smashingpumpkins wrote:
Legislation in the Canadian province of Ontario requires of both public and private employers
that pay be the same for jobs historically held by women as for jobs requiring comparable skill that are usually held by men.
(A) that pay be the same for jobs historically held by women as for jobs requiring comparable skill that are
(B) that pay for jobs historically held by women should be the same as for a job requiring comparable skills
(C) to pay the same in jobs historically held by women as in jobs of comparable skill that are
(D) to pay the same regardless of whether a job was historically held by women or is one demanding comparable skills
(E) to pay as much for jobs historically held by women as for a job demanding comparable skills
Here is my analysis of this question:
This is what the sentence says:
Legislation requires equal pay for jobs historically held by women and jobs requiring comparable skills held by men. Both public and private employers need to ensure this. In the non-underlined part, we have: Legislation requires of both public and private employers …
Since the sentence uses the verb ‘requires,’ we need to use 'that subjunctive.' Only options (A) and (B) use 'that subjunctive.'
(C) to pay the same in jobs historically held by women as in jobs of comparable skill that are
(D) to pay the same regardless of whether a job was historically held by women or is one demanding comparable skills
(E) to pay as much for jobs historically held by women as for a job demanding comparable skillsThen, is the infinitive form ‘to pay’ in other options incorrect? I wouldn’t be too sure because we do write the transitive verb ‘require’ with an object.
For example, something like this may make sense:
Legislation requires both employers to pay the same… This is ‘A requires B to do C’ structure which we do often use. But note that the non-underlined part uses ‘of’ before employers: Legislation requires of both employers to pay …
This is ‘A requires of B to do C’ structure which is incorrect. The object of ‘requires’ is missing.
So, options (C), (D) and (E) are incorrect.
‘A requires B to do C’ would be acceptable in which B is the object of ‘requires.’
‘A requires C of B’ would be correct too in which C would be the object of ‘requires.’
(A) that pay be the same for jobs historically held by women as for jobs requiring comparable skill that are
(B) that pay for jobs historically held by women should be the same as for a job requiring comparable skillsOptions (A) and (B) of our original sentence say: ‘A requires of B C’ which is also correct since C (‘that pay …’ clause) is the object of ‘requires.’ Our sentence placed ‘of B’ before C because C is long and complex.
Option (A) uses the subjunctive form ‘be’ which is correct. Option (B) uses ‘should’ along with ‘be’ which is not correct.
‘A requires that pay be the same’ is correct. When we add ‘should’ here, it becomes ‘A requires that pay should be the same.’ Note that this becomes redundant. We use either ‘requires’ or ‘should,’ but not both.
For example, ‘A says that pay should be the same’ would be acceptable.
Another point to note:
‘… pay be the same for jobs held by women as for jobs held by men…’ works better in terms of parallelism. Options (B) and (E) use plural ‘jobs’ for women but singular ‘a job’ for men which is incorrect. Just like there are multiple jobs which are historically held by women, there are multiple jobs which are historically held by men. So, the comparison should be ‘jobs’ vs ‘jobs’ or ‘a job’ vs ‘a job.’
Another interesting point here in the correct option (A) is that the relative clause ‘that are usually held by men’ does not touch what it modifies – ‘jobs.’ A present participle modifier ‘requiring comparable skill’ is placed right after ‘jobs’ and the relative clause modifier appears after that. Hence, we say that other than some basic non-negotiable rules of grammar, there are no rules!
Answer (A)