A staunch critic of the Umpire Decision Review System

I feel A) is a better choice than C). Here are the reasons :

1. C) doesn't seem to be correct because the "and" is a parallel marker should express two independent ideas, while "did a volte-face" and "backed" are not independent ideas. Also, "saying" should be preceded by a comma, as rightly pointed out by obs23 and sarang31, to express the relation between the 2 ideas.

2. A) seems correct because "by backing ... and saying.. " refers to how the "the football team captain did a volte face".


Thanks

Initially, I also have confusion as you in the lack of comma before "saying that". However, if put comma before "saying that", the sentence will be ambiguous because "saying that..." will modifies preceded subject and clause before comma, including both two action "did a volte-face ..." and "backed...", while in the intent meaning, "saying that..." only modifies action "backed..."

Below is my process of elimination:

(A) backing paralleled with saying => not intent meaning
(B) wrong modifier the controversial innovation
(C) no error
(D) past tense go with present continue tense is strange to me
(E) not intent meaning "has now decided to back... when said that..."

I feel the same , saying should be followed by a comma to make sense.

Hi all,

can you plz explane why D is wrong?

thanks

@krikatkat
Hi,
The question stem looks as follows:

A staunch critic of the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS), the football team captain did a volte-face on Thursday by backing the controversial innovation and saying it would have to be used if the standard of umpiring keeps going down
A. A staunch critic of the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS), the football team captain did a volte-face on Thursday by backing the controversial innovation and saying >> should be followed by "that"
B. A staunch critic of the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS), the controversial innovation was backed by the football team captain when he did a volte-face on Thursday saying that >>> The controversial innovation is not " A staunch critic of the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS)"
C. A staunch critic of the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS), the football team captain did a volte-face on Thursday and backed the controversial innovation saying that >>> Correct
D. A staunch critic of the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS), the football team captain had a volte-face on Thursday and is backing the controversial innovation by saying that >>> Multiple errors : Error1 -> Verb tenses are not parallel in the series, showing a sequence and there by changing the original meaning of the sentence. Error2: The original sentence reads "the football team captain did a volte-face " , where as option D reads "the football team captain had a volte-face " both have different meaning. The change in meaning is unwarranted because the meaning of the original sentence is unambiguous.
E. A staunch critic of the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS), the football team captain did a volte-face on Thursday and has now decided to back the controversial innovation when he said that >>>> Change in tense in parallel verbs is changing the meaning of sentence.


Kudos if my post helped

A staunch critic of the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS), the football team captain did a volte-face on Thursday by backing the controversial innovation and saying it would have to be used if the standard of umpiring keeps going down.

A. A staunch critic of the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS), the football team captain did a volte-face on Thursday by backing the controversial innovation and saying

the ||'sm shown here backing and saying is not correct and changes the meaning of sentence

B. A staunch critic of the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS), the controversial innovation was backed by the football team captain when he did a volte-face on Thursday saying that - Wrong modifier

C. A staunch critic of the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS), the football team captain did a volte-face on Thursday and backed the controversial innovation saying that

Plain and simple . and correct too

D. A staunch critic of the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS), the football team captain had a volte-face on Thursday and is backing the controversial innovation by saying that

had and is backing - clearly not ||

E. A staunch critic of the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS), the football team captain did a volte-face on Thursday and has now decided to back the controversial innovation when he said that

has now decided and when he said - not required

I also couldn't decide between A and C.Anyway both seem weird.
Moreover,this question is considered flawed from one of the Manhattan's proponents.

Refer to : https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... 16749.html

Can you please explain why parallelism between saying and backing is wrong in Option A?

For a discussion, I am unable to appreciate Aristotle's logic implied in their OA.

Between A and C: The Captain, as far as I see, did only one thing namely a somersault; and how did he do that? by retracting from an earlier stand and saying something different now. So backing out and saying are modifiers of the volte-face act, and they do not merit a verb. But C implies that he did two things -- 1. did a volte face and 2. said some blah, blah. This interpretation is logically wrong. IMO, C is out.

In GMAT, Semantics is not secondary to Syntax

I am also struggling to understand choosing between C vs A. I understand that A has parallelism, which is incorrect. However, in C, shouldn't "backed ..." be a subordinate clause to the "did a volte face... " statement? They are not independent - he did a volte face by backing ......

Thoughts?

Dear Daagh Sir,

Thank you for the clarification and this is why i also chose A as the answer to the said question. However after i read few comments from other members they seem to have eliminated A just because it didn't had "That" at the end of the underlined sentence.

Kindly guide.

VeritasKarishma GMATGuruNY GMATNinja generis
Can you please provide the reasoning as to why one should eliminate option A and choose option C ?

Eliminated C because of lack of comma :-/ really hate poorly constructed questions :-/

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Concepts Tested – Modification, Subordination
A – This incorrectly makes 'backing' and 'saying' parallel but the idea is to make 'saying' subordinated to the previous clause because the captain is not doing two things. He is only doing one thing, which is 'backing', and he is doing this by 'saying' something.
B – The modifying phrase at the beginning of the sentence should be followed by the subject of the sentence which is the football captain and not the controversial innovation
D – The use of the possessive 'had' is incorrect. The football captain didn‘t have anything, he did something.
E – Poor sentence construction at the end – 'has now decided to back the controversial innovation when he said that' – the use of 'when‘ is incorrect