There is a widespread belief in the US and Western

[dvrsrikar]

Hi Ron

It'll be great of you can explain preference of "less of a commitment" to "a smaller commitment " in this question?
I marked C thinking "commitment" is non-countable and therefore requires "less"!

Thank You in advance for answering!

DVR

[RonPurewal]

Hi Ron

It'll be great of you can explain preference of "less of a commitment" to "a smaller commitment " in this question?
I marked C thinking "commitment" is non-countable and therefore requires "less"!

Thank You in advance for answering!

DVR

sorry, i don't understand.

you thought (correctly) that "less" is ok ... and so you marked the other option?
that's what i'm reading here. if that's not what you meant to say, please correct me.
if that is what you meant to write, please explain -- sorry, i'm confused.

[rx_11]

Hi Ron

It'll be great of you can explain preference of "less of a commitment" to "a smaller commitment " in this question?
I marked C thinking "commitment" is non-countable and therefore requires "less"!

Thank You in advance for answering!

DVR

sorry, i don't understand.

you thought (correctly) that "less" is ok ... and so you marked the other option?
that's what i'm reading here. if that's not what you meant to say, please correct me.
if that is what you meant to write, please explain -- sorry, i'm confused.

Dear instructors,

I think "less" is used to modify uncountable noun. So why is it still correct to use "less" to modify "a commitment", which is a countable noun?

[jnelson0612]

Hi Ron

It'll be great of you can explain preference of "less of a commitment" to "a smaller commitment " in this question?
I marked C thinking "commitment" is non-countable and therefore requires "less"!

Thank You in advance for answering!

DVR

sorry, i don't understand.

you thought (correctly) that "less" is ok ... and so you marked the other option?
that's what i'm reading here. if that's not what you meant to say, please correct me.
if that is what you meant to write, please explain -- sorry, i'm confused.

Dear instructors,

I think "less" is used to modify uncountable noun. So why is it still correct to use "less" to modify "a commitment", which is a countable noun?

I think it depends on the context in which "commitment" is used. If I use commitment to refer to the appointments or obligations I have then commitment is countable, as in "I have fewer commitments today than I did yesterday".

However, if I make a commitment to some person or cause, the degree of commitment I have is not countable.

[mcmebk]

1) dose less of (or more of) function as adv or adj?
i guess it was used as adv to modify have because just less will be better than less of if a term was used as adj to modify commitment and career.

in this problem it's wrong, so i'm not sure it's wise to analyze at all.

the only acceptable version of "less of" that i've seen appears in sentences dealing with literal fractions of something:
james ate less of the roast than did each of his brothers.

even in this case, it's probably better to say "a smaller portion of...", or something else along those lines.

in this construction, "less" would count as either a noun or a pronoun (i'm not sure which - the distinction isn't terribly important unless you're talking about relative pronouns)

--

2)there are three types of sentences for comparison ,i wonder if they are all ok in gramma.
#1 young people have less career than their parents did.
#2 young people have career less than that of their parents.
#3 young people have less career than that of their parents.

these would all be incorrect. there are several problems.

first, "career" is not a quantitative concept, so it makes no sense to modify "career" with "less".
you would want to express this notion using a word that can be quantified:
young people have [i]less demanding careers than their parents had.
etc.

second, you can't say that "young people" (plural) have "a career" (singular). it has to be "careers".


Hi Ron

I have two questions regarding your answer here:

1. you can't say that "young people" (plural) have "a career" (singular). it has to be "careers". - However, in this correct Prep sentence: "Developed by Pennsylvania's Palatine Germans about 1750, Conestoga wagons had high wheels capable of crossing rutted roads, muddy flats, and the nonroads of the prairie, and a floor that was curved upward at both ends to prevent cargo from shifting on steep grades. ", why it should be "a floor" instead of "floors"?

Similarly, do you say Birds have heads and hearts or do you say Birds have a head and a heart?

About the usage of helping verbs in comparison or parallelism:

It is incorrect to say:
I have never seen an aardvark, but last year my father did.
but correct to say:
I have never seen an aardvark, but last year my father saw one.

In MGMAT book, it says if the later verb does not have the same time-tense, than you should repeat the whole sentence. But I have difficulty to understand it. Would you please list some more examples like this one?

THanks.

[RonPurewal]

hey mcmebk,
these are perceptive questions. in fact, these questions are so perceptive that you should probably think about just going and taking the test and getting it over with.
what i mean is this: the SC problems mostly just require the recognition of larger themes (parallelism, agreement, meaning, placement of modifiers, etc.). if you've advanced to the point where you are thinking about things this small, then there's actually a danger in further studying -- i.e., if you study more and more and more, you may start concentrating on the tiny little subtleties, to the extent that they can begin to distract you from the larger themes that dominate the actual SC problems.

so, watch out for that. if you are seeing these little nitpicky things so much that they are blocking your view of things like parallelism and pronoun agreement, then ... it's time to go take the test, and be done with it all.

1. you can't say that "young people" (plural) have "a career" (singular). it has to be "careers". - However, in this correct Prep sentence: "Developed by Pennsylvania's Palatine Germans about 1750, Conestoga wagons had high wheels capable of crossing rutted roads, muddy flats, and the nonroads of the prairie, and a floor that was curved upward at both ends to prevent cargo from shifting on steep grades. ", why it should be "a floor" instead of "floors"?

key question: is there actually a split of "floor" vs. "floors" in that question? if not, then it's a non-issue.

--- warning: i don't think you'll have to know anything below this line for the exam ---
(i.e., if you see this kind of split in a problem, look for some other criterion for elimination first!)

if there is a split, then here's what's going on here: if you are talking about a phonemenon that is largely identical or similar across the examples in question, then it's customary to use the singular.
e.g.,
The footrace is a form of competition in every human culture ever examined by anthropologists.
("the footrace" refers to essentially the same phenomenon in all of these cultures -- since there's essentially no variety in the nature of a footrace -- so, singular.)
but...
Word games are extremely popular among smartphone users.
(there's a huge diversity of word games, so the plural makes more sense here.)

[RonPurewal]

Similarly, do you say Birds have heads and hearts or do you say Birds have a head and a heart?

so, yeah, this would depend on whether the context implies a diversity of phenomena, or whether it's implying that all the heads/hearts are similar.
e.g.,
birds have a mostly hollow skeleton, which facilitates the task of flying.
--> sure, there might be some variations among the birds' skeletons, but the point is that the skeletons are all essentially identical in the respect we're talking about here.
hence, singular "skeleton".
BUT
--> note that the birds themselves are not considered essentially similar on the whole. (in fact, the point of this sentence is to note that birds in general have this feature, regardless of their other differences.)
hence, plural "birds".
if you were talking about one species of bird, you might write the singular instead ("The cardinal has...")

again, these are not what i would call "rules". instead, this is just "i'm a professional writer, and i'm telling you what i can recollect from years of reading, writing, and editing." it's purely empirical and intuitive, so i am not making any claims to 100% accuracy here.

... and, pardon the redundancy, but make sure this is not the first criterion you try to use if you encounter it in a problem! there are probably much more straightforward things to look at.

[RonPurewal]

It is incorrect to say:
I have never seen an aardvark, but last year my father did.
but correct to say:
I have never seen an aardvark, but last year my father saw one.

nah, these are both fine. i know the book says that -- that's due for some editing.
x_x

you can have a helping verb in a different tense -- no problem, as long as there's no ambiguity about the verb to which it's referring.
e.g.,
i will never sing that song as well as you did last night.
--> here, "did" means "sang [that song]", corresponding to the same verb (in the future tense) in the first part of the sentence. there's nothing wrong with this.

[mcmebk]

hey mcmebk,
these are perceptive questions. in fact, these questions are so perceptive that you should probably think about just going and taking the test and getting it over with.
what i mean is this: the SC problems mostly just require the recognition of larger themes (parallelism, agreement, meaning, placement of modifiers, etc.). if you've advanced to the point where you are thinking about things this small, then there's actually a danger in further studying -- i.e., if you study more and more and more, you may start concentrating on the tiny little subtleties, to the extent that they can begin to distract you from the larger themes that dominate the actual SC problems.

so, watch out for that. if you are seeing these little nitpicky things so much that they are blocking your view of things like parallelism and pronoun agreement, then ... it's time to go take the test, and be done with it all.

1. you can't say that "young people" (plural) have "a career" (singular). it has to be "careers". - However, in this correct Prep sentence: "Developed by Pennsylvania's Palatine Germans about 1750, Conestoga wagons had high wheels capable of crossing rutted roads, muddy flats, and the nonroads of the prairie, and a floor that was curved upward at both ends to prevent cargo from shifting on steep grades. ", why it should be "a floor" instead of "floors"?

key question: is there actually a split of "floor" vs. "floors" in that question? if not, then it's a non-issue.

--- warning: i don't think you'll have to know anything below this line for the exam ---
(i.e., if you see this kind of split in a problem, look for some other criterion for elimination first!)

if there is a split, then here's what's going on here: if you are talking about a phonemenon that is largely identical or similar across the examples in question, then it's customary to use the singular.
e.g.,
The footrace is a form of competition in every human culture ever examined by anthropologists.
("the footrace" refers to essentially the same phenomenon in all of these cultures -- since there's essentially no variety in the nature of a footrace -- so, singular.)
but...
Word games are extremely popular among smartphone users.
(there's a huge diversity of word games, so the plural makes more sense here.)

Hi Ron

For something not so relevant to the question, but only to the comments you made above:

For some time I have been feeling very comfortable with SC Prep questions as if I had the grasp - as you said, I can see the big pic so well that I start to pick up very tiny things. I took your advice and dropped SC for a week, when I was working on CAT tests, I panically realized that I have even lost the "big pic" in a test condition, now I have seriously self-doubt.

If you don't mind, would you please tell me what this means (hopefully it does not violate the forum rules):

The dog was taken to receive vaccine - I know this is correct, because the dog receives vaccine;

The building was destroyed to avoid potential damage if collapsing - Is this correct, sine the building can not avoid potential damage;

The building was destroyed by policemen to avoid potential damage - Is this one correct, since it can be inferred that "policemen" are to avoid....

The building was destroyed to keep it from falling down accidentally - Is this one correct? Since "it" refers to the building so the implied performer of the action "avoid" can not be "the building"? Otherwise it should be "itself"?

Much appreciated.

[dkxdkx199249]

[incorrect statements removed]

Ron, here I found two GMAT PREP sentences that seem to be an exception of this rule.
a. "Recent breakthroughs in technology have made it possible for high-definition digital video cameras to capture material with a degree of fidelity nearly comparable to that of 35-millimeter film and to project it digitally in theaters with no resulting loss of image quality.
b. "During the same period in which the Maya were developing a hieroglyphic system of writing, the Aztec people also developed a written language, but it was not as highly sophisticated as that of the Maya and was more pictographic in nature.
Here I can't see any significant difference between these two sentences and the sentence discussed-- none of them have a corresponding possessive.
Could you please help me?

[RonPurewal]

[incorrect statements removed]

Ron, here I found two GMAT PREP sentences that seem to be an exception of this rule.
a. "Recent breakthroughs in technology have made it possible for high-definition digital video cameras to capture material with a degree of fidelity nearly comparable to that of 35-millimeter film and to project it digitally in theaters with no resulting loss of image quality.
b. "During the same period in which the Maya were developing a hieroglyphic system of writing, the Aztec people also developed a written language, but it was not as highly sophisticated as that of the Maya and was more pictographic in nature.
Here I can't see any significant difference between these two sentences and the sentence discussed-- none of them have a corresponding possessive.
Could you please help me?

You win.
I've edited out the wrong stuff, just so that future readers don't have to deal with it.

[Suapplle]

Hi,Ron,I am still confused.
in choice (D),if "commitment" is uncountable,why there is "a " before the commitment ?please clarify,thanks!

[RonPurewal]

Hi,Ron,I am still confused.
in choice (D),if "commitment" is uncountable,why there is "a " before the commitment ?please clarify,thanks!

"Less of a/an ___" doesn't refer to a literal quantity. It's an expression that means, roughly, "not as true" or "not having as much of the essence of a/an ____".
Since that's an awkward definition, here is an example:
My grandfather thought that crying made you less of a man. (i.e., like "less manly")

Much more importantly, "smaller" vs. "less of a" is there just to distract you. You don't actually need it to solve the problem.
* You can eliminate a/b/c because the comparison has two possible meanings: (1) commitment to work vs. commitment to family, or (2) young people's commitment to work vs. their parents' and grandparents' commitment to work.
* You can eliminate E because "than" is there without "less".

[Suapplle]

Hi,Ron,I am still confused.
in choice (D),if "commitment" is uncountable,why there is "a " before the commitment ?please clarify,thanks!

"Less of a/an ___" doesn't refer to a literal quantity. It's an expression that means, roughly, "not as true" or "not having as much of the essence of a/an ____".
Since that's an awkward definition, here is an example:
My grandfather thought that crying made you less of a man. (i.e., like "less manly")

Much more importantly, "smaller" vs. "less of a" is there just to distract you. You don't actually need it to solve the problem.
* You can eliminate a/b/c because the comparison has two possible meanings: (1) commitment to work vs. commitment to family, or (2) young people's commitment to work vs. their parents' and grandparents' commitment to work.
* You can eliminate E because "than" is there without "less".

great explanation,I get it,thank you so much, Ron O(∩_∩)O~

[RonPurewal]

You're welcome.