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Sub 505 Level|   Parallelism|                              
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Cheryn
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Bengal-born writer, philosopher, and educator Rabindranath Tagore had 11 May 2019, 21:23
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DmitryFarber
Cheryn This is generally true, yes. That's how you build the present perfect tense. Just watch out for cases in which have/has if followed by what looks like a past participle, but is really serving as an adjective:

*She has extended time on the test.
*Our client has unparalleled command of the latest music production software.
*Some people have elongated ears.

In all three cases above, the -ed word modifies the following noun and does not serve as a verb at all. Note that "extended" and "elongated" can serve as verbs in other contexts, but "unparalleled" would only ever be an adjective. One can't "unparallel" something.
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DmitryFarber , thanks for this enlightenment.. wow... yeah.... so i have to be careful even if has , have , had followed by ed words, whether adjective or verb.. so what i will do is i will also look for noun which is following the ed words, to make sure its an adjective or not.. really thank you very much indeed.
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Bengal-born writer, philosopher, and educator Rabindranath Tagore had 12 May 2019, 19:44
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Cheryn
DmitryFarber , thanks for this enlightenment.. wow... yeah.... so i have to be careful even if has , have , had followed by ed words, whether adjective or verb.. so what i will do is i will also look for noun which is following the ed words, to make sure its an adjective or not.. really thank you very much indeed.
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To add to DmitryFarber 's response, we should also watch out for cases in which the participle has not been explicitly included in the sentence.

She has worked in many more industries than I have.

This is a shorter way of saying

She has worked in many more industries than I have worked (in industries).
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Bengal-born writer, philosopher, and educator Rabindranath Tagore had 31 May 2021, 20:41
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Hi GMATNinja
As you say the wrong can mostly be eliminated without even considering idioms. I love what you say, because I do not think of myself memorizing idioms. Coming to this question, can you please find any other way to eliminate D than idiom. Maybe use of also is must? Or anything? (Sorry for the silly question, it you find it so.) Thank you!!!
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Bengal-born writer, philosopher, and educator Rabindranath Tagore had 10 Jun 2021, 01:47
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Mck2023
Hi GMATNinja
As you say the wrong can mostly be eliminated without even considering idioms. I love what you say, because I do not think of myself memorizing idioms. Coming to this question, can you please find any other way to eliminate D than idiom. Maybe use of also is must? Or anything? (Sorry for the silly question, it you find it so.) Thank you!!!
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Hi Mck2023, I am no GmatNinja but let me try to help you. Just like you, I am also not a fan of idioms. However, I have only memorised few correlative conjunctions/idioms(whatever you'd like to call). Few examples
1. Either ... or ...
2. Neither ... nor ...
3. Not ... but ...
4. Not only ... but also ...
5. Not only ... but ... as well
6. Both ... and ...

I agree it is not useful to learn differneces in phrases like ability of vs ability to, but learning above mentioned idioms/correlative conjunctions/special parallelism triggers(as mentioned by GmatNinja in one of his video) is super helpful. Now lets look at option B and D


Quote:
(D) of Mohandas K.Gandhi as a person and as also a politician, but Tagore was
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The problem with D is not with idioms but with parellism (If you noticed here, I used Not A But B construction, in which A and B are parallel). We have "as a person" and "also as a politicion", here the word "also" is the problem, and is breaking the parallelism b/w A and B. One more thing, using "and" and "also" together is redundant, so its best to avoid using both together. So D can be eliminated

Quote:
(B) for Mohandas K.Gandhi as a person and as a politician, but Tagore was also
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Compared with D we have nice parallel construction here "as a person" and "as a politician", and the word "also" is now removed. So B is the best we can do with this question.

If you are still not convinced with my explanation, please check out the below video in which GmatNinja has covered this question in details (Start the video around 44th min to jump to this specific question). Hope this helps

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Bengal-born writer, philosopher, and educator Rabindranath Tagore had 11 Jun 2021, 10:56
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Mck2023
Hi GMATNinja
As you say the wrong can mostly be eliminated without even considering idioms. I love what you say, because I do not think of myself memorizing idioms. Coming to this question, can you please find any other way to eliminate D than idiom. Maybe use of also is must? Or anything? (Sorry for the silly question, it you find it so.) Thank you!!!
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This is a good instance of the idiom connecting to the meaning of the sentence.

If I have admiration for someone, I'm the one doing the admiring. But if I have the admiration of someone, someone else is admiring me! Both constructions are fine, but they mean different things.

In the clause that comes after "but," we get Tagore's negative feelings about Gandhi. It stands to reason that the first clause will give us some positive feelings Tagore has about Gandhi, otherwise, there'd be no real contrast between the two clauses, right?

So it makes more sense to write that Tagore has admiration for Gandhi (meaning Tagore admires Gandhi) than to write that Tagore has the admiration of Gandhi (meaning Gandhi admires Tagore, in which case, the contrast makes no sense.)

Now we can eliminate (D) and (E), which both contain "admiration of," not because we memorized some idiom, but because we reasoned through the meanings and discovered that the construction was illogical.

I hope that helps!
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Bengal-born writer, philosopher, and educator Rabindranath Tagore had Updated on: 03 Mar 2022, 09:09
Originally posted by jabhatta2 on 17 Sep 2021, 16:20.
Last edited by jabhatta2 on 03 Mar 2022, 09:09, edited 8 times in total.
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DmitryFarber GMATNinja AjiteshArunMartyTargetTestPrep sayantanc2k IanStewart

While I agree (B) is the answer, in 'b' isn't also redundant?

We already have but -- so why do we need also ?
I dont think there is any difference between these structures
X but Y | X but also Y

Because i thought also was redundant -- i eliminated B and got this wrong :(
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Bengal-born writer, philosopher, and educator Rabindranath Tagore had 30 Mar 2022, 09:59
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DmitryFarber GMATNinja AjiteshArunMartyTargetTestPrep sayantanc2k IanStewart

While I agree (B) is the answer, in 'b' isn't also redundant?

We already have but -- so why do we need also ?
I dont think there is any difference between these structures
X but Y | X but also Y

Because i thought also was redundant -- i eliminated B and got this wrong :(
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It's great to notice words/phrases that might be considered redundant! But this is murky territory, and there aren't any clear cut "rules" for determining what's redundant and what's not.

Here's an example of another OA that uses "also": https://gmatclub.com/forum/turning-away ... 42870.html. Is the "also" necessary? Nope! But it adds some desired emphasis in this case.

The same is true in choice (B) in this question. Do we NEED the "also"? Probably not, but it emphasizes the point that Tagore simultaneously admired Gandhi and was skeptical of Gandhi.

Now, if choice (B) said, "...but in addition Tagore was also," I'd probably argue that the "in addition/also" is redundant. Still, I'd be very conservative with an observation like that and would absolutely look for other decision points before making any eliminations.

For more on the topic of redundancy vs. emphasis, check out this post.

I hope that helps!
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Bengal-born writer, philosopher, and educator Rabindranath Tagore had 30 Mar 2022, 20:32
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jabhatta2


The funny thing about the word "also" is that it is redundant in almost all of its uses. It's just that kind of word, but that doesn't make it incorrect to use. Consider this:

You: "I like cookies."
Me: "I also like cookies."

From a logical perspective, what does "also" add? All it's doing is acknowledging that you just said the same thing. It doesn't add any needed information. That's how it works most of the time. The problem is when we try to use "also" IN PLACE OF something that IS needed. For instance, if I say "Tagore admired Gandhi, also criticized him." Now I'm missing a conjunction. However, the problem is the missing conjunction (we need AND or OR), not the presence of "also."
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Bengal-born writer, philosopher, and educator Rabindranath Tagore had 31 Mar 2022, 05:15
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DmitryFarber GMATNinja AjiteshArunMartyTargetTestPrep sayantanc2k IanStewart

While I agree (B) is the answer, in 'b' isn't also redundant?

We already have but -- so why do we need also ?
I dont think there is any difference between these structures
X but Y | X but also Y

Because i thought also was redundant -- i eliminated B and got this wrong :(
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Hello jabhatta2,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, on the GMAT, redundancy is not a deal-breaker; it is entirely possible for an answer choice to display redundancy and still be the best answer choice.

Redundancy should only be taken into consideration if there are multiple answer choices that are otherwise entirely correct.

We hope this helps.

All the best!
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Bengal-born writer, philosopher, and educator Rabindranath Tagore had 31 Mar 2022, 10:43
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I'd fine-tune that. Redundancy is an outright error if it interferes with the grammar or meaning of a sentence. If there are just words that aren't carrying their weight, it's not a priority.

Overly wordy for the meaning expressed, but not necessarily wrong:
I really had a great time at the fun party I went to.
Kari likes novels and Kari also likes non-fiction books.

Those two might not be preferred on the GMAT, but I would only cut them if another answer reduced the redundancy without introducing another error. I wouldn't just cut them on sight.

Actually wrong:
I really had a fun time going to the party I went to. ("Going" and "went" create confusion, unless we specifically mean that the process of getting to the party was fun, in which case we should clarify.)
Kari likes novels and Kari also likes non-fiction books, too. ("Also" and "too" serve the same role in the same part of the sentence, so "too" doesn't really mean anything at this point. Cut!)
Kari she likes novels and she also likes non-fiction books, too. (Two subjects in a row? That's redundancy we can't have!)
Kari likes not only novels but also likes non-fiction books. (We can just say that the elements after "not only" and "but also" aren't parallel, but one way to see this is that the initial word "likes" distributes to both terms. So in the second part, we are basically saying "Kari likes likes non-fiction books." We can't have that!)
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Bengal-born writer, philosopher, and educator Rabindranath Tagore had 06 Dec 2022, 21:16
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If we compare first few words of answer choices,

we have a difference of "for" vs "of"

When we have a difference of prepositions, we have idiom error

The word before underline portion is "admiration"

Correct idiom is "admiration for"

Eliminate

D and E

If we compare middle part of option A, B and C

We can see "and", which demands parallelism.

In Option A, "the person" is not parallel to "as a politician"

Eliminate A

In option C,

"not only as a person and as a politician" is a wrong construction.

Right construction is "not only X ...., but also Y"

Eliminate C.

Hence, B is the correct answer
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Bengal-born writer, philosopher, and educator Rabindranath Tagore had 06 Jan 2024, 01:04
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Hello from the GMAT Club VerbalBot!

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