Studies show that young people with higher-than-average

[Guest]

Hi there--

SC from GMAT Prep2:

Studies show that young people with higher-than-average blood pressure and their families have a history of high blood pressure are more lifely than others to develop a severe form of the condition

A. same
B. whose families have a history of high blood pressure
C. and a history of high blood pressure runs in the family
D. whose families have a history of high blood pressure running in them
E. with a history of high blood pressure running in their family

OA: B

I thought B had a modifier problem. Doesn't B sound like blood pressuring having families with high BP history???
I am very confused. I chose C. Please help!

[kylo]

just break the sentence & u can see y B is correct.

--Studies show that young people with higher-than-average blood pressure are more lifely than others to develop a severe form of the condition.

--Studies show that young people whose families have a history of high blood pressure are more lifely than others to develop a severe form of the condition.


Thanks!

[RonPurewal]

I thought B had a modifier problem. Doesn't B sound like blood pressuring having families with high BP history???

nope.
there's no way that "...whose families have..." could grammatically refer to the blood pressure.
i'm pretty sure that the gmat restricts the pronoun "whose" to people and maybe animals; for instance, i don't think you're going to see something like "the can whose lid i ripped off" on the test.
even if that's not true, the plural "families" still prohibits "blood pressure" from being the antecedent.

--

by the way, PRONOUN AMBIGUITY is a CLARITY problem, not a correctness problem. that comes after correctness in the hierarchy of SC errors, so you should NOT treat it until you're through with correctness issues.
(c) has one very glaring correctness issue: modifiers NEVER start with "and". the whole thing about the history of high blood pressure has to be a modifier, modifying the young people; not only is this not a modifier (because it starts with "and"), but it doesn't even tell us that we're talking about the young people's families. it merely says "the" family.
not acceptable.

by the way, the improper use of the conjunction "and" makes (c) not even a sentence at all.

[shobuj40]

What is wrong with E

and where we will use the With modifier?

[Guest]

I guess my problem with this problem is shouldn't "whose" be touching "people" since it modifies people? That is why I eliminated "B". I thought that any word that introduces a modifier, like which, whose, who, etc... should always be touching the noun it is modifying. Could someone please explain that? Thanks!

[RonPurewal]

I guess my problem with this problem is shouldn't "whose" be touching "people" since it modifies people? That is why I eliminated "B". I thought that any word that introduces a modifier, like which, whose, who, etc... should always be touching the noun it is modifying. Could someone please explain that? Thanks!

the problem here is that you've got 2 essential modifiers (modifiers not preceded by commas, whose semantic meanings are essential to the understanding of the sentence).
essential modifiers are supposed to be tacked onto the noun, but, since there are two of them, one of them has to lose the contest.

--

do note that the absolute rule you learned in class is for COMMA PLUS which, who, whose, to whom, of which, etc.
we only posited that rule for situations in which the preceding comma is present. this isn't one of those situations.

--

i probably would have written "who have higher-than-average blood pressure and whose families blah blah blah...".
but it doesn't matter what i would have written, because i don't write official problems.

remember not to question Lord GMAC. whenever you encounter a surprising problem such as this one, just smile, nod your head, learn the takeaways, and go off just a little older and wiser.

[shobuj40]

as long as i see in the GMAT :

When they use " AND" - is a conjunction. Joining two independent clause.

ther is a main verb and they also finish the sentence before that

in Choice :A

Studies show that young people with higher-than-average blood pressure and their families have a history of high blood pressure are more lifely than others to develop a severe form of the condition


comparison is between : Young people and others.

And they also do not finish the sentence before "and" (No finite verb)

Eg: I go to the cinema and John goes to the school

Plus if we read the sentence like : Compound sbject young people and their families then this is the run on sentence.

Studies show that young people with higher-than-average blood pressure and their families have a history of high blood pressure are more lifely than others to develop a severe form of the condition

please clarify if i am wrong

[esledge]

And they also do not finish the sentence before "and" (No finite verb)

Eg: I go to the cinema and John goes to the school

Plus if we read the sentence like : Compound sbject young people and their families then this is the run on sentence.

Studies show that young people with higher-than-average blood pressure and their families have a history of high blood pressure are more likely than others to develop a severe form of the condition

please clarify if i am wrong

I think looking at the number of verbs, their respective subjects, and their placement makes sense here.

(A) interpretation 1:
(compound subject: young people with higher-than-average blood pressure and their families) have a history of high blood pressure are more likely than others to develop a severe form of the condition (the clause in italics is left hanging!)

(A) interpretation 2:
young people with X (higher than avg. blood pressure) and Y (their families) have a history of high blood pressure are more likely than others to develop a severe form of the condition (again, the clause in italics is left hanging!)

(B) has only one interpretation:
certain young people are more likely to develop....
AND
families have a history of high blood pressure.

[pujahait]

Ron,
plz analyze E for me..what i understand is E should have had their families
Also plz clarify what with is modifying in option E.

And from your previous explantion what i gather is that if there is no comma before which, who, whose, to whom, of which, etc. then we dont have to look at modifying the immediate antecedent..so does that mean these will then modify the main subject of the sentence and always

Thanks

[ayushrastogi82]

I thought B had a modifier problem. Doesn't B sound like blood pressuring having families with high BP history???

nope.
there's no way that "...whose families have..." could grammatically refer to the blood pressure.
i'm pretty sure that the gmat restricts the pronoun "whose" to people and maybe animals; for instance, i don't think you're going to see something like "the can whose lid i ripped off" on the test.
even if that's not true, the plural "families" still prohibits "blood pressure" from being the antecedent.

--

by the way, PRONOUN AMBIGUITY is a CLARITY problem, not a correctness problem. that comes after correctness in the hierarchy of SC errors, so you should NOT treat it until you're through with correctness issues.
(c) has one very glaring correctness issue: modifiers NEVER start with "and". the whole thing about the history of high blood pressure has to be a modifier, modifying the young people; not only is this not a modifier (because it starts with "and"), but it doesn't even tell us that we're talking about the young people's families. it merely says "the" family.
not acceptable.

by the way, the improper use of the conjunction "and" makes (c) not even a sentence at all.

I have two doubts here:

Doubt 1: Above you are saying that modifiers NEVER start with "and", which means that young people with higher-than-average blood pressure and whose families blah blah... is incorrect.

But then how come " young people who have higher-than-average blood pressure and whose families blah blah..." is correct.

Could you explain the difference?

Doubt 2:
Studies show that young people with higher-than-average blood pressure and a history of high blood pressure in families are more likely than others to develop a severe form of the condition.

Is above sentence correct? According to me, young people with higher-than-average blood pressure and [with] a history of high blood pressure in families are blah blah... has 2 parallel modifiers (latter 'with' elipsis) modifying young people. Am I wrong?

Thanks and regards,
Ayush

[NIKESH_PAHUJA]

I can try to clear out your 1st doubt

Ron said modifiers NEVER start with "and".

consider the example which you have quoted

"young people who have higher-than-average blood pressure and whose families have a high history of blood pressure are more lifely than others to develop a severe form of the condition"

In this example, if you remove the modifiers, the core of sentence is

Young people are more lifely than others to develop a severe form of the condition

The modifier is

who have higher-than-average blood pressure and whose families have a high history of blood pressure

x and y

where x = who have higher-than-average blood pressure

and

y = whose families have a high history of blood pressure

As you can see ( x and Y ) as a whole is one modifier, and consists of parts x and y which are parallel to each other.

Thus none of x and Y are actually starting with 'and'.
Infact and is used as a conjuction to create a compound modifier, just as it is used to create compound subject. ( I am not sure if there is a term called compound modifier. :-) But this was best I could quote to clear the doubt . Ron would be better able to tell whether we can use this term )

Also, Ron can you please clear second doubt in the poster above about elipsis ?
and it would be great if you could throw some light on when to use 'with 'modifier ?

Hope this

[ayushrastogi82]

My question is unanswered from quite time now. Could any intructor please clarify my doubts?

[zhaoyu0319]

Hey guys,
Is it possible to interpret C) this way:

Studies show that young people with higher-than-average blood pressure and [with] a history of high blood pressure [that] runs in the family are more likely than others to develop a severe form of the condition

I know that "the family" is wrong, but if we ignore that mistake, will the above sentence be correct? Thanks!

[mschwrtz]

No, that won't work.

1) I can see why you've placed that [which] in there, to suggest that "which is distributed over the compound noun "pressure and a history...." That's fine.

2) The [that], on the other hand, makes no sense. There's no reason to suppose that entire clause introduced by first "that" is in any way parallel to the clause beginning "runs." In fact, the first clause has its ow subject while the second one does not.

3) "A history of high blood pressure that runs in the family" would in any event be at best redundant (if it runs in the family then there's a family history) and probably even nonsensical (the thing that young people have in addition to high blood pressure is... a history of high blood pressure? And other people in their families have had the same history? What?