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The winds that howl across the Great Plains not only blow

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The winds that howl across the Great Plains not only blow [#permalink] New post 19 Jan 2013, 23:55
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Question Stats:

88% (01:23) correct 11% (00:36) wrong based on 27 sessions
The winds that howl across the Great Plains not only blow away valuable topsoil, thereby reducing the potential crop yield of a tract of land, and also damage or destroy young plants.
(A) and also damage or destroy
(B) as well as damaging or destroying
(C) but they also cause damage or destroy
(D) but also damage or destroy
(E) but also causing damage or destroying

Hi! According to the OG, Option C is wrong because
1. "they" is not necessary" (agreed)
2. "to" is required after "cause damage" (yup)
3. "cause damage" is not parallel to blow --> can someone explain this please?
Wouldn't cause damage be a present tense verb just as "blow" is? hence, shouldn't they be parallel?

Thanks!
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Re: The winds that howl across [#permalink] New post 20 Jan 2013, 01:19
tcsing wrote:
The winds that howl across the Great Plains not only blow away valuable topsoil, thereby reducing the potential crop yield of a tract of land, and also damage or destroy young plants.
(A) and also damage or destroy
(B) as well as damaging or destroying
(C) but they also cause damage or destroy
(D) but also damage or destroy
(E) but also causing damage or destroying

Hi! According to the OG, Option C is wrong because
1. "they" is not necessary" (agreed)
2. "to" is required after "cause damage" (yup)
3. "cause damage" is not parallel to blow --> can someone explain this please?
Wouldn't cause damage be a present tense verb just as "blow" is? hence, shouldn't they be parallel?

Thanks!


See the key point here is parallelism, both in grammer and logic.
The two impacts of the winds are:
i) blow away valuable top soil
ii) damage or destroy.

"cause damage" is not parallel to "blow" because here "blow" is a verb but "damage" is a noun. On both sides you must have either verb or noun.

Hope that helps.
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Joined: 14 Oct 2012
Posts: 32
Schools: Haas '15, Kenan-Flagler '15 (S), LBS '14, Desautels '15
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Kudos [?]: 1 [0], given: 15

Re: The winds that howl across [#permalink] New post 20 Jan 2013, 01:24
Marcab wrote:
tcsing wrote:
The winds that howl across the Great Plains not only blow away valuable topsoil, thereby reducing the potential crop yield of a tract of land, and also damage or destroy young plants.
(A) and also damage or destroy
(B) as well as damaging or destroying
(C) but they also cause damage or destroy
(D) but also damage or destroy
(E) but also causing damage or destroying

Hi! According to the OG, Option C is wrong because
1. "they" is not necessary" (agreed)
2. "to" is required after "cause damage" (yup)
3. "cause damage" is not parallel to blow --> can someone explain this please?
Wouldn't cause damage be a present tense verb just as "blow" is? hence, shouldn't they be parallel?

Thanks!


See the key point here is parallelism, both in grammer and logic.
The two impacts of the winds are:
i) blow away valuable top soil
ii) damage or destroy.

"cause damage" is not parallel to "blow" because here "blow" is a verb but "damage" is a noun. On both sides you must have either verb or noun.

Hope that helps.


Thanks Marcab! I see what you mean but I was wondering why "cause" couldn't be the parallel word? I'm not very good at judging when nouns are nouns/ verbs are verbs but it seems cause could be a verb here?

Thanks for answering so many of my queries on this forum :)
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Re: The winds that howl across [#permalink] New post 20 Jan 2013, 02:13
"Cause" is a verb here, so it could in theory be parallel to "blow." The main parallelism problem in C is with "they." Whatever comes after "but also" should match what came after "not only," so we want a verb, not a pronoun. As for "cause," the problem I see with it (other than that it should be accompanied by "to," as you said) is that using "damage" as a verb would be more direct. Why say "cause damage to" when we can just say "damage"?

In any case, that's the last thing I would look at on C. The other problems are much more glaring. What it comes down to is that C makes no sense, so depending on how we read it we will see different errors.
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Re: The winds that howl across   [#permalink] 20 Jan 2013, 02:13
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