Residents of Iqaluit, the Largest Town in the Canadian Territory GMAT Sentence Correction

Question: Residents of Iqaluit, the largest town in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, pay as much as four times the prices paid for grocery items by residents of large Canadian cities, most of which enter the town only by sealift.

(A) the prices paid for grocery items by residents of large Canadian cities
(B) the price of what large Canadian city residents pay for grocery items
(C) what residents of large Canadian cities pay for grocery items
(D) of what large Canadian city residents pay for grocery items
(E) the cost of the grocery items purchased by large Canadian cities’ residents

Answer: C
Explanation: The following arguments could be used to defend the suggested language change:

Parallelism
Considering two separate truths
Modifiers

This sentence assumes that Iqaluit inhabitants pay significantly more for goods and services than do residents of Canada's major cities. Four times... must be followed by a noun or comparable phrase in order to compare Canadians who live in cities fairly. Furthermore, since the context makes it obvious that the modifier most of which... refers to food products, grocery items must appear before that modifier.

Option C
what residents of large Canadian cities pay for grocery items- Correct.
It doesn't have the grammatical errors and feels like the answer. The noun phrase what residents … pay represents the price paid by city residents, so four times what residents… pay is properly constructed. The modifier most of which enter… correctly modifies grocery items.

Let’s see the other available choices.

Option A
the prices paid for grocery items by residents of large Canadian cities- Incorrect.
In this choice, most of which enter… is attached to large Canadian cities, illogically suggesting that entire cities are sealed into Iqaluit. Have "most of which enter the town only by sealift". The modifier after the comma at the end must modify grocery items.

Option B
the price of what large Canadian city residents pay for grocery items- Incorrect.
Out for two reasons. 1. Prize shall be replaced by prizes; 2. "of what" is not required.
What … residents pay already signifies a price, so the price of what… illogically suggests that this price itself has a price. Large Canadian city residents seems to refer to large people living in Canadian cities, rather than to residents of large cities as intended.

Option D
of what large Canadian city residents pay for grocery items- Incorrect.
Four times of… is unidiomatic. Large Canadian city residents seems to refer to large people living in Canadian cities, rather than to residents of large cities as intended.

Option E
the cost of the grocery items purchased by large Canadian cities’ residents- Incorrect.
In this choice, most of which enter… is attached to large Canadian cities’ residents, illogically suggesting that Canadians from larger cities, rather than groceries, are sea lifted into Iqaluit. The construction of the grocery items purchased by… illogically suggests that residents of Iqaluit and of larger cities are somehow paying for the same items (not just identical items). The modifier after the comma at the end must modify grocery items

“Residents of Iqaluit, the largest town in the Canadian territory”- is a GMAT sentence correction question. These sorts of questions come up with grammatical errors in the underlined part of the sentence. The candidates need to select the correct statement given in the options. The GMAT sentence correction section demands good skills in grammar since the candidate has to identify common grammatical errors. GMAT sentence correction is a part of GMAT verbal.

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Residents of Iqaluit, the Largest Town in the Canadian Territory GMAT Sentence Correction

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