Sentence Correction

simplyjat wrote:At the beginning of the year, the city allocated $150 million to cover the increase in wages that it expected to approve as a result of negotiations with the municipal labor unions.

(A) increase in wages that it expected to approve as a result of negotiations
(B) increased wages it expected to approve from negotiations
(C) increasing wages expected to be approved as a result of negotiating
(D) negotiated increases in wages it expected to approve
(E) increases expected to be approved in wages from negotiating

OA A

some criteria for elimination:

* the meaning of the original is that the city expected to approve, and thus needed to cover, an increase in wages. in particular, you should not shift the meaning to say that they needed to cover the wages themselves.
this observation eliminates choices b (increased wages) and c (increasing wages).

* the sentence makes it clear that the negotiations hadn't yet happened, but choice d means that they had already occurred (you can't have 'negotiated increases in wages' unless the negotiations have already taken place). so d is gone.

* choice e, quite apart from being ridiculously awkward (to a native speaker, at least), has the following faults:
- it just says that the increases were 'expected to be approved', but doesn't say by whom they were expected to be approved. (the original makes it clear that the city held those expectations)
- 'approved in wages' is at best awkward, and at worst implies that there is some way for an approval to be given financially via wages.

Magellan wrote:In choice (A), the pronoun 'it' refers to city but it looks like it refers to increase. Isn't that a problem or the sentence is clear enough so that there is no ambiguity?

Thanks

there is no ambiguity; the increase is the object of the verb approve, so it can't simultaneously be the subject of that verb.

compare: jim didn't recognize the man he saw.
explain to yourself why 'man' is not a possible referent for 'he'. same idea here.