Hi There,

I am working through the SC guide and have a quick question.

For the sentence below, why is Kathy repeated twice instead of she being stated?

---Kathy's suitcase was so stuffed that Kathy (not she) decided to pack another one.

There are a couple other similar problems that I am having some trouble with.

Thanks so much.

Genevieve

Only possesssive pronouns (in this case 'her') can refer back to the possessive noun.

The subject of the sentence is Kathy's suitcase(possessive noun) but not Kathy, so the subjective pronoun 'she' can't refer back to the subject (Kathy's suitcase) of the sentence. Hence the Kathy is used two times.

Hope it helps

Guest79

Genevieve,

The 'possessive poison' section is a controversial part of that strategy guide, and its solutions guide is (very uncharacteristically) rather poorly written in a few places. We've made significant edits, but, unfortunately, you can't install 'software updates' in paper books.

In any case, you are right that the repetition of 'Kathy' is undesirable (you'd only want to do that if there were more than one woman mentioned, and naming Kathy again were thus the only way to avoid fatal ambiguity). A much better way to revise the sentence: 'Kathy had stuffed her suitcase so full that she decided to pack another one.'

By the way: The OG does mention possessive poison (although not by that name), so we consider it our duty to teach it. However, if it's causing you problems, it's OK for you to put it on the back burner: it only appears in one problem out of everything in OG11 and OG verbal, and (here's the kicker) it's not even decisive in that problem anyway. (And yes, I grossly misused 'it' a couple of times in that sentence.)

Ron,

By modifying the sentence as ' Kathy had stuffed her suitcase so full that she decided to pack other one.' We changed the subject from Kathy's suitcase to 'Kathy'. So, we got rid of the Possessive noun.

By your explanation - do you mean that Possessive poison is not significant enough to select the correct answer choice anymore?
Please explain...

That is really helpful! Thanks!

Ron - could you please answer my question. Thanks

What we mean about possessive poison is that it is a VERY minor topic. Its importance is not zero, inasmuch as GMAC has bothered to address it - in exactly one OG problem (specifically, #86 in the purple Verbal Review book).

But that is the only place GMAC ever mentions it, and, as you can see for yourself, it turns out to have no bearing on the solution to that problem.

So it's unlikely that you'll see it.

--

By the way, please don't post things like 'can you answer my question?' - we are often inundated by questions, and, since we tend to follow a strict 'oldest questions first' protocol, it sometimes takes us a few days. We WILL get there.

Thanks.

As we all said, "Kathy" is a possesive noun in the sentence.

Can you please tell me, what is the meaning by "possesive noun"?

Thanks a lot.

not both versions of Kathy, actually. "Kathy's" is a possessive noun. "Kathy" is just a regular noun.

Basically, if you take a noun and take on an apostrophe-s, you've just made that noun a possessive. (or an s-apostrophe, if you want to make it plural)

So, Stacey's books are very heavy.

The regular noun Stacey does not exist in that sentence. Only the possessive noun "Stacey's" exists in that sentence. As Ron mentioned, there's this rule that, if you have a noun in possessive form, you can only use possessive pronouns to refer to that (possessive) noun. You can't use subject or object pronouns. BUT - don't worry about this too much. It is VERY unlikely to appear on the GMAT.

Thanks Stacey. This was a terrific explanation. I loved it.