Discussion of greenhouse effects have usually .....

[gmatkiller_24]

Discussion of greenhouse effects have usually had as a focus the possibility of Earth growing warmer and to what extent it might, but climatologists have indicated all along that precipitation, storminess, and temperature extremes are likely to have the greatest impact on people.

(A) Discussion of greenhouse effects have usually had as a focus the possibility of Earth growing warmer and to what extent it might,

(B) Discussion of greenhouse effects has usually had as its focus whether Earth would get warmer and what the extent would be,

(C) Discussion of greenhouse effects has usually focused on whether Earth would grow warmer and to what extent,

(D) The discussion of greenhouse effects have usually focused on the possibility of Earth getting warmer and to what extent it might,

(E) The discussion of greenhouse effects has usually focused on whether Earth would grow warmer and the extent that is,

found this question on the prep. The OA is C.

can someone tell me that why A,B,E are wrong in terms of parallelism, thank you!

[RonPurewal]

here you need to recognize the similarity of words like who(m), where, whether, why, etc.
let's call these 'words that suggest questions'. (i just made up this name.)

hopefully you understand the principle here. as used here, these are not ACTUAL 'question words', since we're not forming any actual questions with them. (also, it's impossible to ask a question with 'Whether' as the question word; that's not how yes/no questions work in english.)
...but they are all words that SUGGEST questions.
e.g.,
whether Earth will grow warmer --> suggests the question 'Will Earth grow warmer?'
what form of government the new country will adopt --> suggests 'What form of government will the new country adopt?' (notice different word orders)
and so on.

...as opposed to plain old everyday nouns, which do NOT directly suggest questions:
the warming of the Earth
the form of government that the new country will adopt
and so on.

[RonPurewal]

i guess i didn't directly articulate the point, which is 'Here are TWO kinds of words. For parallelism you should match words of the same kind.'

e.g.,
what he knows and who spoke to him --> parallel (two 'words that suggest questions' as explained above)
what he knows and the people who spoke to him --> nope
the things he knows and who spoke to him --> nope
the things he knows and the people who spoke to him --> parallel (two normal nouns)

[RonPurewal]

MOST IMPORTANTLY—i very, very much hope that i'm not telling you anything new here.

this is really just the basic idea of parallelism: 'match things that actually match'.
beyond that, i think it's reasonable to expect YOU to see—spontaneously—that the 'wh' words are MORE LIKE EACH OTHER than like other nouns.
as long as you can see that, there's nothing to 'learn' here, really.

[RonPurewal]

also, on an unrelated note, you can quickly eliminate A and B because of 'a focus' (singular), which is an inappropriate label for TWO topics of discussion.

[VirgileW24]

Hi Ron,

Just a quick question here regarding the "THE" before "discussion" in D and E. Is the usage of "THE" correct here? My first judgement was A,B,C were incorrect because "Discussion" - as a singular noun - can't be used alone here, either "The / A discussion" or "Discussions".

Can you share your thoughts please?

Thanks.

[sahilk47]

Hi Ron,

Just a quick question here regarding the "THE" before "discussion" in D and E. Is the usage of "THE" correct here? My first judgement was A,B,C were incorrect because "Discussion" - as a singular noun - can't be used alone here, either "The / A discussion" or "Discussions".

Can you share your thoughts please?

Thanks.

Hi

If I may (Ron would correct me if I am wrong), in option (D), the placement of THE before DISCUSSION is not incorrect. You probably want to look at the verb HAVE (plural verb) with DISCUSSION (singular subject) .

Thank you

[VirgileW24]

Hi Ron,

Just a quick question here regarding the "THE" before "discussion" in D and E. Is the usage of "THE" correct here? My first judgement was A,B,C were incorrect because "Discussion" - as a singular noun - can't be used alone here, either "The / A discussion" or "Discussions".

Can you share your thoughts please?

Thanks.

Hi

If I may (Ron would correct me if I am wrong), in option (D), the placement of THE before DISCUSSION is not incorrect. You probably want to look at the verb HAVE (plural verb) with DISCUSSION (singular subject) .

Thank you

Thanks.

The answer choices D and E can be eliminated quickly I agree with you.

Just a little confused by the usage of "THE" here, is it legit?

[RonPurewal]

the presence/absence of 'a'/'an'/'the' is NEVER tested on this exam, and is thus a non-issue.

[TingP565]

hi, Ron,
i want to know is there anything wrong with "it" in A and D?
does "it" refer to "earth"? logically, i think it should refer to the process that the earth is getting warmer.
besides, can we use "it" to refer to a clause rather than a word?

btw, what the difference between "grow" and "get"? both right in this question?
thx~

[jhuman lal meena]

Dear Ron,
what are we paralleling here in the right option. As you rightly said, we need to observe parallelism on both sides of the conjunction "and"

[Chelsey Cooley]

The two parallel elements in C are the two "wh-phrases", "whether Earth would grow warmer" and "to what extent (Earth would grow warmer)". It's fine, in English, to leave off the end of the second wh-phrase in a parallel structure like this. Readers will just assume that it's the same as the second part of the first parallel element.

Other examples:

I wondered why she had left the military and when.

I wondered whether he ever changed his socks and how often.

[thanghnvn]

there are two things we need to consider , structural grammar error , -this is easy, and meaning error- this is hard and is a focus of gmat sc.

when we read an answer choice , focus on meaning error, ask ourself , is there any meaning error with this choice. structural grammar error will automatically appear to you.

meangin error in b are hard. "what extent would be" . meaning error is inhere. it is not clear "what extent"

in C, an elipsis is here "and to what extent it grow. meaning is clear and c is correct.

[tim]

I didn't see a question mark in your post. Please let us know if you have a question for us.

[ShenQ517]

As to "the", the word "usually" determines whether we should add "the" . If added, then discussion is referred to a particular one.
I don't know whether it's correct, since Ron said it's a none-issue.Can someone help me clarify my thought?