if you think about what the sentence is supposed to mean before you start looking at its grammar -- something you should do on every sentence you ever read -- then it's obvious that "they" refers to the people in the study, not the birds (and especially not the magpie attacks).

context is king!

Hi Ron,

Just watched your video about a new approach/ verb tenses. the part about drilling a particular grammar discipline over and over has really helped me.

with that said, during the video i was reading choice E and thought perhaps verb tenses might be enough to eliminate it

The first detailed study of magpie attacks in Australia indicates 98 percent of men and 75 percent of women who were born in the country, by the time they reached adulthood had been attacked by the birds

when i try to envision the entire sentence on the timeline, the "were born" would occur after the "had been attacked"

not to mention "were born" would be around the same time as "reached adulthood"

so my question is, are the verbs inside the relative clause "who were born.." sort of immune to this timeline thing? I suppose it's not a part of the main action of the sentence, but really just modifying the men/women as opposed to making them do actions?


therefore, i chose choice C based on verbs alone because it circumvented this problem using the past participle modifier "born". since having "born" as a verb implies that the author is trying to place that action on the timeline with respect to other actions when it's not necessary. as a modifier its purpose is to show they were born in the country and the timing of that is obvious.

Another question based on Ron's response that the prepositional modifier by the time they reached adulthood is ambiguous. i simply placed answer choice E into the sentence for easy reference and added a bolded comma

The first detailed study of magpie attacks in Australia indicates that 98 percent of men and 75 percent of women who were born in the country, by the time they reached adulthood, had been attacked by the birds


there was an OG problem that i couldn't post here with a similar modifier problem, so this might help clear up that issue (which is still unresolved on other forums!)

So now the prepositional modifier, according to my understanding of the modifiers from the MGMAT SC Guide, can no longer modify a verb before it [since a verb modifier following a verb should not have a comma]. In other words, now it cannot modify "women who were born". Now, however, it could potentially modify the following verb, or it could modify the previous noun "country" as a non essential modifier.

Am i making the right conclusions based on verb/noun modifiers and punctuation? In the OG problem, the OG solution says that a modifier similar to the one above could be ambiguous since it could modify the verb/clause before or the verb/clause after.

thanks again

Ron, you post the following.pls, help

kvitkod wrote:
Hi, Ron,

Basing on your explanation, I believe that pronoun in D is more or less OK. What other flaws violate Option D?



* the modifier "that..."is used to refer to people. ("that" can only be used to refer to non-persons; it must be changed to "who" for people)

* "reach" is in the present tense; these people reached adulthood in the past, so that tense makes no sense.


"that" can not refer to people. This point is in GMAT grammar not in general grammar. I see general grammar permit "that" refers to people.
Is my thinking correct?
Pls, help.

Dave, the ”had been attacked” is the correct construction as long as it occurs before something else in the sentence; in this case it occurs before ”they reached adulthood”. When the people were born is irrelevant, because the attacks are linked to reaching adulthood. On the other hand, in your second post, by adding the comma you’ve linked the ”had been attacked” to ”were born”, which actually does cause a problem as you’ve identified. BTW, ”born” is definitely not a verb in this sentence; it is a modifier..

As for the other questions in your second post, they are a little abstract and perhaps over-generalizations. It would definitely be more helpful if you could provide some concrete examples so we can help you with those..

Thanghnvn, it sounds like you have the right idea. You definitely need to make sure you understand GMAT grammar rules and apply them even if they conflict with what you’ve seen elsewhere..

_________________
Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

Thanks Tim. I was hoping you could elaborate on what you mean by "linked". It appears that when the modifier (bolded below) is surrounded by commas, you are suggesting that it is some kind of non-essential modifier allowing the verbs "were born" and "reached adulthood" to be in sequence [linked] with one another. But I searched through the mgmat sc guide and I see no mention of non-essential verb modifiers.



The first detailed study of magpie attacks in Australia indicates that 98 percent of men and 75 percent of women who were born in the country, by the time they reached adulthood, had been attacked by the birds

And as for what I meant by the second post:

that same bolded prepositional modifier above. It could be a non-essential noun modifier modifying "country" (which i think makes no sense). or It could be an adverbial prepositional modifier modifying the following "had been attacked".

The first detailed study of magpie attacks in Australia indicates that 98 percent of men and 75 percent of women who were born in the country by the time they reached adulthood, had been attacked by the birds

without the comma before it, it could be an adverbial prepositional modifier "who were born" OR it could modify "had been attacked".

Am i correct about what the modifiers are modifying? if so, then i would imagine the modifier could be ambiguous.

You seem to have the right idea about what I meant by my previous post. With commas at both ends of the bold phrase it becomes nonessential and it sounds like people were attacked by birds before they were born. With a comma only at the end, it sounds like people were born by the time they reached adulthood, which, while obviously true, is so obviously true that it is obviously not the intent of the author of the sentence. :)

_________________
Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

thanks Tim,

earlier Ron said that a modifier in the middle of a sentence is either enclosed in commas, or not enclosed at all. Strangely, answer choice C seems to have one enclosed on one side

The first detailed study of magpie attacks in Australia indicates that by the time they reached adulthood, 98 percent of men and 75 percent of women born in the country had been attacked by the birds

the sentence has no ambiguity at all for me. In fact, the way I see the sentence is the bolded modifier is an initial modifier for the subsequent clause. The past-perfect is relative to the simple past in the prepositional modifier. but nevertheless, it's a modifier enclosed only on the right hand side.

by the time seems to be a special prepositional phrase. it has a subject/verb in it "they reached adulthood".

is it a special case?

Yes. :) You could have a comma before the "by" but you don't absolutely have to. They don't here and that's consistent among all five answers. (They won't make you decide on that - they won't give you something like that both with and without that comma, because you can do it either way.)

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Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director of Online Community
ManhattanGMAT

i didn't get your modifier rule (if in middle of sentence)
Even MG S.C. Guide-4 edition Doesn't say it either....Can you put some O.G. Examples ,So that i Can assure and make It thumb rule?Even In the choice C Is contradicting your rule.

sory I post again

in many og questions, I see that " that clause", relative clause can be acceptable because it appear in OA.

but in question 130 in OG 11, and also in gmatprep, in which "who clause" is considered correct and "that clause" is considered incorrect when this relative clause refers to persons.

As a result of the medical advances, many people that might at one time have died as children of such infections as diptheria, pneumonia or rheumatic fever now live well into old age.

a. that might at one time have died as children
b. who might once have died in childhood
c. that as children might once have died
d. who in childhood might have at one time died
e. who, when they are children, might at one time have died


so my conclusion is that

"who relative clause" is prefered than "that relative clause" when the modifier refers to persons. However, "that relative clause" refering to persons is not allway wrong. This is not hard and fast rule as Ron used to said so. I said this is not absolute error.

is my thinking correct? Ron,Manhantan experts. Pls, confirm

kuldeep,
interesting. noted.
still,
* i've never seen that kind of construction in the part of a problem that's actually tested;
* in fact, i've never seen punctuation explicitly tested at all.

still, that's a good observation; i'll bookmark it.

if the pronoun "that" is used to stand for a person, it is flat-out incorrect.

Hi Ron ,

On what basis have you stated the below rule ?



either of the following two constructions would be appropriate:
...by the time they reach adulthood, they have been attacked...
...by the time they reached adulthood, they had been attacked...

So that we can apply the same to other cases

Is it because the tense should be consistent in a sentence ?

it's because the tenses have to be used correctly. please refer to the verb tenses section of our SC strategy guide for information about how to use these tenses..

_________________
Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor