adityaganjoo wrote:
A few doubts in the explanation:
(i) why is 'rather than' preferred over 'instead of' in this case? I understand that 'instead of' shows substitution, while 'rather than' shows preference. Here what suits better, as the judge actually did the substitution
(ii) in (E), "to allow" is parallel to "be confined" right? I am not able grasp that! Would be great if you could explain it a bit more.
(iii) why do we necessarily have to use infinitive form after 'instead of'?
Please do let me know where am I going wrong.
i. Its easy to say 'instead of' shows substitution, while 'rather than' shows preference but equally hard to implement
He drinks coffee instead of tea ( it seems in general he takes coffee)
He drinks coffee rather than tea ( it seems he is in restaurant. While his friends order tea, he order coffee)
The above scenarios are easy to visualize as we are clear whether it is replacement or substitution.
CAn I reverse above scenarios?
Now for general , can i say:
He drinks coffee rather than tea( I think so , it still makes sense . Now he drinks coffee rather than tea )
Similarly If he is in restaurant, he substitute coffee with drink:
He drinks coffee instead of tea. Keypoint is : Both words( replacement /preference ) make sense. In Gmat questions, we can argue on either side unless the context is clear.
So what shall we do?
The remember below point to make a final choice:
1. grammatical: rather than is conjuction, so it can be used with adverb, nouns, adjective , words etc.
but instead of is prepotiion so it can only be used with nouns
It means we can rule out some choice on basis of grammar
Even we are left with 2 choices or more, GMAT prefers
rather than as compared to
instead of . It maybe possible that options with instead of may have some issue and that option maybe open to reject.
This decision depends on question to question
For this particular question, A , B and C can be rejected directly because
instead of is not with noun.
ii. In E , be confined is not in parallel with
to allow but it is parallel with
to go both the words that are needed to be in parallel should be of opposite meaning.
allow rather than
forbidallow rather than
denygo rather than
stopgo rather than
confineiii As mentioned in i. , we need a noun after instead of ; . infinitive is not verb that is used as noun so infinitive not suitable with
instead of .
I hope it clarifies your doubt.