Mission critical modifier SC

[aravind.deva]

Need clarification about the explanation given by manhattan CAT

Stymieing the Armada’s plans to meet up with the Duke of Parma’s army off the coast of Flanders in the Spanish Netherlands, the reason for the defeat of the Spanish Armada was not only due to gale winds that favored the British but also the sacrificing of eight war ships as "fireships," vessels filled with pitch, brimstone, gunpowder, and tar and sent downwind toward the closely-anchored Spanish fleet.

Stymieing the Armada’s plans to meet up with the Duke of Parma’s army off the coast of Flanders in the Spanish Netherlands, the reason for the defeat of the Spanish Armada was not only due to gale winds that favored the British but also the sacrificing
The defeat of the Spanish Armada, which stymied the Armada’s plans to meet up with the Duke of Parma’s army off the coast of Flanders in the Spanish Netherlands, was not only due to gale winds that favored the British but also the sacrificing
The defeat of the Spanish Armada, which stymied the Armada’s plans to meet up with the Duke of Parma’s army off the coast of Flanders in the Spanish Netherlands, was not only due to gale winds that favored the British but also due to the sacrificing
<manhattan>The use of a "which" modifier (which must touch the thing that it modifies) implies that the Spanish Armada, not its defeat, stymied plans.
<my doubt>But is 'of the spanish Armada' not a mission critical modifier? If yes, then 'which' modifies defeat. Need to understand when certain phrase is mission critical and when it is not.
Stymieing the Armada’s plans to meet up with the Duke of Parma’s army off the coast of Flanders in the Spanish Netherlands, the reason for the defeat of the Spanish Armada was not only gale winds that favored the British but also the sacrifice
Stymieing the Armada’s plans to meet up with the Duke of Parma’s army off the coast of Flanders in the Spanish Netherlands, the defeat of the Spanish Armada was due not only to gale winds that favored the British but also to the sacrifice
<manhattan> The elements in "due not only to gale winds that favored the British but also to the sacrifice" are parallel.
<1st doubt> can we split 'due to' ? due not only to X ...
although i have heard of splitting 'attributable to' , but never the splitting of 'due to'. Need a methodological explanation ,when can such words be split.
<2nd doubt> the payment is due ...
here due means 'amount left to be paid'
'the defeat was due ' seemed like a monetary expression to me...since the 'to' was far from due

Instructors ! Please do help me

[aravind.deva]

Hi Instructors, am expecting a reply..URGENT
Hope you understand

[pranab.banerjee82]

Hey ,

I faced the same issue . I too marked C and the correct answer said E.

Here is an explanation from RON that I picked up earlier . (sorry dont have the link to that post.)

Nouns that are modified by prepositional phrase can still be referent of WHICH , even if they are a few words distant from it .

Ex : The picture ABOVE my fireplace , WHICH was taken last year in Mexico , is one of my favorites.

WHICH refers to PICTURE and not FIREPLACE .

Now as per this explanation C is correct .

But in the example that RON gave its also logical that FIREPLACE could not have been taken last year .

Where as in the above sentence in option C , WHICH could refer to DEFEAT or SPANISH ARMADA . So logically both are possible .

Is this how we should differentiate ?


Please can any one help .

[talk2narang]

Ditto. I too marked C. The noun is "The defeat of the Spanish Armada" and which correctly modifies it. Someone please guide. Thanks

[tim]

Aravind, you cannot expect an immediate reply to an "urgent" question over a free service such as this. That's what our classes and private tutoring services are for. Hope you understand..

Now for your questions:

C - The best approach here is to think of "which" as a special modifier that attaches even more strongly to the noun than other modifiers. As a result, unlike most modifiers, "which" isn't as easy to separate from its noun by an intervening modifier. In ALMOST ALL cases, you are safe to eliminate any answer where the "which" doesn't refer to the word immediately preceding it regardless of whatever else is going on. i know this contradicts Pranab's quote from Ron, but i disagree with the quote, and since i can't find a record of it anywhere in the forums i have to assume Ron didn't actually say that..

i should mention that Ron has written some excellent posts about the use of "which", and you should look up some of those. Notice that i said "almost all cases" above; elsewhere Ron does a good job of explaining some of those exceptions..

E1 - The ability to split here has nothing to do with the specific words (i.e. "due" versus "attribute"). Pretty much the only thing you can't split is infinitives, and even that is almost never tested on the GMAT..

E2 - Seriously? The "to" is NOT far from "due", and i find it hard to believe that you have never before encountered words that have more than one meaning..

[RonPurewal]

Here is an explanation from RON that I picked up earlier . (sorry dont have the link to that post.)

Nouns that are modified by prepositional phrase can still be referent of WHICH , even if they are a few words distant from it .

Ex : The picture ABOVE my fireplace , WHICH was taken last year in Mexico , is one of my favorites.

WHICH refers to PICTURE and not FIREPLACE .

the post referenced is here:
post4622.html#p4622
i wrote that post about 3 years ago. since then, we've seen a bit more evidence.

here's an updated post, which is more exact than that one:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mgmat-sc-t24589.html#213052

also, see OG12 problem 26, in which "which" does NOT stand for the noun directly preceding the comma (for the reasons cited in the last 2 linked posts).

[tim]

Thanks for clarifying what you actually said, Ron, and for providing the extra information. Pranab, please note that you misquoted Ron. What Ron actually said contained a HUGE difference - he used the word "brothers" instead of "fireplace", and since "brothers" cannot be modified by a "which" (it must use "who" instead), the "which" must refer to the picture. In your example this distinction is not present, so the "which" is going to refer to "fireplace". Ron brings up an excellent example of an OG problem where this exact issue comes into play, so pay attention to this because that’s the exception I was referring to earlier..

[pmmalkan+gmat]

Dear Ron/Tim,

First of all thank you for all the help and great advice.

I am sorry for digging up an old thread but I went through it over and over and still did not understand why C is wrong.

I read this thread in detail; I also read all the links that Ron has referenced above regarding the use of 'which'.

This is my reasoning -

Quoting Ron -

if you have "X of Y, which..." then:
* if Y works as the antecedent of "which", then "which" should stand for Y.
* if Y doesn't work as the antecedent, but "X of Y" DOES work, then "which" can stand for "X of Y".

In the answer choice (C) X = defeat and Y = the Spanish Armada
I feel that which cannot refer to Y because the sentence states "The defeat of the Spanish Armada, which stymied the Armada’s plans..."
Logically speaking it is not possible for the Spanish Armada to stymie the Armada's plans right ? Only defeat (X) can stymie the plans.

So shouldn't C be right ? Apart from 'which' I do not find any other problem with C. The parallelism between NOT ONLY and BUT ALSO is also present. Even MGMAT CAT says that 'which' seems to be the only issue.

According to Tim's post

The best approach here is to think of "which" as a special modifier that attaches even more strongly to the noun than other modifiers. As a result, unlike most modifiers, "which" isn't as easy to separate from its noun by an intervening modifier. In ALMOST ALL cases, you are safe to eliminate any answer where the "which" doesn't refer to the word immediately preceding it regardless of whatever else is going on.

But I feel this explanation contradicts Ron's.

Please let me know.

Thank you,

Warm Regards,
Priya

[tim]

This is almost like a critical reasoning problem. :) Tim says something almost always happens and that Ron has enumerated some of the rare exceptions. Then Ron restates some of the exceptions. Doesn’t look like much of a contradiction to me.. :)

[pmmalkan+gmat]

Hi Tim,

Thank you for the reply. You are right this is a rather 'painful' one :)

I am still confused about this though. I don't mean to be disrespectful and I am sorry if I am being too pushy but I just don't get this one.

What I feel is that this question is an example of Ron's exceptions (as stated above) where "Y" (Spanish Armada) cannot be the subject (reason - it is not possible for the Armada to stymie the Armada's plans) so the subject is the next-in-line "X of Y" (Defeat of SA)

'which' is rather a painful area for me so I would really like to clarify this one.

However, I went through what Ron and you said again and I can re-interpret Ron's explanation in two ways -

if you have "X of Y, which..." then:
* if Y works as the antecedent of "which", then "which" should stand for Y.
* if Y doesn't work as the antecedent, but "X of Y" DOES work, then "which" can stand for "X of Y".

Does Y work as the antecedent grammatically or logically (seeing the meaning)
If it is grammatically then "Y" = Spanish Armada can sure be the subject and I'll shut up and put this as an important takeaway
But if it is logically then "X of Y" is the subject right ?

Please let me know if my reasoning is right and which one can it be.

Thanks a lot,

- Priya

[pmmalkan+gmat]

Hi Ron/Tim,

I read another thread regarding usage of 'which' - sc-by-merging-its-two-publishing-divisions-the-t8026.html

In the above thread the phrase "market in the country, which" Ron has stated that country can be the referent of 'which' because it is grammatically correct although logically absurd.

So I guess I have it clear now:

If in X of Y construction Y can GRAMMATICALLY be the referent of which then pick Y else pick X.

Thanks very much for you time and help,

- Priya

[tim]

This sounds like a good rule of thumb to adopt..

[rikky.bora]

Apologies for kicking up an old thread.

I am in the same boat as pmmalkan+gmat ( priya ) regarding the OA.

Query 1 - Is E really the OA here?

Reason 1 - According to Ron's 'other' rule regarding "which", C sounds perfectly alright to me.

Reason 2 - The major problem with E, I felt was the split in "due to", which ( I just used "X preposition Y, WHICH" here :) ) I felt was wrong, but then a Google search of quoted "due not only to" text, threw up quite a few texts having that construction. I am stumped !!

Query 2 - Would they really agonize us with such unknown uses of known idioms on the D-day?

[george.kourdin]

ricky,

just my 2 cents but

reason 1 - it sounds perfectly allright, but we have to be extremly careful when we encounter <which> in a sentence. we have to be absolutely positive that the clause that follows <which> modifies the right noun. based on all the discussion in this thread what i've understood is that IF <which> can gramatically modify preceeding noun, then <which> will stick to it. if not, <which> will modify the whole phrase. in this specific example since both <the defeat> and <the spanish armada> are singular <which> can technically tag to either one. try to read the sentence w/out either aramda or army and both are gramatically correct, but the army obv. makes no sense.

reason 2 - the <due to> construction used here is correct. its parallel. it uses the right elements <not only to NOUN....but also to NOUN>. we could use this as one of the splits. A and B are not parallel and are comparing a noun <gale winds> with a gerund form of a verb...seems like a crappy comparison to me.

since D is gramatically correct, albeit not as "smooth" as, C, but C contains <which pronoun> we could anticipate that this is something that GMAT is testing and go for D. its pretty clear that GMAT is OCD about the use of <which> we better be certain that it modifies the right part of the sentence.

Query 2 - LOL.....they would. they live for this. somewhere right now a GMAT instructor is sitting in his room and maniacally laughing at some absurd problem that he/she created. this problem will ruin bschool dreams of thousands and makes 10x as much for the collegeboard or for whoever runs this thing.

[rikky.bora]

1. According to me C and E are grammatically correct.

2. C because of Ron's rule that is logically correct.

3. Between C and E, E loses out on concision. E though grammatically correct is so hard on the ears, unlike C.

4. And, if C is really wrong because of only the "Which" usage, then Ron's rule stands invalid. It uses Ron's rule in its most exquisite form.

5. Like Priya, I would shut up if one can point out some other problem with C.

Looking forward to the experts' reply.