Ellipsis of verbs

[Levent-g]

Can I use ellipsis also to skip verbs, like skipping the verb "ordered" below:

Jane ordered an ice cream and jill (ordered) a fruit juice.
or
Jane ordered an ice cream and jill similiarly (ordered) a fruit juice.

Thank you for your response

[tim]

possibly. have you ever seen this as an issue that was actually a determining factor in a GMAT question? keep in mind that if you have no evidence that the GMAT tests on something there's not much point in spending any study time on it..

[Levent-g]

No, I haven't. Good advice - Thanks Tim

[tim]

yep, you definitely want to save time and study things that are more likely to be tested.. :)

[Levent-g]

Hi Tim,

I have found a useful example in the MGMAT Sentence Correction Book. In the Idioms Chapter, for the idiom "NOT ... BUT" it's stated the following:

Wrong: She did not eat mangoes but other kinds of fruit.
Right: She did not eat mangoes but ate other kinds of fruit.

I think those examples are from the OG right?

Thanks in advance :-)

Levent

[tim]

no these are not from the OG. if you look closely you'll also see that they don't fit the pattern you were describing in your original post. these examples can be analyzed by the normal rules of parallelism..

[Levent-g]

Hi Tim,

can you please explain this a bit deeper?

Why is this sentence wrong?
Wrong: She did not eat mangoes but other kinds of fruit.

Assuming: She did not eat mangoes but (she did eat) other kinds of fruit.

Also the subordination clause starting with BUT introduces contrast, so that it can only mean that she has eaten other kinds of fruits vs. that she has not eaten other kinds of fruits.

Furthermore I learned that in order to use ellipsis the clauses must be parallel right?

Thanks in advance

Levent

[tim]

the problem is that the construction is "not x but y", but x and y are not the same part of speech (verb and noun, respectively)..

my advice is to avoid the issue of ellipsis entirely. it is a red herring, and there are far better ways to evaluate parallelism..

[Levent-g]

OK, thank you very much Tim.

[RonPurewal]

tim -- yes.

always look for parallelism first!
not only is it probably the single most important topic in sentence correction, but it's also the only topic that will masquerade as other issues (as it did here) if you don't find it in the first place.

[Levent-g]

OK, thanks.

This means that if 2 parts are requried to be parallel, they need to start with the same word types (e.g. noun and noun/pronoun, verb and verb, preposition and preposition....) right?

[tim]

that's right. figure out what type of word you have on the right of the parallel marker, and see if you can find the same type on the left. as long as they make sense together, you're fine. remember, the TYPE of word is all we care about. if you have prepositional phrases, they don't have to have the same preposition, as long as they both have prepositions. if you have verbs, they don't have to be in the same tense, as long as they're both verbs..

[Levent-g]

Thanks - Directly added into my SC script. :-)

[tim]

glad to hear it!