<p>Hi all, </p>
<p>I just got the question below wrong; the thing is I understand parallelism well; however, this question caught me out. </p>
<p>"Twice as many bird species inhabit Ecuador [as in] North America. "</p>
<p>A) as in
B) as inhabit
C) instead of in
D) when compared to
E) then</p>
<p>The answer is B, however why is B correct. I understand that the conjunction 'as' needs another pair 'as'. Also, since as...as is a comparison, if I am not mistaken, in between the conjunctions the two elements being compared need to be parallel- i.e. have the same grammatical structure; is this also correct? The thing that I didn't completely grasp here is what exactly are the two elements being compared, so I wasn't able to check parallelism . </p>
<p>Thanks a lot if someone could improve my understanding.</p>
<p>what is parallelism? well the structures must stay consistent.
for example, noun+verb-noun+verb, prep+noun-prep+noun…
in this sentence, ‘as… as’ are correlative conjunctions.
if the sentence was written as
Twice as many bird species inhabit in Ecuador as (those) inhabit in North America.
it would correct because it follows a verb+prep+noun format.
B is correct because it follows verb+noun format.</p>
<p>elements that are being compared are birds inhabit in Eucador and birds in habit in North America.</p>
<p>currently working on a 16 page grammar book solely on SAT, hopefully i will get it done by tonight.</p>
<p>The previous post by Yangfizz with the example of parallelism, i.e.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>is not correct – neither in meaning nor in structure.</p>
<p>“inhabit in Ecuador” does not make sense.</p>
<p>@fogcity, you right, i was thinking about demonstrating an example of parallelism and forgot about inhabit+place.</p>
<p>Okay so what I gather is that what I was saying about the elements being compared must be parallel is correct. So basically, the elements being compared are the ‘inhabit Ecuador and North America’. Therefore, inhabit ecuador must be parallel to North America which means then that the element ‘inhabit ecuador’ has the form VERB + NOUN, so the other element North America is not parallel because it doesn’t have the same structure i.e. it has the structure prep + noun. So, if I am not mistaken then to make this parallel I have to make the North America be like Verb + noun i.e. INHABIT NORTH AMERICA. </p>
<p>The above is long winded, but is my reasoning correct @Fogcity and @Yangfizz? </p>
<p>Cheers</p>