Geologists once thought that the molten rock known as lava

[tim]

"Woolens Act of 1698" is a noun that can't be separated, and the "which" refers to it exactly as we would expect. It's good to be able to recognize such nouns, because otherwise you might end up misapplying the rules. As another example, consider this:

My favorite holiday is the Fourth of July, which always ends with fireworks.

Here the "which" modifies the actual noun "Fourth of July" rather than just a piece of the noun. Note that such examples will almost always be capitalized, making them easier to spot in most cases..

[alwaysudit]

I am confused with option C
OG 13 , Q. 29 is an example in which the relative pronoun "which" isn't touching the noun it is meant to modify .
C.was an underground remnant of Earth's earliest days, which sporadically erupted
in this case ,if which refers to the underground remnant will the sentence be correct.
Also ,in which cases can one apply this exception to the touch rule

[jlucero]

I am confused with option C
OG 13 , Q. 29 is an example in which the relative pronoun "which" isn't touching the noun it is meant to modify .
C.was an underground remnant of Earth's earliest days, which sporadically erupted
in this case ,if which refers to the underground remnant will the sentence be correct.
Also ,in which cases can one apply this exception to the touch rule

You could possibly argue that which modifies "an underground remnant of Earth's earliest days", but that meaning would still be absurd. Lava is a remnant that erupted through volcanoes? No. What does a remnant that erupted mean? You could say lava is a hot substance that erupts through volcanoes. But not a remnant that erupts.

[greggblainestarr]

I am a little confused. Why can't we use the past perfect form of had been? Since past perfect describes the earlier of the past events, isn't the verb "thought" the later of the past events?

[jlucero]

I am a little confused. Why can't we use the past perfect form of had been? Since past perfect describes the earlier of the past events, isn't the verb "thought" the later of the past events?

You don't use "had" anytime that there are two events in the past. You use "had" to avoid confusion when there isn't a clear order of events. For example, I wouldn't say "I owned a cat in 2010 and I had owned a dog in 2000." The years give us a clear indication of what happened first.

Likewise, geologists didn't think that something had happened before they started thinking about something. Geologists thought that something happened. I wouldn't say "I thought that the Earth had been flat" unless (and this is unlikely to happen on the GMAT) I wanted to say that in the past I thought something happened PRIOR to the act of me thinking about it (in 2000, I thought about something that happened in 1800): "In 2000, people thought that there had been an asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago."

This is NOT the case here, since scientists once thought X but now think Y.

[shveta.sarin]

I am still confused about the OA A

In my opinion if "sporadically erupting" is modifying the entire clause before it then the clause itself is "geologists once thought that molten rock....was...of Earth's earliest days". That means it is modifying "geologists once thought...."

Which is not correct.

Also there are exceptions to when which does not necessarily follow the "touch rule" within context of the sentence. I marked C as the answer even though I remembered the "which" rule but it seemed like the only correct answer. Others had much greater errors.

[jlucero]

I am still confused about the OA A

In my opinion if "sporadically erupting" is modifying the entire clause before it then the clause itself is "geologists once thought that molten rock....was...of Earth's earliest days". That means it is modifying "geologists once thought...."

Which is not correct.

Also there are exceptions to when which does not necessarily follow the "touch rule" within context of the sentence. I marked C as the answer even though I remembered the "which" rule but it seemed like the only correct answer. Others had much greater errors.

One of my two posts right above this address the problem with "which" in this particular sentence. Read that to learn why C is incorrect.

As for A, yes, there are several different clauses in this sentence and there's no one rule that dictates all comma+ing modifiers, but here's the basic idea in this sentence and then one other:

Geologists thought THAT lava was a remnant, erupting sporadically.
Geologists thought THAT lava was hot, learning this after burning their hands off.

Either sentence can work since the main idea of the sentence is clear- lava was erupting, not the geologists. Geologists were learning, not the lava. So in this case, when you do have a longer sentence, think about what the comma+ing verb is logically referring to, rather than assuming it should refer to something that you've predetermined.

[gaurav.chauhan619]

Hey M-staff,

I also feel that "C" is correct and which can modify slightly far away noun before the comma and can skip the part in prepositional phrase.

Even I read somewhere Ron wrote that in GMAT many times, which never refers to the noun it is touching.

example from OG:
EMily Dickinson’s letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson, which were written over a period beginning a few years before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother and ending shortly before Emily’s death in 1886, outnumber her letters to anyone else.

In this sentence, relative pronoun "which" correctly modifies "letters", a noun entity that is not placed immediately before "which". Now "letters" is followed by a prepositional phrase "to SHD" that modifies the "letters". It tells us who the letters were written to. This prepositional phrase cannot be placed elsewhere in the sentence. So we have a big noun phrase preceding "which" - "ED’s letters to SHD". In this case, "which" has the liberty to jump over "to SHD" and modify the head of the big noun phrase. This modification leads to no ambiguity at all.


Example 1 from GMATprep:

Although she had been known as an effective legislator first in the Texas Senate and later in the United States House of Representatives, Barbara Jordan did not become a nationally recognized figure until 1974, when she participated in the hearings on the impeachment of President Richard Nixon, which were televised nationwide.


The sentence says that Jordan participated in "hearings". What were these hearing about? These hearings were on the impeachment of President Nixon. The prepositional phrase "on the impeachment" modifies "the hearings" while "of President Nixon" modifies "the impeachment". The modifiers appear after the entities (all nouns) they modify. Hence, together we have a huge noun phrase "the hearings on the impeachment of President Richard Nixon".

[RonPurewal]

We are retiring this problem in its current form, because it has several issues.

First, as you point out, "which" is not necessarily wrong here.

Second -- and more importantly -- the ostensibly correct answer to this problem doesn't actually work.
In choice A, the modifier "sporadically erupting..." does not describe anything in the preceding part, so it doesn't make sense as a "comma + __ing" modifier (which must meaningfully describe the subject+action of the preceding sentence).
Incidentally, choice A of the Dickinson problem (OG12 #26) is wrong for exactly the same reason!

This problem is no longer in our database. It will be replaced by an updated (and fully correct) version soon.

Because the problem is no longer in the database, this thread is now retired.

Thanks.