#4 In addition to her work on the miocene homicide fosiil record, Mary Leakey contributed to archaelogy with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting East African paintings.

(A) Leakey contributed to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting

(B) Leakey contributed to archaeology by her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and by painstakingly documenting

(C) Leakey was a contributor to archaelogy with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and with her painstaking documentation of

(D) Leakey's contributions to archaelogy include her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and her painstaking documentation of

(E) Leakey's contributions to archaelogy include her discovering the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstaking documentation

http://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/in-addition-to-her-work-on-the-miocene-homicide-fossil-t499.html

Stacey,

As per your comment on the post above (hyperlink), D is better but how what does Her refer to?

I think in D HER can't refer to Leakey's ----am I missing something?

Please confim.

possessive pronouns can refer to possessive nouns. so her can refer to Leakey's

Ohhhh....man how can I miss that!!!

Thanks for pointing that out. Answer is Indeed D here because I got this wrong on my GPREP and the correct answer is D.

Saurabh Malpani

Dear Moderators,

I understand the above has been covered extensively previously.

GMAT consider D as the correct answer, I am not trying to argue against it, but wouldn't you agree the option has a possessive poison?

"Jose's room is so messy that his mother calls him a pig" - as stated in ManGMATPrep SC.

Sigh.
KH

Dear KH,

the possessive poison applies to subject and object pronouns, such as HIM in your example. HER (in this example), though, is a possessive pronoun, and can refer back to Mary Leakey's work, a possessive noun. Your sentence even shows that:

Jose's room is so messy that HIS mother calls HIM a pig.

In your example, only HIM is wrong, while his is absolutely legitimate. This also applies to the given question.

The only difference that might confuse you here is the fact that female possessive and subject/object pronouns are the same: HER
Only for male, they are different: HIS/HIM.

So in such a case (female) you have to pause for a moment and figure out whether it is used as a possessive pronoun, like here, or a subject/object pronoun.

Hope that sheds light for you,
chron

Thanks chron

You are the best.

Are u a gmat tutor or something? amazing. I have searched the net for explanation to no avail.

Good luck.
KH

Thanks to all of our guests for weighing in and helping out on this one.

-Brian Lange
Manhattan GMAT

WITH POSSESSIVE POISON WE need to just be careful of the referent. And if th referent is correctly used then possessive use is ok? IS that the takeaway here?

basically:
if the referent is a 'normal' (non-possessive) noun, then the pronoun can be in any case.
if the referent is in the possessive case, then the pronoun can only be possessive.

BUT

i wouldn't sweat bullets over this rule; as far as we know, it has NEVER been the deciding factor on any official gmat, og, or gmatprep question. it only appears in the og once (#86 in the verbal supplement), and that question can be decided by other means anyway. so, in short, i wouldn't really worry about it; concentrate on the rules that matter more.

Hi, I just wonder whether "in addition to..." *must* logically modifies the subject of the main clause.
Thanks in advance.

in the way the gmat traditionally uses such modifiers, yes, it would have to modify the subject of the following clause.

again, the gmat is unpredictable, so i'll stop well short of making any sort of guarantees; however, i can confidently say that that's the rule the gmat follows the vast majority of the time, at least.

umm...I just saw a question from OG(published in 86) using such rule to eliminate choices...
Thanks Ron!

which rule?

wait, you're looking at an OG that was published in 1986? or do you mean question number 86 in the current version?

oops, should be #19 in OG Edition 10.
Anyway, OG eliminates the choices that "in additional to..." cannot logical modify the subject of the following clause.
I think that I have seen another example in OG in a different edition. Will post under this thread if I find it again.

umm....GMATPrep somehow contains a different version of the same question:

In addition to her work on the Miocene hominid fossil record, Mary Leakey contributed to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting East African cave paintings.

(A) Leakey contributed to archaeology through her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and through her painstaking documentation of
(B) Leakey contributed to archaeology by her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and by painstakingly documenting
(C) Leakey was a contributor to archaeology by discoverying the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and with her painstaking documentation of
(D) Leakey's contributions to archaeology include her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and her painstakingly documentating
(E) Leakey's contributions to archaeology include her discovering the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstaking documentation of

OA is A instead of E.
The explanation for OG 10 #19 uses the rule I mentioned above to eliminate choices.
If it is the case, then shouldn't the answer be E?