SC : By recording the noise of crinkled wrappers

[harika.apu]

By recording the noise of crinkled wrappers as they were slowly stretched out in an otherwise silent chamber, and then digitizing and analyzing the sound emissions on computers, a team of scientists found the noise not continuous but consisted of individual bursts or pops just thousandths of a second long.
A. digitizing and analyzing the sound emissions on computers, a team of scientists found the noise not
B. digitizing and analyzing the sound emissions on computers, a team of scientists found that the noise was not
C. digitizing and analyzing the sound emissions on computers, a team of scientists found the noise not to be
D. the sound emissions were digitized and analyzed on computers, a team of scientists found that the noise was not
E. the sound emissions were digitized and analyzed on computers, a team of scientists found the noise not to be

Here the answer is B but i don't understand how
was not continuous - was consisted , is "was consisted" not wrong ?

[RonPurewal]

you still have parallelism of 2 verbs here.

consider:
I am not a career counselor but can give you some advice about your situation.
the first verb is "am not". the second verb is "can give".

similarly:
the noise was not continuous but consisted of xxxxxx.

[RonPurewal]

moreover—
it's impossible to write verbs in a way like "not am", or "not was".

so, if you have
negative verb || non-negative verb
then this is the ONLY way to write this kind of parallelism anyway.

[harika.apu]

Ron , why is C wrong ?

is it because "to be " not parallel to "consisted" ?

[RonPurewal]

Ron , why is C wrong ?

is it because "to be " not parallel to "consisted" ?

yes.

[harika.apu]

Ron ,
i would like to understand more about the structure in C to eliminate it .
"noise not to be continuous "

Thanks

[sandeepr433]

you still have parallelism of 2 verbs here.

consider:
I am not a career counselor but can give you some advice about your situation.
the first verb is "am not". the second verb is "can give".

similarly:
the noise was not continuous but consisted of xxxxxx.

Hi Ron,

I always dealt with "not only A but also B" and "not A but B" by blindly eliminating options in which A and B are not parallel.
In this ans choice,A is "continuous" and B is "consisted".Here A and B are not parallel.

After looking at your example,i have a doubt if my method works for all the sentences.

I would have written your example as-
I am not a career counselor but a person who can give you some advice about your situation.
,to make A and B parallel.

Please help.

[RonPurewal]

well, 2 pieces of insight here.

1/
you can just read this as a parallel structure with "but" as the only signal.

I am not a pilot, but can fly this plane.
("am not a pilot" is parallel to "can fly this plane")

__

2/

I would have written your example as-
I am not a career counselor but a person who can give you some advice about your situation.
,to make A and B parallel.

if your method requires the insertion of something as clunky as "a person who..." in order to make this sentence workable, then, clearly, it's not a viable method. no real-life language would put up with something like that.

__

i mean... you can just memorize this, if you want:
if you have the "not X but Y" construction, and "X" and "Y" are verbs, then "did"/"does"/"is"/"was"/etc. is going to come BEFORE "not".

as you've seen, it's impossible to write these sentences any other way, without having to add an entire string of unnecessary words.

[sandeepr433]

Thank You Ron!

Will try to do more SC with similar constructions.

[RonPurewal]

ok.