Chile laborers are employed not so much for their skill but instead by

Question

Child laborers are employed not so much for their skill  but instead  by the fact that these children are cheap in terms of their wage rates.

A. but instead
B. rather than
C. than
D. as
E. so much as

ShrinidhiKumar · Answer

Hi can you please explain why the answer could not be E? 
Is this a test on idioms or parallelism?

Posted from my mobile device

itoyj · Answer

So much________ so much as- it's non idiomatic construction

ShankSouljaBoi · Answer

daagh  kindly guide with this question.

Regards.

daagh · Answer

Shank

Child laborers are employed not so much for their skill  but instead  by the fact that these children are cheap in terms of their wage rates.

A. but instead
B. rather than
C. than
D. as
E. so much as

I couldn't make out much from this question; therefore I just left it.

1. There is a well-recognized idiom such as--- not so much for their skills … as for their cheapness. This is not there. 
2. The parallelism of the correlative conjunction ''not so much for … but so much for' is also is missing.

We should perhaps wait for the OE to say what is in the mind of the author who wrote this question. Probably she wanted to introduce a non- standard idiom in order to pose this question as a toughy and prove one-up over others.

Chile laborers are employed not so much for their skill but instead by

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