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Sb70012 Posted 10 years ago
Grammar

------------ without their realizing his identity.

------------ without their realizing his identity.

A. The undercover agent secretly joined forces with local pushers in order to destroy the drug dealer's ring
B. Secretly determined to destroy the drug dealer's ring, the local pushers and the undercover agent joined forces
C. The undercover agent joined forces with the local pushers and secretly determined to destroy the drug dealer's ring
D. Secretly determined to break up the drug dealer's ring, the undercover agent joined forces with the local pushers (Answer)

Source: university exam

Hello,
Option A, B and C look good to me. Would you please tell me what's wrong with A, B and C?

Thank you.
  

Top answer

sb70012 Would you please tell me what's wrong with A, B and C? The sentence would not make much sense with any of those choices; it would be contradictory.

— Teechr

  • sb70012 Would you please tell me what's wrong with A, B and C?
  • The sentence would not make much sense with any of those choices; it would be contradictory.
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12 Answers
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sb70012Would you please tell me what's wrong with A, B and C?
The sentence would not make much sense with any of those choices; it would be contradictory.
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I may be missing something, but I can't see the contradictions that teechr mentions.

B has a dangling participle issue (unless the pushers also want to destroy the ring, which I suppose is deemed unlikely).

In A and C, I'm wondering whether the combinations "destroy ... without their realizing his identity" and "determined ... without their realizing his identity" are supposed to
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GPYIn A and C, I'm wondering whether the combinations "destroy ... without their realizing his identity" and "determined ... without their realizing his identity" are supposed to be faulty in that "their realizing" is not under the control of the subject of the verb.
I've gone off this idea, but I had another thought about A and C. Perhaps the test writer had
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A. to destroy the drug dealer's ring without their (?) realizing ...
B. joined forces without their (?) realizing ...
C. to destroy the drug dealer's ring without their (?) realizing ...
D. with the local pushers without their ( ! ) realizing ...

D is the only one that has a close antecedent for "their" which is suitable.
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CalifJimD is the only one that has a close antecedent for "their" which is suitable. Whoever "they" are, "they" have to be capable of reasoning enough to realize something. "ring" (not plural) won't work, because "their" is plural,
This is where we disagree, quite possibly due to AmE/BrE differences. For me, it is quite OK to use "their" to refer to the logica
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GPYquite possibly due to AmE/BrE differences
Yes, that sounds like a reasonable explanation. I hadn't even thought of British notional agreement.

CJ
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CalifJimYes, that sounds like a reasonable explanation. I hadn't even thought of British notional agreement.
No, and I didn't think of the possible AmE difficulty with this. Perhaps sb70012 can tell us which university this comes from.
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I found the original source of the question. It's taken from GMAT book but I think the person who has written this question in our university exam, has mistyped and changed some of its parts. This show that our teachers in Iran are not experienced enough even when copying a question from an original book.

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But I think without having more (enough) context, option B can also make sense because maybe the local pushers betray the forces.

B) Secretly determined to destroy the drug dealer's ring, the local pushers and the undercover agent joined forces without their realizing his identity.
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sb70012This is my analysis for option B: "their" refers back to the "forces" (groups of criminals).
This isn't possible. "forces" here is not a group of people to which "their" can refer. "join forces" is a set expression meaning to combine one's efforts.
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