After weeks of uncertainty about the course the country would pursue

If you take pledging and keeping PARALLEL, then lets see the role these words play..
Both are VERB+ing modifier and should modify the previous clause..
yes pledging.. is OK but..

After weeks of uncertainty about the course the country would pursue to stabilize its troubled economy, officials reached a revised agreement with the International Monetary Fund, keeping inflation below ten percent...
highlighted portion does not play a role of modifier here
_________________

After weeks of uncertainty about the course the country would pursue to stabilize its troubled economy, officials reached a revised agreement with the International Monetary Fund, pledging the enforcement of substantially greater budget discipline as that which was originally promised and to keep inflation below ten percent.

Issues: Parallelism | Comparison

Analysis:
1. The underlined part of the sentence has 2 clauses that are the pledges officials have taken. The clauses should be kept parallel i.e. "to enforce... and to keep..."
2. In the clause for first pledge, there is a comparison i.e. enforce greater discipline as compared to the one that was original promised. Hence, we need to use the correct comparison marker "than" and compare the same objects i.e. "... greater budget discipline than originally promised... "

I have highlighted the errors below:

(A) the enforcement of substantially greater budget discipline as that which was originally promised and to keep inflation below ten percent
- The clauses are not parallel "the enforcement of" and "to keep"
- Incorrect comparison marker

(B) the enforcement of substantially greater budget discipline than originally promised and keeping inflation below the ten percent figure
- The clauses are not parallel "the enforcement of" and "keeping"

(C) to enforce substantially greater budget discipline than originally promised and to keep inflation below ten percent

(D) to enforce substantially greater budget discipline than that which was originally promised and keeping inflation less than the ten percent figure
- incorrect comparison construction

(E) to enforce substantially greater budget discipline as that which was originally promised and to keep inflation less than ten percent
- incorrect comparison construction

Answer: (C)

Two flaws..
1) THAT WHICH is unidiomatic A,D and E are out
2) the modifier starts with pledging and then has two parallel activities -- to enforce and to keep..

Only C follows both
_________________

Thanks Chetan, i was confused between B and C, i chose B , taking "pledging the enforcement" and "keeping inflation" as parallel

Hi chetan2u, I have an objection here. IMO, "keeping inflation below ten percent" is parallel with "pledging...".
So, I think the difference between choice B and C is just the addition of the word "figure" after "ten percent".

Wdyt?
_________________

chetan2u daagh egmat

I have two doubts pertaining to this question

Should it be "Greater budget discipline" or "more budget discipline"???
I have read zillions or articles saying that greater is used for countable quantities. And we can not treat budget discipline as countable.

Is there any difference between less than 10% and below 10 Percent?

Posted from my mobile device

1. septwibowo



Pledging and keeping need not be parallel. One may see that the pledging is an act done by the officials, while keeping is not a function done the official. Inflation is something that evolves eventually or consequent to several aspects or contexts. However, when one says both pledging and keeping as being done by the officials, the intent is altered.

The purpose of the infinitive to pledge and to keep below ten percent is to express a serious desire to rein the drifting economy under grips.



Dharshak, I am afraid your are getting into unwanted territories. Are you trying to tell GMAT that it doesn't know much? It is not a good practice even to think so. If this question appears in the hall, what would be the candidate's response? One has either to select some answer or retract from the hall.

Is it correct to think that 'greater cannot be used with non countable examples? Let us look at the following GMAT PREP questions.

1. In the sixteenth century, the push for greater precision in measuring time was not, like more recently, motivated by complicated philosophical questions about the nature of matter and the universe, but the practical matters of navigation: sailors simply needed more highly accurate timepieces in order to compute their longitude from the positions of the stars.

'Greater discipline' used in the non-underlined part. It must be a correct usage even though 'precision' is not a countable noun.

2. Soaring television costs accounted for more than half the spending in the presidential campaign of 1992, a greater proportion than it was in any previous election.

(a) a greater proportion than it was
(b) a greater proportion than
(c) a greater proportion than they have been
(d) which is greater than was so
(e) which is greater than it has been
The correct answer B uses 'greater proportion' although 'proportion' is not countable. 'Proportion' refers to the total quantum.

170. While studying the genetic makeup of corn, a new class of mutant genes was discovered by Barbara McClintock, a discovery which led to greater understanding of cell differentiation.

'Greater understanding' as used in the non-underlined part indicates that it is a correct usage and one can see that 'understanding' is not countable.
_________________

This question is based on Comparison and Parallelism.

The sentence gives us information about two things that officials pledged in their agreement with the IMF - the enforcement of substantially greater budget discipline and to keep inflation below ten percent.

Option A lacks parallelism – the noun form ‘enforcement’ and the infinitive form ‘to keep’ are not parallel in structure. Furthermore, the comparative word ‘greater’ cannot be followed by the conjunction ‘as’. It should be followed by the conjunction ‘than’. So, Option A can be eliminated.

Option B also lacks parallelism. The noun form ‘enforcement’ is not parallel to the participle form ‘keeping’. It might have been more parallel if it had been phrased “keeping of inflation”. However, “pledging keeping inflation below the ten percent figure” is a clumsy construction. So, Option B can be eliminated.

Option D also lacks parallelism. ‘To enforce’ is not parallel to ‘keeping’. This option is also a wordy option. So, Option D can also be eliminated.

Option E contains the same error of comparison as Option A – the comparative word ‘greater’ cannot be followed by the conjunction ‘as’. So, Option E can be eliminated.

The infinitive forms ‘to enforce’ and ‘to keep’ are parallel to each other. The appropriate pair of comparative words – ‘greater than’ is used in this sentence. Therefore, C is the most appropriate option.

Jayanthi Kumar.
_________________

Pledging and Keeping are not parallel because if we consider them parallel, the sentence would mean officials reached a revised agreement with the International Monetary Fund, Keeping inflation under 10 percent figure. That is wrong.

Hi AjiteshArun

(C) to enforce substantially greater budget discipline than originally promised

here the comparison to enforce vs promised
to enforce- infinite
vs
promised- verb + ed

should both not be of same type?

( Actually I choose C because I have read similar structures but when I tried to find reasoning , I have this doubt)

Please clarify

thanks AjiteshArun

Hi mSKR,

Comparison is not particularly easy when ellipsis is involved. For example, even a relatively simple sentence like "His GMAT was tougher than expected" can be interpreted in multiple ways:

1. His GMAT was tougher than he expected it to be.

2. His GMAT was tougher than people expected it to be.

In the case of option C, promised is like expected.

3. ... enforce substantially greater budget discipline than originally promised...

(3) can be read as "enforce substantially greater budget discipline than they (the officials) had originally promised to enforce".
_________________

GMATNinja AndrewN VeritasKarishma ChiranjeevSingh
Want to ask construction
that which used in option A,D,E
Can this type of construction is right in SC coming 2 relative pronouns together

Posted from my mobile device

Hello, saby1410. This is a case in which things may be a little different from the way you understand them: that which does not contain two relative pronouns. Rather, that is used as a pronoun, while which is the relative pronoun. You should be able to replace that with its logical referent to test:

Original: pledging the enforcement of substantially greater budget discipline as that which was originally promised

Revised: pledging the enforcement of substantially greater budget discipline as [the discipline] which was originally promised

Even though which is not typically used in a restrictive sense in American English and tends to be replaced by that in such contexts in SC sentences, that that is reserved for different contexts, not to mention that the OG explicitly states that the that versus which split is not tested. In short, that which is perfectly fine.

- Andrew
_________________

Read about the different roles played by "that" here:
https://www.gmatclub.com/forum/veritas-prep-resource-links-no-longer-available-399979.html#/2017/0 ... t-on-gmat/

Here, "that" is a demonstrative pronoun. It stands for "the budget discipline".
"which" is the relative pronoun. It modifies "that/budget discipline".

Hi chetan2u

"1) THAT WHICH is unidiomatic"
Is it an absolute rule? I meant it's already 100% incorrect?

hey, i was able to eliminate (D) on the ground of incorrect parallelism, but can someone tell if the wording "than that which was" is correct? just trying to work through layers of understanding here. thanks

Are we just gonna talk about rules and parallelisms ...what about meaning?

A means: they promised to hold the original budget as earlier promised.
C talks about ...even more budget than earlier promised.

Can anyone explain?

Hi iridescent995,

It seems you're focusing on what option A says. We shouldn't do that, as option A isn't special in any way. Moreover, the as in option A is a mistake (greater needs than), so any meaning call on the basis of that as could be problematic.

The GMAT is testing parallelism in this question (3 options!). If we try to avoid it, we'll just make our own job harder.
_________________

Hello iridescent995,

We hope this finds you well.

Having gone through the question and your query, we believe we can help resolve your doubt.

Since Option A uses the unidiomatic construction "comparative adjective ("greater")...as" rather than the idiomatic construction "comparative adjective ("greater")...than", it fails to produce a coherent meaning.

Please remember, if Option A produces an incoherent or illogical meaning, this meaning cannot be considered the intended meaning of the sentence.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team
_________________