By 1914, ten of the western states had granted women the right to vote

Question

By 1914, ten of the western states had granted women the right to vote, but  only one in the East .

(A) only one in the East
(B) only one eastern state
(C) in the East there was only one state
(D) in the East only one state did
(E) only one in the East had

sudarshan22 · Accepted Answer

+1 for  E .

(A) only one in the East -->   Parallel construct missing, No Verb,  "X had.... Y ___"

(B) only one eastern state -->   Parallel construct missing, No Verb,  "X had.... Y ___"

(C) in the East there was only one state -->   Not-much-parallel  "X had.... Y was"

(D) in the East only one state did -->   Not-much-parallel  "X had.... Y did"

(E) only one in the East had -->   Correct, Parallel construct,  "X had.... Y had"

Hence,  E .

daagh · Answer

I am not sure whether NinetyFour is still pursuing this. However, in his anxiety, he has terribly confused himself with terminology and parts of speech of 'had' and 'did' 
Where a past perfect tense ' had granted' is the tense form, it is perfectly ok to elide what comes after the helping verb 'had' provided those words are already existent verbatim in the prior part. 
However, one cannot substitute a past perfect form with a simple past, because of the difference in timeline. All the happenings are occurring around the same time and hence it will be ungrammatical to use different tenses for each of them. That is the reason D is wrong and E is correct.

NinetyFour · Answer

I got this wrong and selected D over E. Could someone explain why my reasoning is incorrect.

I believe the use of HAD is incorrect in E because HAD does not function as a pronoun. We would need to say "only one in the East had granted women".

In D, however, did can act as a pronoun for verbs hence "in the East only one state  did   ". Why is this wrong and E correct?

CrackverbalGMAT · Answer

When we look out for the  parallel structure  that is required here we can easily arrive at the right answer. The structure needed here is  X had  granted … but only one in  Y had .

This sentence uses the concept of  ellipsis . By not repeating the words granted women the right to vote at the end of the sentence, the sentence elides this using the parallel structure.

This is how we can  eliminate Options A, B, C, and D  in one go. 
Hope this helps!

omkarkhanvilkar · Answer

E is clearly correct due to parallelism and meaning context. A, B, C can be eliminated for either wrong meaning or clunkier construction

minalgambhir · Answer

ERROR ANALYSIS -

1) Case of parallelism around 'but' - only one in the east did/had (Note that tenses don't matter in parallelism)

ANSWER CHOICE ANALYSIS -

A) should end with did/had
B) Same as A
C) should not start with 'in the east'
D) Same as C
E) Correct

lostminer · Answer

There’s a comma before BUT, so why should we go for parallelism and why not consider the part after COMMA BUT to be an Independent Clause ? So why would the answer not be C ?

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ekanshgoyal · Answer

Using concept of ellipsis why option A is wrong? Does it not convey the intended meaning?

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shanks2020 · Answer

CrackverbalGMAT   AndrewN   MartyMurray   EducationAisle

I have the same doubt as above.

AndrewN · Answer

Hello,  shanks2020 . First off, I noticed you tagged me on another question regarding ellipsis. I will respond here for both. I would urge you not to create rules, but to observe tendencies and expand your knowledge as necessary whenever you might see an exception. In my mind, I cannot see any reason to favor answer choice (A) over (B)— eastern state  in the latter better parallels  western states  from the earlier part of the sentence. (If two options are qualitatively the same, you should be able to eliminate both.) More to the point, if the phrase were moved so that it appeared right next to  ten of the western states , then the verb would be understood to apply to both:

By 1914, ten of the western states,  but only one eastern state , had granted women the right to vote.

If the phrase is instead placed at the end of the sentence, the reader anticipates information after  but  that might comment on women's right to vote:  had granted women the right to vote, but...  It is jarring to then encounter the second element of a comparison of sorts without a reminder that the sentence is holding one action up to another action (here, the same one, just performed in different locations). That is what the missing verb achieves. In conversational English, people use ellipsis in a number of ways that would not be acceptable on the GMAT.

Perhaps another Expert will speak more to rules, but I am quite often not going to be your guy. In any case, good luck with your studies. (Maybe 2023 will be your year to put this test behind you.)

- Andrew

vishalsinghvs08 · Answer

AndrewN   omkarkhanvilkar   CrackverbalGMAT   Bunuel

Option B looks much better. Please help
(B) only one eastern state (had granted women the right to vote)
(E) only one(one what? states? ) in the East had (granted women the right to vote)

For option E, we cant use "state" as this form is not mentioned in the passage. Option B seems the best from the lot.

AndrewN · Answer

Hello,  vishalsinghvs08 . I have discussed answer choice (B) above, its pros and cons, so I will let that one be. As for (E), I think you are too narrowly interpreting  only one , which could just as easily refer to the prepositional phrase  of the states , rather than the singular  state . (Just because other options say  state  does not mean you have to preserve the phrasing in any other option. The underlined portion can be negotiated.)

Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

MartyMurray · Answer

The C version is grammatically correct, but the meaning it conveys doesn't make sense.

After all, it doesn't make sense to use "but" to contrast the following two ideas:

"ten of the western states had granted women the right to vote"

and

"in the East there was only one state"

Notice that the C version seems to illogically contrast how many western states had granted women the right to vote with simply how many states there were in the East.

By 1914, ten of the western states had granted women the right to vote

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GMAT Sentence Correction (SC - EA only) Questions

By 1914, ten of the western states had granted women the right to vote

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