imSKR wrote:
Known idiom: Whether A or B
I choose B because I applied idiom whether A or B
Whether A or B ( ,if); B with the condition as in following example:
Quote:
It is unclear whether chimpanzees are unique among nonhuman species in their ability to learn behaviors from one another, or if, when other animals are studied in as much depth, similar patterns would be found.
i read it as :
It is unclear whether chimpanzees are unique among nonhuman species in their ability to learn behaviors from one another, OR they(other animals) would exhibit similar patterns, if other animals were studied with as much depth
Shall I say the sentence construction is wrong beause A and B are clauses , NOT PHRASES ?
Example:
It is unclear whether clothes of shop A are unique or shop B has similar clothes, if Shop B is studied in details.
So the correct structure should be :
It is unclear whether clothes of shop A are unique or
that of shop B, if Shop B is studied in details.
OR
It is unclear whether clothes of shop A are unique or
whether shop B has similar clothes, if Shop B is studied in details.
Hence,
It is unclear whether chimpanzees are unique among nonhuman species in their ability to learn behaviors from one another, OR
WHETHER they(other animals) would exhibit similar patterns, if other animals were studied with as much depth.
So , it means whether A or whether B is also correct idiom.please confirm the thought.
EducationAisle AjiteshArun AndrewN ( you changed your profile name
)
Hello,
imSKR. I did indeed change my profile name. I no longer wish to associate my activities on this site with my business. When I say I do this for fun to assist the community, I want to put my money where my mouth is. Perhaps reaching 1,000 posts under my former alias made me feel comfortable with making a clean break. I will continue to provide answers I think are worth reading.
Looking at your analysis, I agree with the bottom line:
whether A or... whether B is indeed an acceptable idiom. Such usage holds particularly when the distance between A and B increases—i.e. there are more words and/or punctuation, which might make the sentence more difficult to understand without a reminder. I see the issue as falling into a similar camp as the comma + "and" + phrase usage, or indeed as the [ranging]
from A, to B usage (note the comma), both of which once again crop up in a perfectly legitimate manner when dealing with lengthier phrases and clauses between points A and B.
Meanwhile, "whether" + "if" is a common if unidiomatic way of expressing the two sides of the coin. In your proposed
correct structure sentences, only the second would work. The other would still need work.
It is unclear whether clothes of shop A are unique or that of shop B, if Shop B is studied in details.To fix the sentence, we would need something more like the following:
It is unclear whether the clothes of Shop A are unique or are similar to those of Shop B, if Shop B were studied in detail.That is a tough sentence to construct, not one that I would expect to appear on the GMAT™. You might think that it falls into shaky "whether" + "if" territory, but the
those of precludes a second
whether they. If you used both, you would create a redundancy. The sentence structure, within the details, now appears different from that of the original sentence: placeholder + verb + predicate ("whether" + noun + verb + modifier A + "or" + modifier B + conditional "if" clause).
I hope that helps. Thank you for taking the time to look me up. As always, best of luck with your studies.
- Andrew
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