VIGHNESHKAMATH wrote:
Hello,
My query may appear silly, but just want to know there are two parallelism triggers in this sentence, 'rather than' and 'and'
How do we understand which needs to be made parallel. I chose D considering that facing and rising is parallel as 'and' is a parallelism trigger between them, however in doing that ,'rather than' becomes unparallel.
Please advise what should be the approach in such sentences containing apparently dual parallelism triggers.
Good question,
VIGHNESHKAMATH. You want to prioritize like elements in a comparison ahead of other concerns regarding parallelism. In this case, one element within the comparison, the second, simply branches, adding extra information about that particular element. Take a look at the options again in the context of the sentence:
Quote:
A recent study has found that within the past few years, many doctors had elected early retirement rather than face the threats of lawsuits and the rising costs of malpractice insurance.
(A) had elected early retirement rather than face
(B) had elected early retirement instead of facing
(C) have elected retiring early instead of facing
(D) have elected to retire early rather than facing
(E) have elected to retire early rather than face
Since
rather than or
instead of is our comparison trigger, we can look to each side for like elements.
(A) retirement (noun) rather than face (noun—infinitive)
X(B) retirement (noun) instead of facing (noun—gerund)
X(C) retiring (noun—gerund) instead of facing (noun—gerund) (strictly in terms of comparing like elements, and ignoring the usage of
instead of, this option is better than (B))
√(D) to retire (noun—infinitive) rather than facing (noun—gerund)
X(E) to retire (noun—infinitive) rather than face (noun—infinitive, with an ellipsis for
to)
√After round one, with an eye on exactly what is being compared, only (C) and (E) hold up. Notice that the latter half of each answer choice branches:
rather than face the threats... and [face] the rising costs. There is no need to seek parallelism between
facing and
rising, since
facing would carry over as an understood element ahead of
the rising costs anyway:
(D)
rather than facing the threats... and [facing] the rising costsYou have to be careful not to chase the wrong targets in SC. Comparisons are heavily tested, and they are also tightly governed. If you have any doubts about an answer choice that contains a comparison, look to that part first and consider other issues thereafter.
Good luck with your studies.
- Andrew