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Dear Experts,

(B) the company's executives admitted that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure to record.

There is a thread (I forget which question is) but I do remember a comment from an expert.

The comment tells that : V-ing can be gerund.
The + V.ing + of can be complex gerund.

Gerund cannot parallel with Noun. Only Noun and complex gerund can parallel with Noun. Then, how reporting can parallel with failure ?
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Tanchat
Dear Experts,

(B) the company's executives admitted that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure to record.

There is a thread (I forget which question is) but I do remember a comment from an expert.

The comment tells that : V-ing can be gerund.
The + V.ing + of can be complex gerund.

Gerund cannot parallel with Noun. Only Noun and complex gerund can parallel with Noun. Then, how reporting can parallel with failure ?


I don't know all of that terminology, but:

For any verb, there's a corresponding noun form that refers to the action of that verb.

Some of these nouns have their own special forms that do not end with __ING. For instance,
destroy —> destruction
disavow —> disavowal
fail —> failure

Others just end with __ING. E.g.,
learn —> learning (no other word like "learnage" or "learnation" exists)
burn —> burning
report —> reporting


"Failure" and "reporting" are exactly the same type of verb-based noun here, so it's definitely OK to put them in parallel.
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According to me in option B it appears parallelism is not followed i.e " improper reporting of revenue" (verb-ing) and "to record" ( infinitive form) are not parallel.
Please clarify.
With due Regards.
In (B), the author lists two nouns in parallel: "accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure to record expenses."

Here, "involving" is just modifying the noun irregularities, and "to record" is just further discussing the noun "failure." It's completely fine for this modifying information to take different forms, and the parallelism in (B) isn't a problem at all.

I hope that helps!

I thought the parallelism is between "improper reporting of revenue" which is a complex gerund AND "failure" which is an action noun.

Am I wrong if I attack the question on such basis?

I understood your explanation above, but how I choose B, as mentioned, is still incorrect?
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himanshu0077
According to me in option B it appears parallelism is not followed i.e " improper reporting of revenue" (verb-ing) and "to record" ( infinitive form) are not parallel.
Please clarify.
With due Regards.
In (B), the author lists two nouns in parallel: "accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure to record expenses."

Here, "involving" is just modifying the noun irregularities, and "to record" is just further discussing the noun "failure." It's completely fine for this modifying information to take different forms, and the parallelism in (B) isn't a problem at all.

I hope that helps!

I thought the parallelism is between "improper reporting of revenue" which is a complex gerund AND "failure" which is an action noun.

Am I wrong if I attack the question on such basis?

I understood your explanation above, but how I choose B, as mentioned, is still incorrect?
Don't overcomplicate it! If we're in the weeds, grappling with esoteric terminology, it means we're not thinking about the basic logic and function of what we're reading.

So ignore the simple vs complex gerund stuff. Take another look at the relevant part of (B):

Quote:
There had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure to record expenses.
The items in red are the two accounting irregularities. They're both noun phrases. They're both things that the company is doing or not doing. Great. They're parallel. End of story.

The takeaway: treat faulty parallelism as an error only if the two elements are clearly not parallel -- either they don't fit together logically, or they play fundamentally different grammatical roles. If it's a debate -- and if you're wondering about complex vs simple gerunds, it is definitely a debate -- don't treat it as a concrete error, and look for other decision points. Simple as that.

I hope that helps!
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Present perfect in A "have admitted" is correct : it is saying that the execs admitted something in a no specific time AFTER the accounting irregularities happened.

Without the parallelim error, would this sentense be corrrect?
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rtsaito93

Present perfect creates an additional problem with the later use of PAST perfect. We can't use past perfect ("there had been irregularities") unless we are talking about a past event that happens before some other past event described in the sentence. By using the past tense, B provides that past event. Without this, A falls apart.
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Present perfect in A "have admitted" is correct : it is saying that the execs admitted something in a no specific time AFTER the accounting irregularities happened.

Without the parallelim error, would this sentense be corrrect?
The present perfect isn't necessarily WRONG in choice (A), but it's not ideal. Take another look at the verbs in choice (B):

  • In (B), we have two simple past actions ("admitted" and "could not yet say"). So if we were to sketch these actions on a timeline, we'd put them pretty close together -- which makes sense because both refer to statements made by the execs.
  • (B) also has a past perfect action ("had been"), and because of the choice of verb tenses, it's very clear that the "had been" action should go before the two simple past actions.

Now look at the verbs in (A):

  • In (A), we have a present perfect action ("have admitted"), a past perfect action ("had been"), and a simple past action ("could not yet say").
  • This leaves the reader wondering, "Why use present perfect for one and simple past for another? Does that suggest that the simple past action came first and the present perfect action was more recent (and, if so, does that make sense)? Or did those two actions occur at roughly the same time, as indicated by choice (A)?"
  • That's certainly not a deal-breaker, but the timing of the actions is less clear in this option.

Would that be a strong enough reason to eliminate (A) on its own? Maybe not. But luckily we don't have to make that call. Remember, your job is to pick the best available option, not to look at individual sentences in a bubble and label them right or wrong -- and in this case, (B) is a better option.

I hope that helps!
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What is the antecedent of "there" in the correct option?
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There isn't one. When we say "There had been x" or "There are Y," this is just a way of saying that X or Y exists. "There" doesn't refer to a place.

(And come to think of it, the same thing is true in my first sentence. When I say "There isn't one," I mean "an antecedent for 'there' doesn't exist in this sentence.")

Kartikeya40
What is the antecedent of "there" in the correct option?
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