United States Senator Daniel Inouye was appointed to several posts within the Democratic party during his first term, that included assistant majority whip and vice-chair of the Democratic Senatorial Committee.

A. that included

B. which includes

C. including

D. some of which were

E. among them being


ron,
i chose the right and switched.aah!

could you please tell me why a, b, d, e are wrong?

i switched from c to d.

Please somebody explain what's wrong with D, it seems to me more appropriate. in S-V agreement and clearly refer back to 'posts'

Some of which were assistant majority whip and vice-chair of the Democratic Senatorial Committee.

This makes it an independent clause which needs to be joined with the first independent clause by a conjunction or ';'. Hence not acceptable.

editor: this is incorrect. this clause still uses the relative pronoun "which", and so is still a relative clause.
any constructions based on "which" - including to which, from which, some of which, etc. - must be used in exactly the same way as "which" itself.
-- ron

this is sloppy writing.
are you sure this is an OFFICIAL problem?

* first of all, "during his first term" should be placed in front of the sentence (with a comma afterward) for the sake of clarity.
placed where it is, it destroys the clarity of any modifier, even the ostensibly correct answer.

* second, the posts mentioned aren't "posts within the Democratic party"; they're posts in the Senate itself.
this is a BIG mistake, and is not the sort of mistake that would be committed by the official problem writers. no way.

--

(a), (b), and (e) are clearly wrong.
i will withhold judgment on (c) and (d) until you tell me where you got the problem.

i will also provide EXTREMELY terse explanations of those three wrong answers. if you want more details, tell me where you got this problem, because i sincerely doubt that it's official.

(a)
can't have "that" after comma

(b)
"which" incorrectly applies to "first term"

(e)
ridiculous
horrible
awful

This is a GPREP problem, Ron. You can trust me.
(I 've re-run the CD,so I can't produce the proof).

(d) is incorrect because it misuses a "which" construction.

all constructions built on preposition + "which" - such as of which, from which, some of which, with which, etc. - must be used in the same way as "which" itself.

in this case, the "which" is trying to refer to "several posts", which is way too far away from the comma to be acceptable.

if this is really a gmat problem, then the quality of those problems is declining at an alarming rate (or the problem writers were asleep, drunk, etc. when they wrote this problem ... ugh)

Thanks for trusting and giving the tip. Indeed, it IS a gprep problem.
As you have mentioned, the answer is (C).

ugh.

horrible.

thanks.

excuse me, 2 questions plz
Ron, at my post, u've proved me the view that the structure "N of N" and its usage of relative clause. (u tolded me that the usage of verb of relative nouns "which/that" depends on the meaning of the reltive clause) Is that application also similar to this prep problem?(DI was appointed to several posts within the D during his first term, whic includes.....) I wonder whether the usage of "withn" and "during" is similar to the usage of "of".

If possible, does "which include (plural)" clearly indicate to the several posts(plural)??

the meaning is clear in the latter modifier clause, so can we identify that the clause directly modify "several posts"?

I come with a idea of JUMP to think the usage of modifiers.

badly illustrated, I hope for your instruction. thx

can't say.

i've seen official examples in which "which" refers to NOUN1 in the construction NOUN1 + PREP + NOUN2, but i've never seen "which" referring to NOUN1 in the construction NOUN1 + PREP + NOUN2 + PREP + NOUN3.
this is not to say that it would be wrong -- there's just zero evidence in either direction, from what i can find.

i would bet a large sum of money that you will not face this issue on the official test.


which modifier clause? the one in the correct answer?

which modifier clause? the one in the correct answer?[/quote]

yes, the participle clause (including....).
Can we just find out the meaning of such participle clause to identify which objects (several posts) is modified? (at first glance, is that deduction make sense prior to picking out any choices?)

I can only express awkward sentence to make you clearly understand.
very sorry for my poor illustration
regards

Hi,

First off, I want to say that I agree with Ron that this problem is just terrible. It's awful. I saw it first hand with a private student two months ago and we moved very quickly through it eliminating all but C, but I *hated* picking C.

To answer your question, we can in fact deduce that the phrase that begins with ", including" modifies the clause prior and "including" directly relates to the several posts that the senator held during his term. That is because ", including" begins an adverbial modifier and these types of modifiers can provide additional information on entire clauses. Though "including" and "several posts" match up nicely, their relationship doesn't define the entire modifier relationship. You may be tempted to force a relationship between "several posts" and the options in the answer choices because most of those answer choices are noun modifiers such as "which," "that," etc. Noun modifiers need to touch the noun they modify but adverbial modifiers are more nimble. For this reason, including works.

In the future, I'd approach this problem the same way I did the first time; knock out A and B quickly due to misplace noun modifier, then E for "being," and kill of D due to noun modifier issue again. C stinks but it's correct grammatically!

Thanks,
Chris

_________________
Chris Brusznicki
MGMAT Instructor
Chicago, IL

Chris,
As I understand, adverbial modifier modifies ACTION or entire clause, but not NOUN. If it is right, how “including” relates to "the several posts"?

"including" is modifying the prior clause which includes "the several posts". Again, this question stinks but C is the only answer choice that is even tolerable.

_________________
Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor

Thanks Chris, now elimination of "D" makes sense. Also Ron's class (Thursdays with Ron) helped me in understanding the use of "including".
You guys are the best!