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"In the gallery above the sales department, supervisors can monitor the customers without disturbing them."

I'm taking a test which has asked me to state the location of the customers. From my interpretation of the statement, the supervisors are situated in the gallery while the customers are in the sales department; the correct answer is that the customers are in the gallery and vice versa. Can someone explain the reasoning behind this?

Anon
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  • Where does this come from? How are these customers being monitored? – Xanne Sep 23 '20 at 01:44
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    Both are possible. – Lawrence Sep 23 '20 at 02:03
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    I can't explain it, I interpreted it in exactly the way you did. Why would the customers be anywhere but in the sales department? Not only that but the location information "In the gallery above the sales department" immediately precedes the word 'supervisors' and the word 'customers' is further away from it which suggests that the location information relates to the supervisors. – BoldBen Sep 24 '20 at 01:01
  • I too would interpret the sentence the same way as you and BoldBen, but that's only because that interpretation makes it easier to imagine how the whole arrangement would work (the supervisors' being away from the customers makes it easier to understand why the monitoring does not disturb the customers); so far as the language is concerned, the sentence could be interpreted either way. Its ambiguity, however, does not illustrate any general feature of English language; it only illustrates incompetence in test design. – jsw29 Sep 25 '20 at 22:00

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