Laos has a land area

[jlucero]

@Aravind-

Read through the entire thread before posting, because Ron's previous post (2 above yours) begins with:

DO NOT "bump" discussions.


Remember that this does nothing but make you wait longer for questions to get answered.

@davidfrank

1. The number one rule you have to remember for what the GMAT will test is that each pronoun should have one antecedent somewhere in the sentence that you can replace the pronoun with. Yes, it's very obvious that the "they" refers to the Laotian people, but without explicitly having a plural noun elsewhere in the sentence, you can't use the pronoun "they".

2. Because "many of them are members" is a full, stand-alone sentence that shouldn't be separated from the first part of the sentence with just a comma, while "many of whom are members" is a dependant clause.

3. I can't really explain idioms, but I can tell you other uses that would be correct: a population of 4 million or 4 million people. Memorize those.

[rohit.manglik]

We use "compared to" to compare unlike object and "compared with" to compare like objects.

Here we are comparing land area with land area so why do we have comparable to rather than comparable with?

[RonPurewal]

The GMAT does not distinguish between "compared to" and "compared with".

[aditya8062]

Good day Ron
i am quoting some text from jlucero's post (which is three post above this post) :Because "many of them are members" is a full, stand-alone sentence that shouldn't be separated from the first part of the sentence with just a comma, while "many of whom are members" is a dependant clause

i know Ron u have written a very nice explanation to this stuff earlier in the thread but i still have a doubt

my doubt : u have said that "many of whom" is not a subject pronoun and it has exactly the same grammar as "which" .so it will not make a run-on .
on the other hand "many of them are members" will make a
run-on. does that mean that "many of them" is a subject pronoun? .what is confusing me is how can "many of them" be a subject pronoun ? i always thought that "them" is object pronoun!!

[aditya8062]

Bump :)

DO NOT "bump" discussions.

... well, actually, i take that back; you can "bump" discussions if you want. but, if you do, you are just adding a couple of days to the time we'll take to answer your question.

see, we always answer everything here in strict order from oldest to newest (unless one user posts excessively, in which case we'll often skip some of that user's posts in order to be fair to other users).
so, if you "bump" something, you're moving it to last in the queue. probably not what you are trying to accomplish here.

I have a question about the subgroup modifier.

i don't know what a "subgroup modifier" is (and i would suggest that you have the wrong priorities if you are thinking too much about this kind of terminology), but i will attempt to answer the question(s) anyway.

"Ron adopted two dog, each only 100 pounds" (I eliminate the verb Weights"???

first of all, "two dog" is wrong; it needs to be "two dogs".
(this is not actually tested on the gmat, but it's one of the most fundamental building blocks of the english language; in fact, it's one of the earliest pieces of grammar to be mastered by small children who grow up speaking english. so, if you want a career involving lots of professional correspondence with english speakers, you should definitely learn the distinctions between singular and plural nouns. not necessarily right at this exact moment ... but at some point.)

second, no, you can't write that, for reasons that i will explain below.

This question elaborates for question:

Chinese, the most ancient of living writing systems, consists of tens of thousands of ideographic characters, each character a miniature calligraphic composition inside its own square frame (correct)

This sentence is very similar to Ron's dog example. It does not contain main verb TO BE.

Is it correct to say:

Chinese, the most ancient of living writing systems, consists of 10 of thousands of ideographic characters, each of which IS a miniature calligraphic composition inside its own square frame?

sure, you could do either of those.

note: in the former construction, the only verb that it's acceptable to omit is a form of "to be" (is, are, were, was, etc.)
so, ... two dogs, each 100 pounds is unacceptable, because you can't write "each dog is 100 pounds".
by contrast, ... two dogs, each a mix of several breeds is perfectly acceptable, because "each dog is a mix of several breeds" is correct and sensible.

finally, 100 pounds is awfully heavy for a dog, so "only 100 pounds" makes little sense in context. (it's like saying "Jack is only seven feet tall." --> ???)

i have a doubt here :
sent 1 :This model explains all known subatomic particles, SOME OF WHICH WERE only recently discovered.

sent 2:This model explains all known subatomic particles, SOME OF WHICH only recently discovered.

sent 2 is a wrong sentence as per manhattan guide .but if i conclude as per ur post then sent 2 sud be a correct
sentence !! as you have said that in such construction we can omit verb "to be" .now because sent 2 is omitting "were" so it sud be correct !!
as i missing something ?

[RonPurewal]

If you have "which", you can't omit the verb.

What is "sud"?

[minjieyishuo]

@ shimbal80

I am confused. Is not correct that "them" is referring to "people"?
Why is not correct?

Thanks in advance

go read that choice (c) again; the word "people" does not exist anywhere in that choice (or in the non-underlined part). a pronoun cannot refer to a word that is not actually there!
the closest you get in that sentence is "population", but that's singular.

Hi Ron,

2 questions:
1) The choice C do has the word "people" ... what else could "them" refer to ? GB people?
2) Does choice C make a run-on sentence? or "but" in choice C just connects two complete sentence? Can I treat "but in Laos ... people" as a parenthesis?

Thanks a lot!

[cshen02]

Hi Ron,

I'm confused why OG says that "reference of them" in choice C "is unclear"? I thought "them" refers to "only four million people", because Manhattan GMAT gives an example on this issue. On page 72 of the fifth edition, "The board is investigating packages of executives in order to determine how much they may have been..."
So I assume a pronoun can refer to either part of a "X of Y" structure.

For choice D, can "many" refer to "four million"? To me, it sounds wrong...because "four million" is not four million people and "many" cannot be a pronoun.

And finally, why do we use " whom" in E? "many of whom" is the subject of the clause, and I think "who" is more appropriate here. But I also read on the book on page 87 that "whom is used as the object of the verb or of a preposition". Can I say the "whom" is correct in E, because there is a preposition?

Cheers!

[RonPurewal]

Hi Ron,

I'm confused why OG says that "reference of them" in choice C "is unclear"? I thought "them" refers to "only four million people", because Manhattan GMAT gives an example on this issue. On page 72 of the fifth edition, "The board is investigating packages of executives in order to determine how much they may have been..."
So I assume a pronoun can refer to either part of a "X of Y" structure.

"Them" in choice C is fine.

The OG explanations are sometimes out to lunch; this is one of those times. (The OG questions, on the other hand, are very well written.)

The real issue in that section of choice C is redundancy, created by the presence of both "population" and "people".

[RonPurewal]

For choice D, can "many" refer to "four million"? To me, it sounds wrong...because "four million" is not four million people and "many" cannot be a pronoun.

I don't really understand your question.
You state that "many" is NOT a pronoun... but the rest of your analysis (trying to find a "referent") implies that it IS a pronoun.

I.e., if "many" is not a pronoun, then there's no need for a grammatical antecedent.

("4 million in population" is not idiomatic.)

[RonPurewal]

And finally, why do we use " whom" in E? "many of whom" is the subject of the clause, and I think "who" is more appropriate here. But I also read on the book on page 87 that "whom is used as the object of the verb or of a preposition". Can I say the "whom" is correct in E, because there is a preposition?

The GMAT does not test "who"/"whom".

"Of" is the determinant here. You wouldn't write "of he", "of I", or "of they"; you'd write "of him", "of me", or "of them". So, it's "of whom".
Again, irrelevant to the GMAT.

[cshen02]

Hey Ron, I really appreciate your help! Now I understand that in ABD, the "four million" is just pure number and cannot stand for "four million people".

When I revisit this problem, E looks like a run-on sentence. The only linking word "but" is used to parallel " a land area" and "four million in population". Did I misunderstand something here?

I'm editing my post cause I just realized "many of whom" is not really a sentence, so no issue with run-on sentence any more...But I came up with a new question. Many said in C, "them" incorrectly refers to "four million people", making choice C wrong. However, if that's the case, wouldn't E be wrong, because "whom" is referring to "four million people" as well?

So what makes C wrong?

[RonPurewal]

Who said "them" was wrong in choice C? It looks OK to me.

If I wrote that, please tell me where, so I can edit it.

Thanks.

[JIYUS618]

Hi Ron,

I'm confused why OG says that "reference of them" in choice C "is unclear"? I thought "them" refers to "only four million people", because Manhattan GMAT gives an example on this issue. On page 72 of the fifth edition, "The board is investigating packages of executives in order to determine how much they may have been..."
So I assume a pronoun can refer to either part of a "X of Y" structure.

"Them" in choice C is fine.

The OG explanations are sometimes out to lunch; this is one of those times. (The OG questions, on the other hand, are very well written.)

The real issue in that section of choice C is redundancy, created by the presence of both "population" and "people".

While there are both "population" and "people"in choice E, the right answer.
in choice E,"but"is a preposition or a conj, because it is followed by a noun.
S+V+O1+conj+O2？？
Does conj link a word with another word
or just link a sentence with another sentence?
And in choice:
Laos has a land area that....,but+adverbial modifier,many of them are members...
that structure is right??

Thanks in advance!

[RonPurewal]

While there are both "population" and "people"in choice E, the right answer.

Valid point. Very interesting.

in choice E,"but"is a preposition or a conj, because it is followed by a noun.
S+V+O1+conj+O2？？
Does conj link a word with another word
or just link a sentence with another sentence?

The part that looks like a math equation, I don't understand. Sorry.

I don't know the grammatical terms, so I can't answer that part of the question. If you think about this for a bit, though, you'll see that "but" is just linking "a land area ... but a population ..."

This is the same structure as "I bought apples and bananas". By translating it into strange-looking equations, it seems, you're making it unnecessarily difficult.