Ambiguous Pronoun

crouch88
Thu, 14 Nov 2013 15:39:32 +0000

The labor union is negotiating a contract with the hospital b THAT** will satisfy the demands of the workers and be acceptable to all levels of management. b No Error**

The answers is E, but I picked B because I thought THAT was an ambiguous pronoun which could refer to either the hospital or the contract. The fact that it was placed right beside HOSPITAL didn’t help at all. Please don’t say something like, “it’s obvious that it isn’t ambiguous.” I’m looking for a grammatical rule that can clear things up for me.

I understand that THAT was intended to refer to the contract. But consider the following sentence: I served lemonade to the guests in pink cups.
Obviously, the guests weren’t in pink cups, but by SAT logic wouldn’t we say that the sentence is incorrect because it has a misplaced modifier?

Seems to me like sometimes we’re using logic and ignoring ambiguity and sometimes we’re not…

Thanks for reading.