Mary buys cookies made with SugarFree ,an artificial sweetener , which tastes as sweet as the corn syrup that her brother loves but where there are fewer calories than in an equivalent amount of corn syrup .

The answer is :
Mary buys cookies made with sugarFree, an artificial sweetener ,which tastes as sweet as corn syrup that her brother loves but which contains fewer calories than does as equivalent amount of corn syrup .

I am confused about this answer . Here we have two back to back modifiers .First one being "an artificial sweetener" and the second one being "which tastes as sweet...." . Is is not incorrect to use back to back modifiers ?

wow .. no reply ??

Rahul, we do our best to respond to all posts as quickly as we can, but bumping your post moves you to the back of our respond list.

Back to back modifiers are completely fine, in fact, most long GMAT questions will have back to back modifiers. What's important is that each modifier refers to the correct part of the sentence. For example:

Mary buys cookies made (with SugarFree,) (an artificial sweetener).

Back to back modifiers with the second modifier describing the first.

Mary buys cookies made (with SugarFree) (and with other sweeteners).

Back to back modifiers each modifying how the cookies were made.

The correct answer to this question changes "where" to "which" so that the end of the sentence has two parallel clauses that each describe SugarFree.

Mary buys cookies made with SugarFree, which tastes X but which contains Y.

By repeating "which" we are able to make two parallel elements that each clearly refer to SugarFree.

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Joe Lucero
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

Hi Joe , thanks for that .

would it be safe to say that if the modifiers are parallel then they most probably modify the same subject , and if the modifiers are not parallel the second one modifies the first one ?? Or is this too far fetched a generalization ??

Dear instructors, I have another question regarding this problem.
The explanation (page 97) says "When relative clauses are parallel, they should start with the same relative pronoun".
However, on page 57 of the SC Guide (in the chapter of Parallelism), it says "The subordinators do not have to be identical. Right: There are many people WHO speak English BUT WHOSE parents do not."
Aren't these explanations contradictory?

So my question for this problem: would it be correct to just change "where" to "in which"?

Thanks in advance.

parallel modifiers must modify the same thing, but nonparallel modifiers can modify either the same thing or different things, depending on the context..

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

one source says something SHOULD happen, but the other says it doesn't HAVE TO. nothing contradictory about that. you SHOULD study hard for the GMAT, but you don't HAVE TO. as for the change you propose, you probably wouldn't see it in a GMAT answer so it's probably irrelevant. remember, your job with SC is not actually to *correct* anything despite the name. :) you just have to identify errors..

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

Dear instructor:


In this example, if Which clause is modifier SugarFree, the comma pairs must belong to the appositive and when we remove the modifier the sentence is:
Mary buys cookies made with SugarFree which tastes as sweet as the corn syrup that her brother loves but which contains fewer calories than does an equivalent amount of corn syrup.

So, here we introduce a essential modifier by using which, is it ok?

Ikuta

no, not necessarily.

it's possible (and, in this case, it's the only possibility) that the remaining sentence would still have a comma there.

i.e., if you have the sentence
xxxxxxxxxx, yyyyyyyyyy
and you add a modifier blocked off by commas, then you'll get
xxxxxxxxxx, modifier, yyyyyyyyyy.
the point is that you clearly can't have two commas in a row, so the two commas are concatenated into one.
so, that's the same construction you'll get by inserting the modifier if the original sentence doesn't contain the comma.

... so, there's no "rule" that will allow you to discern the form of the original; you have to use existing clues (such as the "which" here, which requires a preceding comma).

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