According to Italy's top anti-Mafia prosecutor, the ailing mobster came to take refuge in Corleone, a town famous because of the “The Godfather” and near to those he most trusted.


In the above SC question, is the "he" in "he most trusted" not ambiguous? Is it clear whether it is referring to the ailing mobster or the anti-Mafia prosecutor?

hi -

as noted a few other times on this forum - most noticeably in the GMATPrep verbal folder, but in a couple places in the other verbal folders - pronoun ambiguity is not an absolute rule. in other words, the test will clearly tolerate a certain degree of pronoun ambiguity.

in general, we've found:
the gmat will tolerate pronoun ambiguity when both of the following are satisfied:
1. the intended referent makes much more sense than do the other possible referents,
and
2. the intended referent is PARALLEL TO THE PRONOUN, and the other possible referents are NOT parallel to the pronoun.

in this case, both are satisfied.
note especially #2: "he" is the subject of "trusted". "ailing mobster" is the subject of its clause (and is thus parallel to the pronoun). "prosecutor" is not the subject of anything; it's the object of a prepositional phrase.

hope that helps.

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

I don't know why C is wrong because it still works.....the mobster could be famous for "the God father"....and I thought A needs "is" before near?

Can someone clarify this for me?

According to Italy's top anti-Mafia prosecutor, the ailing mobster came to take refuge in Corleone, a town famous because of the “The Godfather” and near to those he most trusted.
A)the ailing mobster came to take refuge in Corleone, a town famous because of “The Godfather” and near to those he most trusted
B)famous because of “The Godfather,” the ailing mobster came to take refuge in Corleone, a town near to those he most trusted
C)the ailing mobster, famous because of “The Godfather,” came to take refuge in Corleone, a town near to those he most trusted
D)near to those he most trusted, the ailing mobster came to take refuge in Corleone, a town famous because of “The Godfather”
E)Corleone, famous because of “The Godfather,” was the town that the ailing mobster came to take refuge in because it was near to those he most trusted.


C is clearly wrong because it distorts the meaning of the sentence.The town,not the mobster, was famous because of godfather.

Could you please clarify my doubt:The Manhattan SC guide clearly states
GRAMMAR
MEANING
CONCISION
should be given priority in the mentioned order while solving a question.
Now choices A and E both are grammatically correct but choice E is lengthier than A.
However,I chose choice E because it clarifies the meaning of the sentence:shows a cause and effect ,the reason Why the mobster took refuge in the town:Because it was near to those he most trusted
In choice A this relationship is not shown,although the modifiers are placed correctly
Since MEANING TRUMPS CONCISION,
Please provide an explanation

1) you don't want to alter the meaning of the sentence. unless the meaning of the original is absurd, you should pick a choice that preserves the original meaning.

2) nope.
"near to those he most trusted" is the right half of a parallel structure (______ and _____).
the left half is "famous because of..."
these are adjective phrases (both "near" and "famous" are adjectives). therefore, they are parallel. if you throw a verb onto one of them, they will no longer be parallel.

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

...but it doesn't "clarify" the meaning of the sentence. there's nothing in the original from which you can deduce a cause-effect relationship!
this isn't a clarification - it's an unjustified assumption.

also, (e) contains an actual grammatical error: the modifier "that the ailing mobster came to take refuge in" ends with a preposition.
this is unacceptable; the correct version is "in which the ailing mobster came to take refuge".

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

Hi Ron, although none of the answer choices really give a choice, don't you think that the use of the word "those" in the question is not ambiguous? If those refers to people (as it ideally should, because we are talling about "trust"), then "those" does not have a referent. If, on the other hand, "those" is intented to refer to "towns", then the "new copy" created by "those" in the sentence does not match with the original copy (i.e. singular word "town").

Although I answered the question correctly while giving the MGMAT, the answer choices threw me off initially because I could not find any answer choice with a better usage of "those" - the first criteria on which I thought I will be able to eliminate a few options!

Sorry for too many apostrophes....

Thanks for the explanations Ron.

One question -

'Modifier phrase cant end in a preposition' - is this a general rule?

Best Regards

also, (e) contains an actual grammatical error: the modifier "that the ailing mobster came to take refuge in" ends with a preposition.
this is unacceptable; the correct version is "in which the ailing mobster came to take refuge".[/quote]



I'm a little confused about this rule as well!

Do we eliminate clauses that end in preposition? If not, how do we know when it is acceptable?

Isn't this first choice suggest that the town was famous because 'near to those he most trusted', making it awkward?

"those" is fine here because it needs to be. :) you are right to look for an antecedent, and if a grammatically correct sentence had one you would go with that, but there are certain rare uses of pronouns that don't actually require an antecedent:
"it is raining"
"those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones"

_________________
Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

it is. it doesn't show up very often, but you won't find a grammatically correct GMAT sentence where a phrase ends with a preposition..

_________________
Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

not at all. the town is famous for one thing and near to something else..

_________________
Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

According to Italy's top anti-Mafia prosecutor, the ailing mobster came to take refuge in Corleone, a town famous because of the “The Godfather” and near to those he most trusted.

I have a question regarding the correct answer I provided above: is parallelism clear in the underlined part? when I first read the sentence, I thought that the following two phrases were parallel:
a town famous
Because of the "The Godfather"
and near to those he most trusted

In other words, I though that the town was famous because of the "The Godfather" and (because of) near to those he most trusted.
Since the second phrase did not make sense to me, I thought that this option was wrong.
Also, incidentally, famous because of is the proper idiom? -- I always thought it's famous for.

thank you

What you've done here is forced your chosen interpretation onto a question that allows two interpretations. If there are two possible interpretations of a sentence, you have to allow the sentence to take on either interpretation and not eliminate an answer just because it chooses a different correct interpretation than the one you wanted to see..

_________________
Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor