InLimbo wrote:
Hi Experts
AnishPassi AnthonyRitz,
(B) In feudal Europe, urban areas developed from clusters of houses where peasants lived and from which they commuted to farmlands in the countryside, but in the
American West homesteading policiesI believed the comparison was between feudal Europe and Homesteading policies of (American West). Therefore I eliminated this answer choice. How do I avoid making this mistake? Can you please help me straighten up my understanding of v-ing modifier?
Thank you.
InLimbo, I'm not sure why you made that assumption about B. This answer is both the most parallel of the bunch and simultaneously the only answer that doesn't strictly require parallelism. I'm also not sure what participle ("v-ing modifier") you're concerned about here.
The first main point is to look at the specific parts of speech in order to identify parallel elements. Let's look at B word by word:
Quote:
In feudal Europe, urban areas developed... but in the American West homesteading policies required...
Both clauses start with prepositional phrases ("in feudal Europe"/"in the American West") that are perfectly parallel. "Feudal Europe" clearly parallels "the American West" and cannot possibly parallel "homesteading policies" or anything else. Structurally, "urban areas developed" is
noun, verb, as is "homesteading policies required," so the grammatical parallelism continues to be perfect. ("urban" is an adjective, whereas "homesteading" is a participle, but they're both modifiers that modify the nouns they're right next to, so there's no issue there.) Now, we may grant that the logical parallel between "urban areas" and "homesteading policies" is still not perfect here. Nevertheless, there are multiple reasons not to worry about this.
For one thing, every other answer fails parallelism far worse, far earlier in the parallel structure. Just look for the word "unlike" and the comma to identify the elements being compared.
A tries to match "urban areas developed" with "homesteading policies in the American West that required" -- this illogically compares "urban areas" with "homesteading policies" and structurally tries to match
noun, verb with
noun, relative clause (not acceptable).
C tries to match "feudal Europe where urban areas developed" with "the American West's homesteading policies required" -- this illogically compares "feudal Europe" with "homesteading policies" and structurally tries to match
noun, relative clause with
noun, verb (not acceptable).
D tries to match "feudal Europe where urban areas developed" with "the homesteading policies of the American West required" -- this illogically compares "feudal Europe" with "homesteading policies" and structurally tries to match
noun, relative clause with
noun, verb (not acceptable).
E tries to match "urban areas developed" with "the American West where homesteading policies required" -- this illogically compares "urban areas" with "homesteading policies" and structurally tries to match
noun, verb with
noun, relative clause (not acceptable).
But wait... where's the "unlike" in B?
In fact, there
is no "unlike" in B, and B is technically not creating a comparison structure at all. So, in fact, B is the one and only answer that doesn't actually need to be super parallel in the first place. It's just two independent clauses connected by a comma and a conjunction. And independent clauses have less cause to line up in any particular way with elements of other independent clauses in the sentence.
Don't forget that parallelism is not a general truth of the English language. It's fun with a purpose. You need parallelism for lists ("A, B, and C"), comparisons ("like"/"unlike"/"more"/etc.), and correlated conjunction structures ("either"/"or" and "not only"/"but also" and so forth). Otherwise, whatever: If you're not dealing with one of these structures, you probably don't need to think about parallelism at all.
Finally, to top it all off, A, C, D, and E all have other errors as well.
A, C, and D create a logic error with a bad list: "houses where peasants lived and commuted to farmlands" says that the peasants commuted at their houses. But of course they commuted
from their houses to the farmlands -- it doesn't make any sense to commute
at one's home.
E tries to fix this by cutting the "and" but ends up with a very awkward modifier "from which they commuted" as a result; "in feudal Europe" is also badly placed.
I honestly wouldn't resort to these subtler issues; I'd just kill A, C, D, and E for failed parallelism in their comparisons and pick B straight away. But in case you had any lingering doubts, yeah, those four wrong answers are all godawful sentences.
To summarize:
B doesn't need to be parallel, but it does a pretty decent job of parallelism anyway, and it has no other errors.
A, C, D, and E all make comparisons that require parallelism, fail both logical and grammatical parallelism, and contain other errors as well.
Here's another official question that invokes some similar ideas:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/as-criminal-activity-on-the-internet-becomes-more-and-more-sophisticat-220239.htmlI hope this helps!
close
17 Jan 2022, 06:46
I understand my assumption was incorrect, as "homesteading policies" isnt a verbal that would modify a noun close to it. I will focus more on definite errors than nitpicking benign perceived errors. 
