<p>1) When order is followed too mechanically, it obscures rather than clarifying relationships.
Order, if followed too mechanically, obscures rather than clarifies relationships.
*I chose the 1st sentence but the answer was 2nd sentence-- I guess it's because of verb tense/parallelism BUT.... in this similar sentence, wouldn't you say?--> The lawyer gave the judge papers of information rather than presenting his case.</p>
<p>2) [During the last] fifty years, we [come] [to take] radio communication for granted, but the mere suggestion that we could communication [in such] a fashion must once have seemed outlandish.
*Answer is [come]. Should the correct version be "we CAME to take"? I thought it should be "we HAVE TAKEN...."</p>
<p>we have come to take …?</p>
<p>for number 1, i probably would say present his case, not presenting, and number 2 is have come</p>
<p>I’ve never touched the SAT, so I don’t know if they ask for editing within a passage or standalone. If it’s by itself, “come” in number two should’ve been “have come.” If it’s in a passage, though, it <em>may</em> have varied with context. For instance:
On Mars, our high-profile government team establishes a radio tower while we attempt to predict its impact on the next hundred years… Initially, we appreciate all the revolutionary networks established across the planet. During the last fifty years, we come to take radio communication for granted. Reflecting on it, the concept that we could do so must have seemed bizarre to the general public some hundred years ago.</p>
<p>Also, I don’t know if the last part (but the mere suggestion…) would necessarily offset “come” in the first part depending on the passage.</p>
<p>(1) When order is followed too mechanically, it obscures rather than clarifying relationships.
OR
(2) Order, if followed too mechanically, obscures rather than clarifies relationships.</p>
<p>(1) has two issues. The first issue is the use of “it”. The antecedent of “it” is ambiguous. Is the antecedent of “it” “order” or “order followed too mechanically”? The second issue is lack of parallelism with use of the verbs “obsure” and “clarify”. “Clarifying” is incorrect. Replace “clarifying” with “clarifies”. Grammar aside, the sentence just sounds wrong. The wording is awkward.</p>
<p>You ask whether the following sentence is correctly written:
“The lawyer gave the judge papers of information rather than presenting his case.”
I don’t totally understand the sentence. What are “papers” of information? In any case let me try a similar sentence:</p>
<p>Rather than working on his assignment, John spent the night playing poker with his friends.</p>
<p>This sentence is totally different in structure from the one in the original question.</p>
<p>[During the last] fifty years, we [come] [to take] radio communication for granted, but the mere suggestion that we could communicate [in such] a fashion must once have seemed outlandish.</p>
<p>The phrase “during the last fifty years” is the cue that the tense of come is present perfect (an event that has started in the past and continues on to today). So “come” should be “have come”.</p>
<p>QUESTION:
For my sentence-- I was trying to see if you’d always follow parallelism in the use of verbs for “rather than” (just as you would keep parallelism for other conjunctions, ie. and…)
So for the sentence I made up (I know “papers”, etc. may be confusing but just looking at it gramatically…) would it be- “The lawyer GIVES the judge papers of information rather than PRESENTS his case.” or “The lawyer GIVES the judge papers of information rather than PRESENTING his case.”</p>
<p>Thank you so much for the other explanations- it made sense!</p>
<p>16) Because the owl [is usually nocturnal] [plus being] noiseless in flight, [it] [is seldom seen] by the casual observer.
- “plus being” is the error-- explain? (should corrected version be “Because the owl IS usually nocturnal and noiseless…” or “Because the owl IS usually nocturnal and IS noiseless…”??)</p>
<p>Sorry Pinkie , but your lawyer sentence has a problem. Giving documents and presenting the case are not parallel ideas in your sentence and don’t take parallel constructions. In the sentence I just wrote, ‘giving’ and ‘presenting’ are parallel ideas, both naming parts of your sentence. In your sentence, ‘giving documents’ expresses an action that the lawyer actually performed. ‘Presenting his case’ names an option that the lawyer rejected, but never performed, thus never happening in the past, present or future. Attempting to coordinate the tense of an action that actually happened to an option that never happened is the problem.</p>
<p>Consider it another way. Make both ideas represent options the lawyer is considering. </p>
<p>The lawyer had to decide which was the better strategy: presenting his case or giving the judge documents. He gave the documents.</p>
<p>Note that both sentences are written in past tense (‘had’ and ‘gave’), but the two options the lawyer was considering are gerunds, which, since they act as nouns naming actions and therefore treat the action as the name of a thing, are always in the present tense. (Bob, Cleveland and a cat - all nouns- don’t show tense.)</p>
<p>In short, ‘gave’ is an action that does show tense, but ‘presenting’ is a gerund that does not show tense and thus need not be in parallel tense to ‘gave’.</p>
<p>In regard to your owl question, you are correct in seeing the error as a problem with parallelism. Now look at the two choices you gave as possibilities. The first changes the meaning of the sentence. “Because the owl IS usually nocturnal and noiseless…” is constructed so that ‘usually’ modifies both ‘nocturnal’ and ‘noiseless’ as in ‘usually nocturnal’ and ‘usually noiseless’. Because your second option preserves the distinction between ‘usually nocturnal’ and (always) ‘noiseless’, it is the better option.</p>
<p>Wow thank you so much for that amazing explanation!</p>
<p>1) Along the border between China and Tibet lies the Himalaya Mountains, which include some of the highest peaks in the world.
*it should be “lie” instead of “lies”… I thought “Himalaya Mountains” was like a collective noun so the verb should be singular instead of plural???</p>
<p>2) In the past, the small nation [had been committed] to self-managed socialism, a system [under which] the workers, [rather than] the state, owns most enterprises.
*Answer is “owns”-- I was confused by this because…
“… SYSTEM under which the workers, rather than the state, OWNS most enterprises” or “… system under which the WORKERS, rather than the state, OWN most enterprises”
(I thought it was first sentence because “under which the workers” was prepositonal phrase???)</p>
<p>Look for an answer tomorrow, pinkie. My wife will shoot me if I don’t go to bed now.</p>
<p>Hello again. Here I am, awake, refreshed and still alive.</p>
<p>Now to your questions. First, regarding the Himalaya Mountains, the rule about group nouns is flexible. If the group is thought of as a single entity, it takes a singular verb. If it is thought of as a collection of individual things, it takes a plural verb. So the question here is: what do the context clues in this particular sentence suggest about how we should think of the collection of mountains in the Himalayas? I would argue that there are two clues that would suggest we think of the mountains as a collection of individual peaks, and therefore take a plural verb. The first clue comes in the name. Viewed as a single thing, the Himalaya mountains would be called the Himalaya Mountain Range. If you substitute that name back into the original sentence, I think you will hear that it sounds better.</p>
<p>The second clue comes in the adjective clause that follows and modifies ‘Himalaya Mountains’. Note that in that clause the mountains are treated twice as plurals - first in the number of the verb (‘include’, not 'includes) and in the plural noun ‘peaks’. If the modifier treats the mountains as plural, then the noun it modifies could reasonably be considered to be plural.</p>
<p>There is one last detail. If Himalaya Mountains is considered to be plural, it should have been written as Himalaya mountains, with no capitalization of ‘mountains’. Was this a typo on your part? If not, it was a seriously misleading error on the part of whoever wrote the question. (Mistakes like this are what ETS is looking for in the experimental section of the SAT.)</p>
<p>In your second question, I assume that ‘owns’ should be ‘[owns]’. If so, you need to look at the sentence construction of “…a system [under which] the workers, [rather than] the state, [owns] most enterprises.” Here you have a noun, ‘system’, modified by an adjective clause. The relative pronoun that relates the two ,‘which’, functions in the adjective clause as the object of the preposition ‘under’. In this clause, the relative pronoun is not the subject of the sentence (clause, really) and therefore is not considered when determining the number of the verb. The subject of the clause is ‘workers’. It is plural, so the verb should be plural as well: ‘own’.</p>
<p>Thanks!! I haven’t really been studying grammar for the past couple of days 
but still have questions from when I actually did study 
- Some of the workers [who resent] the supervisor’s authority [would probably] feel uncomfortable [if] they were the acquire the independence that [they demand].
*Shouldn’t it be “they demandED”? Why is this sentence- no error?</p>
<p>2) Is it always – no sooner… than… for word pairings?</p>
<p>3) The common cold is [one of our most] indiscriminate diseases; [it makes] no [distinction between] [you and me], millionaires and paupers, or athletes and couch potatoes.
*I thought there was a problem with “our”… I thought it should be “one of the most”… because technically, it’s not directly referring to “our” when it mentions millionaires and paupers, athletes and couch potatoes.</p>
<p>4) Paul became known as “Mr. Poinsettia” after developing new varieties of the flower and by pioneering it as a living symbol of Christmas.
*Error is “by pioneering”-- need to get rid of “BY”… but why? I thought it was following parallelism rules-- “AFTER developing… and BY pioneering …”
I kind of understand that “after” is modifying both “developing” and “pioneering” but how are you supposed to know that as opposed to following parallelism rule?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The workers resent the authority now and they demand independence now. Since the dispute seems to be ongoing in the present, both verbs should be in the present tense.</p></li>
<li><p>The Oxford American dictionary gives 3 specific uses for ‘than’. The third one is to indicate when one event follows immediately in time after another. The example they use to illustrate the point is ‘no sooner than’.</p></li>
<li><p>I see no error. ‘Our’ could refer to the entire human population as in humanity, or mankind, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>This is a bit complicated. One can see that the ideas really should be parallel since they both represent actions Paul performed in order to earn the title. The purpose of the sentence is either to tell WHEN Paul became known or to tell HOW he became known… If the ideas are truly parallel they will both be used to tell one or the other. ‘After developing and pioneering’ makes both ideas parallel telling WHEN he became. ‘After developing’ and ‘by pioneering’ use WHEN for developing and HOW for pioneering, and the ideas are no longer parallel.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>QUEST: Faulty comparison
Officials announced that there would be no major changes made to the eligibility requirements for its benefits package, an offering that makes its plan more generous than other retailers.
*** I know that it’s comparing plan to retailers when it should be comparing plan to the retailers’ plans… but… I thought it was “plan more generous than THAT of other retailers” (since it’s comparing plan to the plan of the retailers?) but it said THOSE OF in answer key. WHY??</p>
<p>If there are more than one retailers, there will be more than one plan.</p>
<p>I think I was overthinking tht one- thank u:)
For word pairs- What usually goes w “at once… _____”</p>