GMAT问答 - 毕出GMAT

choice (b) starts out with “With 20 percent of the world's fresh water, that is more than ...”
this could potentially be read in two ways, both of which are incorrect:

(INCORRECT READING 1)
"that" is a pronoun (in the same way you'd point at a menu and say "i want that")
to use that in this way - by itself as a pronoun, as a "pointing word" - is always incorrect in formal written english.
"that" CAN be used as a pronoun, but only if it's in a parallel construction (such as the capacity of tank A vs. that of tank B).

(INCORRECT READING 2)
it's a relative pronoun (in the same way you'd write "here's the book that i read").
two things wrong here.
one, you don't put a comma before this kind of "that".
two, even if this were written correctly (i.e., without the comma), which it isn't, you'd still be saying 20% of the water that is more than the great lakes. i.e., there is SOME SPECIFIC water that is "more than the great lakes", and we're talking about 20% of that water. that doesn't make sense.
so, wrong either way.

choice (d) neither "lake" nor "water" would be a legitimate referent for this modifier -- you couldn't say "the lake is more than...", but neither could you say "the water is more than..."
this sentence will only make sense if the modifier is allowed to modify the preceding clause, which talks about holding water (because "holding more" actually makes sense).
if you are talking about choice (d) or choice (e), note that the modifiers in those choices are modifiers that modify nouns, not clauses. that's a problem in this case.
we can also knock out choice (d) because of wrong usage of "while"，It should be used in one of two circumstances:
(1) if the first act takes place during the second act, or (2) if there is some sort of contrast between the two acts - most of the time used as this way when used at the beginning
Both these situation doesn't apply to this answer right!

choice (e)： when you have an INITIAL MODIFIER THAT'S NOT A CLAUSE (i.e., it doesn't have its own subject and verb), then it must modify the immediately following noun.
example:
coming home from school, the wind blew me off my bike. --> INCORRECT, because the implication is that the wind itself was "coming home from school".
coming home from school, i was blown off my bike by the wind. --> correct (even though the passive voice is used).
--
same problem in choice (e), which implies that lake baikal itself is somehow "more than all the North American Great Lakes combined".
that doesn't make sense. The lake might hold an amount of water that is more than another amount of water, but the lake itself is not "more than" something.
the above rule is completely rigid, too; it doesn't allow for the modifier to be used in any other way.

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