Source MGMAT Test

Municipal governments are beginning to confront the growing pension liabilities; this leads local politicians throughout the country to become increasingly vocal about restraining costs and limiting services.
the growing pension liabilities; this leads
their growing pension liabilities; leading
the growth in their pension liabilities, which leads
their growing pension liabilities, leading
their growing pension liabilities, that leads

I have couple of questions here :

Please explain why each choice is wrong?
And in the MGMAT explanations I see "Additionally, “the growing pension liabilities” in the 1st part of the sentence is incorrect in its use of the article “the,” as the pension liabilities were not referenced earlier in the sentence. "

Can you please explain what eactly do they mean? why is this usage wrong?

Can some MGMAT Instructor please reply to this one????

A is wrong for the reason you quote. I can't say something like "I enjoy the TV show" unless I've given some clue as to which TV show I mean. "the" is too specific to be used without some degree of certainty regarding what specific thing you're referring to.

B is a quick one; any time you see a semicolon in a sentence your first instinct should be to make sure the words on each side of the semicolon can stand alone as a sentence. This is not the case for the portion after the semicolon.

C and E are both wrong because we don't know what the "that" and the "which" refer to. We do know that both of those words if used in this manner must refer back to nouns, but in this sentence it is clearly the act of confronting the liabilities (in other words, NOT any noun) that is leading the politicians to do their thing. E should also be a red flag; usually the correct usage of that as a relative pronoun is without a comma preceding it.

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

Sounds strange.....I posted this on Jan 21st and got a response on April 6th . Now should I think that there were so many questions that my question got answered after 3 months???

Please let me know if there is a way of getting the answers pretty quickly or if this forum is only meant for MGMAT class rooms students? I bought quite a few books of MGMAT and the tests as well , am I not eligible for this?

Everyone has been waiting this long to get responses, unfortunately - even students in our classes. This forum is a free service that is completely open to the public. Unfortunately, we have been getting way too many posts for the amount of time we have to answer them.

We have added time and additional instructors to the forums in the last few weeks. We are also looking at some changes that we can institute in order to speed up the response time for our course, self-study, and book students, but this is going to require a technical solution from our IT department. They're working on it, but it's going to take some time.

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Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director of Online Community
ManhattanGMAT

In the Right Option (D), We have Comma + ING Modifier and as per Ron's explanations, COMMA + ING Modifier should also apply to the Subject of the Clause. Here the Subject is 'Municipal Governments'.

Can someone please explain how the Subject applies here to 'Leading Local Politicians throughout the country..'?

That's actually not quite correct. Comma + ING modifier is an adverbial modifier. Adverbial modifiers can be modifying adverbs or entire clauses. This sort of construction frequently is used to show the result of the main clause.

See Ron's comments here: the-number-of-people-flying-first-t5600-30.html

For example:
The rain fell, providing water but flooding streets.

The "providing water but flooding streets" is an adverbial modifier giving us more information about the rain falling; in this case it tells us what happened when the rain fell.

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Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor

Hi jnelson0612

Thanks for taking time to respond to my query. Below is the link where Ron mentions that ING Modifier should also apply to the Subject of the Clause and that is where I was confused in this particular problem.

post30766.html#p30766

Thanks
Vijay

Vijay, thanks! I get it now.

Well, maybe you could justify this by saying that the action of the municipal governments is leading to this effect, so in this way the governments themselves would be leading? Hmm. Let me run this by Tim and get his take on it also.

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Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor

the difference here is between the concepts of "modify" and "apply to". "apply to" simply implies having some connection, whereas "modify" has a much more strict definition. comma-ing will serve as an adverbial modifier, as both Jamie and Ron have confirmed..

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

Thanks Tim & Jamie for excellent explanation on VERBING Modifier. It clarified all my doubts.

-Vijay

glad to hear it!

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

i have read in one of the posts of Ron that possessive + verbing are too awkward to be seen in the correct answer choices
here is that post :http://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/post18293.html#18293
i have even copied that text below :
ron says:
so, incredibly enough, the correct version of the sentence here would actually be "the fields' posing ...".
the gmat considers such constructions fatally awkward, and won't include them in correct answers (i believe this has been articulated in the official guide at a couple of different points, so i'm not just making an empirical claim). therefore, you can ignore such constructions outright, and eliminate choices that contain them.

what perplexes me though is isint this rule flouted by the correct option D in this problem
D reads : their growing pension liabilities, leading
isint "their growing " a possesive verbing
can Ron plz help me understand as what am i getting wrong here
thanks and regards

In this sentence "growing" is an adjective that describes the liabilities. Key difference is you can take out "growing" here and the sentence's core is fine, but if you take out the "posing" in the other example, the sentence doesn't work b/c the word is functioning as a verb.

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Joe Lucero
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

@joe u mean to say that in the following sentence :
Although no proof yet exists of electromagnetic fields' generated by household appliances posing any health threat......
"posing" is acting as a verb ?
i thought this complete expression " electromagnetic fields' generated by household appliances posing" is acting as object of preposition
of the preposition "of"

as per me the verb in the above mentioned sentence is "exists"
so if "exists " is the verb then how can ur reasoning be justified ?
moreover when ron mentioned in that post (the link which i added in my previous post ) that noun possesive verbing are awkward he never mentioned that this guideline is subject to exception .can u plz tell me as what are the exception to this guideline
thanks and regards