Gmat Prep Verbal Sentence Correction

[RonPurewal]

you should be able to eliminate "industries that are more established" fairly easily, though, for either of 2 reasons:
• it's not parallel to "the internet industry"
• it's less efficient / more wordy than "more established industries", for no benefit.

[SharayuR89]

Hi instructors,

I have an understanding that a clause cannot follow "whereas" as "whereas" is not a coordinating conjunction. I straight away rejected option A and got the question wrong.

Please comment on my understanding. Thanks.

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

This is an easy one to change: 'whereas' is a conjunction and is used to connect two complete clauses. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar ... ns/whereas

[ZITIAND433]

Hi Ron! May I ask why "they" refers to "lines" not "industries" ？ Thank you.

[Chelsey Cooley]

Hi Ron! May I ask why "they" refers to "lines" not "industries" ？ Thank you.

Because of parallelism! If a sentence has parallelism, and one of the halves of the sentence has a pronoun in it, that pronoun should stand for the word that's in the same position in the other half. For example:

Anteaters love ants, but they hate spaghetti.

There's a parallel structure here (you can tell from the word 'but'.) ___ LOVES ___, but ___ HATES ___. Since the 'they' is in the first spot, it should match whatever's in the first spot in the other half of the sentence. That is, 'they' stands for 'anteaters', not 'ants'.

Here's more detail:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... orrection/

[JbhB682]

Hi Experts - in option B - can the adverb (one day) refer to the present participle adjective (competing) ?

In B - I dont think the adverb (one day) is referring to the noun Companies, as has been implied in the thread, because
i) adverbs CANNOT refer to nouns to begin with [and Companies is a noun]
ii) adverbs DONT have to be placed right next to their referrant [thus, the adverb (one day) can be placed far away from its referrant]
iii) adverbs CAN refer to adjectives.

If the adverb (one day) refers to the present participle adjective (competing) - how then to eliminate option B ?

[esledge]

Hi Experts - in option B - can the adverb (one day) refer to the present participle adjective (competing) ? ...
If the adverb (one day) refers to the present participle adjective (competing) - how then to eliminate option B ?

The short answer is "No, 'one day' cannot refer to 'competing companies.'"

In (B), I think "one day" is modifying the only verb after the last comma: "may be partners." Note that even if we changed the word order to put "one day" before "competing companies," it would still describe the verb "may be partners."

So there are two problems with this:

(1) Both "one day" and "the next" modify "may be partners," so the companies are doing the same thing at the two different times, which is contrary to the whole point of companies doing different things at different times. In correct answer (A), "one day" modifies "compete" and "the next" modifies "may be partners," so it's clear that the companies' activities differ over time.

(2) In (B), "competing companies" is the only subject, so it goes with both "one day" and "the next": competing companies ... may be partners in both time frames. This is illogical, because the companies are not competing when they are cooperating, and vice versa. Both "compete" and "may be partners" need to be parallel verbs to get this meaning across.

[JbhB682]

Thank you so much Emily for replying.

If i create a quick analogy to understand what you mentioned above a bit more conceptually -- I can see why in my analogy, B is wrong

Analogy to A) Lions [that hunt on saturday] will sleep on sunday
Analogy to B) Hunting lions on saturday will sleep on sunday

As a native speaker, I can see clearly why in my analogy - option B is wrong (on saturday and on sunday are both referring to "Will sleep" and is thus wrong)

Just one follow up on A) with what you mentioned above

[JbhB682]

I don't see parallel verbs in my analogy for option A) as you metioned parallelism

Analogy to A) Lions [that hunt on saturday] will sleep on sunday

i just see the adverb (on saturday) clearly referring to the verb "HUNT" in option A whereas in the option B the adverb is referring to something illogical

I noticed you mentioned in A - parallel verbs are in play ( I dont see that as there is no parallelism marker)

Thank you for everything !

[esledge]

Good example!

You are right, it's not exactly parallelism. I probably should have said "equivalent verbs": both compete and be partners need to be equivalent, tensed verbs for one day and the next to modify them, respectively. Just as you need hunt and will sleep to both be verbs in your example, so that the separate modifiers on Saturday and on Sunday have different verbs to modify.