<p>Hi,
question of identifying error is:
The labor union is negotiating a contract with the hospital --that-- will satisfy the demands of the workers and --be acceptable-- to all levels of management.
1.Above, isn't "that"(highlighted between --) an ambiguous pronoun as it could refer to both "hospital" or "contract"?
2. shouldn't "will" be added between "that" and "be acceptable..." to parallel the clause after "that"?
By the way, the answer is E(no error).<br>
Plz reply fast. SAT is approaching.</p>
<p>I’m no grammar whiz, but I rarely get grammar questions wrong so I might as well give it a shot…</p>
<ol>
<li>“that” is not ambiguous since it clearly refers to “contract”. “the hospital” is non-essential to the sentence as a whole, as it just specifies with whom the labor union is negotiating the contract.</li>
</ol>
<p>It’s very similar to problems that deal with subject-verb-agreement. Take the following example: The paleontologist’s THESIS on dinosaurs’ eating habits WAS truly groundbreaking. </p>
<p>In the above example, “dinosaurs’ eating habits” briefly specifies what the thesis was about, and it’s the THESIS that ultimately WAS groundbreaking, not the eating habits.</p>
<ol>
<li>Will satisfy --> be acceptable. Parallell structure seems perfectly fine to me as it is.</li>
</ol>
<p>Hope it helped, sorry if it confused you</p>
<p>Ambiguity is a function of context as well grammar. Technically “that” can refer to “hospital,” but no one would ever read the sentence that way, because it makes a lot less sense than reading “that” as a reference to “contract.” You have to reach beyond technicalities when determining if a reference is ambiguous or not.</p>
<p>I agree with WasatchWriter – technically it is a grammatically correct but ambiguous sentence and can be interpreted two ways. Other sentences have similar ambiguities, such as “Flying planes can be dangerous.” Going even further, other sentences cause you to stumble the first time interpreting it, forcing you to parse it differently (such as “The old man the boat”) – these are known as “garden path sentences” in linguistics.</p>
<p>The sentence isn’t ambiguous, because it would make no sense to refer to a hospital that would satisfy demands. It clearly refers to the contract.</p>
<p>@Hunt how about this sentence? (from Wikipedia)</p>
<p>The girl in the car that needed water is waiting.</p>
<p>Clearly these sentences can have multiple meanings; you usually need context to understand the full meaning.</p>
<p>That’s an awkward sentence, but it isn’t really ambiguous–“girl” is clearly the subject of the sentence, and “is” is the verb.</p>
<p>But from SAT’s perspective, I believe the sentence mentioned by MITer94 is ambiguous. </p>
<p>“with the hospital” is a prepositional phrase which can be removed. “that” clearly refers to the contract.
Part two: “will” --“satisfy and be acceptable”—will applies to both so no need to repeat the word “will”.
No error.</p>
<p>Note that sentences can be awkward, weird, and downright bad, but still correct.</p>
<p>The ambiguity in my the sentence in my previous post is, does the girl need water, or does the car need water?</p>
<p>From my standpoint (though I claim to be no expert) both examples seemed ambiguous as heck. if we wrote the sentence as “the girl, in the car that needed water, was waiting” it is quite evident it is the car that needed water, and it may very well be a hybrid and run on water. </p>
<p>Let us take this example from grammargirl “John gave his little brother a toy for Christmas that he played with constantly.” It seems quite evident the little brother played with the toy. Nonetheless it is ambiguous.</p>
<p>After juxtapositioning these examples, I personally reached the conclusion that, rather than an ambiguous “that”, ambiguous pronouns (he she him her who) are tested more frequently and it may be wise to ignore “that” (unless you happen to find examples of “that” ambiguous errors).</p>
<p>Well, this is just my take. I may be, as I often am, wrong</p>