I3igDmsu wrote:
The company announced that its profits declined much less in the second quarter than analysts
had expected it to and its business will improve in the second half of the year.
A) had expected it to and its business will improve
B) had expected and that its business would improve
C) expected it would and that it will improve its business
D) expected them to and its business would improve
E) expected and that it will have improved its business
Hi Guys,
There are some other important issues to take note of here!
1. Ellipsis: In A, "had expected it to" implies the word "decline," but "decline" is not in the sentence-- "declin
ed" is! It's perfectly alright to leave a word out,
as long as that exact same word appears somewhere else in the sentence!
Ex. CORRECT:Joe's shoes are nicer than Bob's (shoes). The last word is optional because "shoes" already appears.
Ex. CORRECT:Joe is taller than Bob (is). The last word is optional because "is" already appears.
Ex. INCORRECT: Joe has and always will be confident. The word "been" is missing! You cannot imply a word that never appears in the sentence!! This is considered an error in ellipsis.2. The phrase of parallelism here is "A and B", meaning that "and" must connect between two words/phrases of the same grammatical structure. In this case A is the relative clause, "that its profits declined...
So B must also be a relative clause!! "that+a subject+a verb..." Any answer that failed to put "that" after the "and" can be eliminated!!! This is tested a lot on the SC!!!
3. Why "would" and not "will"?
This is a matter of reported speech.
A direct quote would be this: The company announced, "Our business
will improve..."
Reported speech pulls the tense back: The company announced
that its business
would improve...
_________________
Sarai
GMAT Verbal Instructor at GMAX
Visit me at www.theverbalcorner.com
If this helped, kindly give Kudos! 
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57% (01:23) correct
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