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The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal [#permalink]
 18 Jul 2009, 00:57
Question Stats:
61% (01:30) correct
38% (01:32) wrong based on 1 sessions
The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal that his inventions typically sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly from previous works.
(A) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly
(B) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolved
(C) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly
(D) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but had slowly evolved
(E) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolved
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Re: The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal [#permalink]
25 Jun 2012, 13:34
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This question tests parallelism. Indeed most of the wrong answers can be eliminated simply because of lack of parallelism (see below). The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal that his inventions typically sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly from previous works. (A) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly'Not in a Noun Phrase but in a Noun Phrase' is violated by the use of the verb 'evolved.' (B) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolvedSame problem as in (A), but this time because of 'were slowly evolved.' (C) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly'Did not 'Verb Phrase + Prepositional Phrase but 'Verb Phrase + PP' is maintained here. The Answer. (D) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but had slowly evolvedThe use of past perfect, 'had...evolved' is unnecessary. (E) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolvedUse of the passive construction, 'were slowly evolved' invalidates this answer choice. Hope that helps 
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Re: The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal [#permalink]
01 Aug 2012, 10:11
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Quote: "srikirs007"]But if we need to maintain parallelism, spring is just in base form where as evolved is past tense . Can someone please explain this? (C) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly Notice that "did" appears before "spring". Hence we cannot write "sprang" because we cannot write two past tenses in same sentence. Note that "did not spring" = "sprang" which is parallel to past tense "evolved". The structure of the sentence is such that "spring" and "evolved" cannot be identically parallel. But both the verb tenses are in simple past tense. And that is why they are parallel. Hence, it is not always necessary that all the entities in a list must be identically parallel. They should be made identically parallel only when it is possible to do so. In an e-gmat course concept namely Parallelism - Helpful Tips, we discuss how far entities can be parallel in the list. Hope this helps. Thanks. Shraddha
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Last edited by egmat on 06 Aug 2012, 07:20, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal [#permalink]
28 Nov 2012, 08:45
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Hi Sachin, In the construction “not X but Y”, X and Y should be parallel, but it is not necessary for the voices to be the same if the context demands so. For example: The beggars did not get any money but were helped in other ways. In this sentence, “did not get” is in active voice but “were helped” is in passive. It is so because here both the entities cannot be identically parallel. If we make both the voice active, the meaning will be violated. However, this is not the case with the OG question. Choice E reads: E) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolved In this choice we can make both the entities identically parallel without violating the meaning of the sentence. We can easily say: Did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but slowly evolved… The takeaway is that we must keep the entities as parallel as possible. When we can have identically parallel entities to convey the intended logical meaning, we must keep them that way. The list can be made non-identical only if the logical meaning cannot be conveyed by making the entities absolutely parallel. Hope this helps. Thanks. Shraddha
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Re: personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison [#permalink]
18 Jul 2009, 09:18
skim wrote: The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal that his inventions typically sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly from previous works.
(A) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly
(B) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolved
(C) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly
(D) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but had slowly evolved
(E) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolved A use of idiom....'Not X... but Y'
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Re: personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison [#permalink]
18 Jul 2009, 10:12
skim wrote: The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal that his inventions typically sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly from previous works.
(A) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly
(B) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolved
(C) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly
(D) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but had slowly evolved
(E) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolved C for me. Not spring...but evolved is idiomatic. In A, Not in a flash of inspiration...but evolved is not parallel.
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Re: personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison [#permalink]
22 Jul 2009, 03:59
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Re: personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison [#permalink]
22 Jul 2009, 05:59
After search I found that choices are different in the question: original wrote: The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal that his inventions typically sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly from previous works
A) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly
B) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolved
C) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly
D) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but had slowly evolved
E) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but they were slowly evolved still the OA is C. sc-og-verbal-review-27469.html#p184319
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Last edited by sudeep on 22 Jul 2009, 06:28, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison [#permalink]
18 Aug 2009, 23:06
Not X but Y,
X and Y should be parallel
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Re: personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison [#permalink]
12 Jun 2010, 09:16
hasham222 wrote: skim wrote: The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal that his inventions typically sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly from previous works.
(A) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly
(B) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolved
(C) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly
(D) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but had slowly evolved
(E) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolved A use of idiom....'Not X... but Y' A is not para||. not in flash .... but <in missing>
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Re: personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison [#permalink]
12 Jun 2010, 11:13
hey SudiptoGmat I like the way you nailed it. C best answer did not spring (simple past) .....but evolved (simple past) . SudiptoGmat wrote: hasham222 wrote: skim wrote: The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal that his inventions typically sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly from previous works.
(A) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly
(B) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolved
(C) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly
(D) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but had slowly evolved
(E) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolved A use of idiom....'Not X... but Y' A is not para||. not in flash .... but <in missing> _________________
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Re: personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison [#permalink]
12 Jun 2010, 14:46
C is correct...
lesson to be learnt.....refresh refresh...idioms need to maintain parallel structures...
'Not in X but in Y'
Thanks
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Re: personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison [#permalink]
21 Jun 2010, 07:39
I struggled between A and C but luckily remebered the idiom and picked C.
C for me.
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Re: personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison [#permalink]
21 Jun 2010, 09:26
seekmba wrote: I struggled between A and C but luckily remebered the idiom and picked C.
C for me. I go with C .. just checking howto use spoiler reg
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Re: The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal [#permalink]
24 Jun 2012, 08:39
d)did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but had slowly evolved
what is wrong with option d
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Re: The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal [#permalink]
24 Jun 2012, 11:34
In D, the use of past perfect 'had evolved' to describe the nature of a phenomenon is erroneous. The springing and evolving are concurrent happenings and so there is no need to sequence them as one before the other. That is why D loses
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Re: The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal [#permalink]
31 Jul 2012, 12:39
But if we need to maintain parallelism, spring is just in base form where as evolved is past tense . Can someone please explain this?  Posted from GMAT ToolKit
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Re: The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal [#permalink]
05 Aug 2012, 18:00
Awesome, thanks for the explanation.
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Re: The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal [#permalink]
25 Nov 2012, 02:30
ChrisLele wrote: This question tests parallelism. Indeed most of the wrong answers can be eliminated simply because of lack of parallelism (see below). The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal that his inventions typically sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly from previous works. (A) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly'Not in a Noun Phrase but in a Noun Phrase' is violated by the use of the verb 'evolved.' (B) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolvedSame problem as in (A), but this time because of 'were slowly evolved.' (C) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly'Did not 'Verb Phrase + Prepositional Phrase but 'Verb Phrase + PP' is maintained here. The Answer. (D) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but had slowly evolvedThe use of past perfect, 'had...evolved' is unnecessary. (E) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolvedUse of the passive construction, 'were slowly evolved' invalidates this answer choice. Hope that helps
Use of the passive construction, 'were slowly evolved' invalidates this answer choice. Hi Chris, You mention the above as the reason why E is wrong. So, Do we need the voices ( passive/active ) to be parallel in a x but y structure? Regards, Sach
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Re: The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal [#permalink]
27 Nov 2012, 20:25
The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal that his inventions typically sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly from previous works.
(A) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly structure not X but Y should be grammatically parallel - in a flash is not parallel to evolved
(B) sprang to life not in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolved structure not X but Y should be grammatically parallel - in a flash is not parallel to were slowly
(C) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but evolved slowly CORRECT - structure X but Y should be grammatically parallel - did not spring is not parallel to evolved
(D) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but had slowly evolved grammatically nonparallel
(E) did not spring to life in a flash of inspiration but were slowly evolvedgrammatically nonparallel
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Re: The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Alva Edison reveal
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27 Nov 2012, 20:25
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