vivekcall81 Wrote:one question.. are the pronoun they and thier are correctly refering to thier antecedent. i am confused beacause 'They', is close to 'suppliers' so, it may refer to supplier.
please clarify
this is a good point -- the correct answer to this problem, yet again, contains a pronoun that is technically ambiguous.
however, as we've seen again and again and again and again,
not all ambiguous pronouns are incorrect!so here's the simplest way of making the decision:
1)
if you see an AMBIGUOUS PRONOUN that is REPLACED BY THE CORRECT NOUN in OTHER ANSWER CHOICES, then ELIMINATE the ambiguous pronoun and keep the specific noun.
for an example, see problem 68 in the blue verbal supplement, in which "them" is split against "these companies".
HOWEVER,
2) if you see an ambiguous pronoun that is NOT replaced by the correct noun in any of the other answer choices, then
DON'T eliminate!
for an example, see problem 21 in the blue verbal supplement (in which the correct answer contains a technically ambiguous pronoun).
or see the problem in this thread!
also:
in general, OBJECTS OF PREPOSITIONS are very rarely the antecedents of pronouns. (i won't say never -- but rarely enough that, if you have to make a random guess, this is probably a pretty good standard by which to make such a guess.)
for instance:
if you have "the cat in the box", then it is very unlikely that a pronoun will be able to stand for "box".
see #29 in the blue verbal supplement, choices (a) and (b).
--
in the problem at hand, "they" is not split against "(those) fish", so we can't confidently eliminate it.