater than" be "its numbers are now five times greater than those"? thanks

linguistically correct answer:
no, because 'when the use of ddt was...' is, or at least can be interpreted as, an adverb phrase (not an adjective phrase).
if the descriptive phrase placed there were an adjective phrase (or were being interpreted as one, at least), you'd want 'those' to assure a parallel construction.

Hi Ron,

Could you please provide an example to clarify ... with adjectival and adverbial phrases...

X has more money now than when the stock market crashed
X has more money now than in 1988
X has more money than he had in 1988


are these all correct.... ???

thanks in advance

[Anon]

sorry..wrong question...belongs somewhere else...pls ignore...

[rfernandez]

Gellar, your version would be correct since "in 1990" is an adverbial phrase, per Ron's posting.

[Anon]

Hi Ron,

Could you please provide an example to clarify ... with adjectival and adverbial phrases...

X has more money now than when the stock market crashed
X has more money now than in 1988
X has more money than he had in 1988


are these all correct.... ???

thanks in advance -

[RonPurewal]

Hi Ron,

Could you please provide an example to clarify ... with adjectival and adverbial phrases...

X has more money now than when the stock market crashed
X has more money now than in 1988
X has more money than he had in 1988


are these all correct.... ???

thanks in advance -

i don't think the gmat would like any of these constructions all that much.

first two: the gmat would probably ding these for not changing the tensed verb. when you have a parallel structure, the common parts (here, "has ... money") are assumed to apply equally to both parts of the structure; applying that principle here leads to the conclusion that the present tense (has) is being applied to both halves of the parallel construction, including the second half (which is obviously a past event).

in other words: the second sentence expands as "x has more money now than he has in 1988". that's wrong.
the same type of thing applies to the first sentence - again, the second half needs a verb that's fixed in the past tense.

the third part seems fine, although there's something slightly undesirable about it (i can't put my finger on it exactly).

[Guest]

Stancey,
Its really nasty to see someone like you to keep examples of" numbers of " uses here, It shows how mechanical your approach is? The test here is not of a number vs the number that you are quoting strategy guide to say so...its about its numbers...

that said a couple of more things:

as for as source goes please note that many questions from OG is repeated in GMATPREP so if somebody says he/she got it from GMATPREP the question itself could be from OG but that person is still 110% honest as he encountered a repeat from OG in GMATPREP.

The question being referred here is from OG-10 QN 251 and repeat in OG-11 verbal supplement QN 72.

Here is the brief explanation from OG that is 1000 times better than the ones of yours(Ron included)

See it
deleted. you can't quote anything from the o.g. on these forums. if the question itself is in gmatprep, then quoting the question here is allowed. however, ANY content that is exclusive to the OG - a category that perforce includes answer keys, as there are no answer keys on the gmatprep software - is banned. --ron

Somebody wrote above "I have taken this question from GMATPREP collections only"

That sounds like this is from a collection of GMATPrep questions that you got from someplace other than taking a GMATPrep test yourself. Please remember that you should post GMATPrep questions ONLY directly from the software that you yourself use. Don't post from random collections found on the web, as these collections tend to introduce typos and errors that then create serious problems for people studying from them.

* * *
Hei, you may be thinking about a rule in the SC strategy guide that says a certain incarnation of "numbers" is always wrong. Specifically:

"A number of" is plural
"The number of" is singular

and either "A numbers of" or "The numbers of" is incorrect.

However, you can have "numbers" in other forms.

[StaceyKoprince]

"The test here is not of a number vs the number that you are quoting strategy guide to say so...its about its numbers... "

Yes... that's why I said "you can have "numbers" in other forms." You can't have "A numbers of" or "The numbers of" but that isn't what's going on in this problem.

Yes, someone may see a GMATPrep question that also appears in the OG. We do not want people to post GMATPrep questions that they found from a collection of GMATPrep questions posted online, though, and the person who posted this said they got the question from "GMATPrep collections." I was clarifying the rule, because collections of GMATPrep questions taken out of the GMATPrep software often contain transcription errors. In addition, as Ron noted, we cannot post any explanations from OG.

[mehek_khurana]

In this question, OA A has pronoun "its". As per my understanding, pronoun is referring to gyrfalcon however as per strategy guide possessive pronoun can refer to only possessive noun (which is not the case in OA)

Request for clarification please. Thanks

[RonPurewal]

In this question, OA A has pronoun "its". As per my understanding, pronoun is referring to gyrfalcon however as per strategy guide possessive pronoun can refer to only possessive noun (which is not the case in OA)

Request for clarification please. Thanks

incorrect.

* possessive pronouns can refer to either possessive or nominative ("normal") nouns.
there is definitely nothing wrong with Joe lost his sunglasses.

* the thing you're thinking of, according to the EXTREMELY OBSCURE "possessive poison" rule, is the other way around: it's subject and object pronouns that can't refer to possessive nouns.
note: this is an EXTREMELY OBSCURE "rule", and, to date, has been the decisive factor in exactly 0 official problems of which we're aware. if it causes ANY confusion, such as the confusion above, then DISREGARD IT COMPLETELY and forget that it even exists.
in fact, this rule is so obscure that we've actually excised it from the latest edition (3rd edition) of the sentence-correction guide.
the only time we've ever seen it is in the notes for one answer to one official problem: either #68 or #86 (i can't remember) in the purple verbal OG supplement. (it's whichever one of those 2 features a sentence about investment officers and their fees.) it's mentioned in regard to precisely one answer choice, and, to boot, that one answer choice is easily eliminated by other means.

[mehek_khurana]

Thanks Ron

[soundok]

one concern about parallelism: should choice "its numbers are now five times greater than" be "its numbers are now five times greater than those"? thanks

linguistically correct answer:
no, because 'when the use of ddt was...' is, or at least can be interpreted as, an adverb phrase (not an adjective phrase).
if the descriptive phrase placed there were an adjective phrase (or were being interpreted as one, at least), you'd want 'those' to assure a parallel construction.

functional answer:
no, because none of the five choices contain this construction. :)

Is that because the sentence with adv. phrase could omit "those" to be parallel?

Could you give us a specific example to illustrate the parallel construction with "adj. phrase"? Thanks.

[RonPurewal]

one concern about parallelism: should choice "its numbers are now five times greater than" be "its numbers are now five times greater than those"? thanks

linguistically correct answer:
no, because 'when the use of ddt was...' is, or at least can be interpreted as, an adverb phrase (not an adjective phrase).
if the descriptive phrase placed there were an adjective phrase (or were being interpreted as one, at least), you'd want 'those' to assure a parallel construction.

functional answer:
no, because none of the five choices contain this construction. :)

Is that because the sentence with adv. phrase could omit "those" to be parallel?

Could you give us a specific example to illustrate the parallel construction with "adj. phrase"? Thanks.

ok, here's the basic story: as with other forms of parallelism, you have to ensure that the grammatical constructions are matched up as closely as possible.

if you had "those when the use of ddt was...", that would be centered around the pronoun those, which stands for a noun. therefore, to be parallel with it, you'd want another noun-centered construction: "its numbers now".

the problem in this sentence, though, is that now is being used strictly as a stand-alone adverb, since it's separated from "its numbers" by the VERB "are". (we know that this verb isn't part of the parallel construction, since there's no parallel verb in the second part.)
therefore, "now" itself - an adverb - is the whole first part of the parallel construction. for parallelism to be completed properly, the second part must be another adverb or adverbial construction, and that's why we just want "when the use of ddt was..." (without those).

this particular instance is somewhat complicated, but it's still a special case of the very very basic premise of parallelism: make the 2 parts the same.

[soundok]

therefore, "now" itself - an adverb - is the whole first part of the parallel construction. for parallelism to be completed properly, the second part must be another adverb or adverbial construction, and that's why we just want "when the use of ddt was..." (without those).

this particular instance is somewhat complicated, but it's still a special case of the very very basic premise of parallelism: make the 2 parts the same.

I think this is a subject comparison. Two numbers of different times are compared. In my view, "its numbers" rather than "now" is the whole first part of the parallel construction. So, adding "those" to the second part sounds reasonable. Please clarify.Thank you.

[RonPurewal]

I think this is a subject comparison. Two numbers of different times are compared. In my view, "its numbers" rather than "now" is the whole first part of the parallel construction. So, adding "those" to the second part sounds reasonable. Please clarify.Thank you.

nope. i covered this above, but i'll recap:

you think that "its numbers now" is the first part of the parallelism.
that's not possible, though, because there's a verb ("are") stuck between "its numbers" and "now". since that verb doesn't have a counterpart in the second half of the parallelism, it cannot be included in the first part.
and you are certainly not allowed to cherry-pick "its numbers ... now" from either side of "are".

this leaves "now" as the only legitimate 1st half, since "its numbers" by itself doesn't make sense, and you aren't allowed to include the "are".