GMAT follows relatively strict rules pertaining to subject-verb agreement, verb tenses, modification, & parallelism. But “Pronoun Reference” is one such error topic that is not based on a strict rule-set. For this reason, many people often mistakenly eliminate an answer choice because of “ambiguous pronoun error”, when in fact the pronoun reference is not really incorrect.
In this post, we will discuss a framework that helps with the determination of whether the pronoun is correctly used or not. In subsequent posts, we will take official questions and apply this framework to determine the correctness or ambiguity of the pronoun.
Step 1 – Understand the meaning of the sentence
The key to understanding pronouns is to understand the meaning of the sentence. So understand the meaning of the sentence and determine the best possible logical antecedent for the pronoun.
You may follow these tips:
1. Pay close attention to the subject of the main clause as that is typically the prime focus of the sentence and hence pronouns have the propensity to refer to the subject. Again, no hard and fast rule.
2. However, the above becomes an accepted practice, when there are two parallel clauses and the second clause uses a pronoun. In this case, the antecedent is the subject of the preceding clause. This ensures parallelism in the sentence – two subjects are the same entities.
The car hit the tree so badly that its engine got damaged.
The sentence implies that the engine got damaged in the accident. Thus, the pronoun “it” logically refers to the antecedent “car”.
Step 2 – Look for grammatically possible antecedents
After step 1, we understand the logical antecedent of the pronoun in question. Next we need to determine if there is some other noun that can be referred to by this pronoun. For this check the number of the pronoun and see if there are other nouns in the same number that this pronoun could refer to. You may follow these tips:
1. Focus on the structural role played by these possible antecedents.
• If any of these nouns play similar role as the logical antecedent does, then there may be pronoun ambiguity.
2. Look at the relative location of these possible antecedents. If these are too far away from the pronoun in question, then there may not be any pronoun ambiguity.
Step 3 – Selecting the Correct Answer Choice
The correct answer choice is the one that communicates the intended meaning without any grammatical errors and ambiguity. Thus, while solving SC questions, after performing thorough analysis of the pronouns in the original sentence, if you find that there are multiple possible antecedents, then first eliminate the answer choices for more obvious errors – SV, Verb, Modifier, Parallelism, Idioms. Then look for answer choices that correct the pronoun ambiguity error. This can be done by the following methods:
- Changing the structure of sentence so that the pronoun or other possible antecedents now play different roles.
- Replacing the pronoun with the antecedent to eliminate the pronoun usage altogether.
- There may also be cases in which the final answer choice still appears to have pronoun ambiguity. In this case, mark this as the correct answer since this is the best answer among the 5 given choices.
Since pronoun ambiguity is not as objective as other error types are, you should not eliminate answer choices solely based on pronoun error in the first pass of process of elimination.
Putting it all together
Here is the summarized framework
- Understand the meaning of the sentence and determine the logical antecedent
- Ensure that the pronoun-antecedent pair agrees in number
- Determine if there is ambiguity in pronoun reference: Find if the pronoun can refer to any other noun
- Is there another noun (in same number) that plays similar role as the logical antecedent does? Yes -> ambiguity.
- Is there another noun (in same number) that is closer to the pronoun than the logical antecedent? Yes -> ambiguity
- If there is pronoun ambiguity, then first eliminate answer choices with known objective errors – SV, verb, parallelism, modifiers, idioms. Use this ambiguous pronoun error as the last basis for elimination.
Where can you get more information?
The basics of pronoun are covered in detail in the “Pronouns” concept file available for e-GMAT users in the SC free trial. You can access this trial by loging in the e-Gmat website.
Also, following posts show the application of this framework on official questions.
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