Question: Hiking Club

Comment on Hiking Club

Hi,

I eliminated answer choice D thinking 'any people' is wrong. Can you please explain this?

thanks!
gmat-admin's picture

Notice that the sentence ends with "THEY would have stayed warm."

So, the subject of the sentence must be PLURAL, which means we can eliminate A, B and C because they all use the SINGULAR (anyone).

I know that "Any people" might not sound right, but it's no different from saying "any players" or "any chickens"

"Any players who injure any chickens will be fined."

So what should have replaced "THEY"?
If we say he, we are excluding the possible females.
Can we use 'they' for singular nouns when we refer to both gender or we don't know the gender?
For example, "I don't know who is driving the bus; they clearly don't know how to drive"
gmat-admin's picture

Answer choice D: If any people in the hiking club had had the foresight to bring a jacket, THEY would have stayed warm.

If we want to replace THEY with its antecedent, we can write: If ANY PEOPLE in the hiking club had had the foresight to bring a jacket, THOSE PEOPLE would have stayed warm.

Question: Can we use 'they' for singular nouns when we refer to both gender or we don't know the gender? For example, "I don't know who is driving the bus; THEY clearly don't know how to drive"

No, we can't use the plural THEY to refer to one person (if you don't know the gender).

Here are two ways to deal with this:

- I don't know who is driving the bus; HE OR SHE clearly DOESN'T know how to drive
- I don't know who is driving the bus; THE PERSON clearly DOESN'T know how to drive

Cheers,
Brent

just to confirm, any can modify both plural and singular. "Anyone" is singular, "any people" is plural?
gmat-admin's picture

Correctamundo!

Hi,

Please explain the correct usage of have had / had had.

Thanks
gmat-admin's picture

Good question.

Grammar Girl provides a nice explanation here: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/when-are-double-word...

Cheers,
Brent

As someone who has learned English over the past three years, the way English is spoken in everyday conversations can definitely lead to mistakes. Using the pronoun they after using words such as anyone or mentioning the driver (without knowing the gender) is so common nowadays that I started watching these videos with the belief that this type of sentence was correct in the GMAT
gmat-admin's picture

You're absolutely right; using is a pronoun THEY to represent one person is totally acceptable these days.
I have to imagine that, at some point in the future, the GMAT will adopt a similar stance with regard to SC questions.

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