OFFICIAL EXPLANATION



HIGHLIGHTS

Splits
Three major splits exist:
(1) THEM/IT
-- who or what is eavesdropping? Not the Congressmen [plural]. The National Security Administration [singular] is eavesdropping.
(2) eavesdrop and pass / eavesdrop and be passing
and
(3) the description of the source of the evidence that the NSA is allowed to pass on
-- the calls; the calls on which it eavesdropped; and those calls
-- decide this issue second. Clear grammar errors always come first. This second split is more about style than grammar.

Meaning?

Elected representatives gave the National Security Agency power both to tap into phone calls without judicial permission and to share any gathered data.

The two things that the NSA can now do should be parallel because they are joined with the word "AND."

THE PROMPT



THE OPTIONS


• The National Security Agency is singular and takes the pronoun "it." Them is incorrect. The error in option A is fatal.
• The infinitives eavesdrop and pass are correct.
Eliminate A


• the singular "it" correctly refers to the NSA
• HOLD
-- the calls on which it eavesdropped should not be assessed in isolation


• as in (B), the pronoun "it" is correct
• those calls is much more concise than the phrasing in (B).
-- But we will decide style issues last.
HOLD


• them cannot refer to the National Security Administration (in English, agencies and government bodies are singular)
• and is a parallelism marker. The two verbs joined by and (eavesdrop, be passing) are not parallel. It doesn't matter that the the word "to" is not repeated before "be passing."
-- Verbs made up of more than one word (to walk, had walked, will walk) are often split up.
-- The first part of the verb, in this case, to, "distributes" to the second parts of both verbs.
-- The problem is that to eavesdrop is a simple infinitive. To be passing is not.
-- If you have doubt, look at other sentences. Three say, simply, pass. Pass and eavesdrop are parallel.
Eliminate D

[/quote]
• as in (D), to eavesdrop and to be passing are not parallel
Eliminate E

• Option B or C? Which is better?
B:.. . pass along evidence from the calls on which it eavesdropped
C:. . .pass along evidence from those calls
-- we know which calls the NSA gets its evidence from
-- the word "those" [calls] is concise and clear.
-- "Those" is called a demonstrative adjective. The word those points to the noun calls

Option C says the same thing that B does in fewer words.
Eliminate B

The best answer is C

COMMENTS

philipssonicare and arorasomya , welcome to SC Butler.

Almost all of these answers are excellent.
Aspirants who follow: I would read the whole thread. Each person adds something from which we can learn.
If you explained your answer, you get kudos. Nicely done.

Many United States Congressmen recently voted to give the National Security Agency new powers enabling them to eavesdrop on telephone calls without a court warrant and pass along evidence from the calls to other government agencies.

A) enabling them to eavesdrop on telephone calls without a court warrant and pass along evidence from the calls
them is a plural pronoun. Congressmen is a plural noun. NSA is a singular noun. The intended meaning is for the NSA to eavesdrop, not the congressmen.

B) enabling it to eavesdrop on telephone calls without a court warrant and pass along evidence from the calls on which it eavesdropped
it is a singular pronoun and has a clear singular antecedent in NSA.
on which it eavesdropped seems redundant – the NSA isn't passing along evidence from phone calls that it isn't eavesdropping on
eavesdropped is the wrong tense. It could have already eavesdropped (in the short time between the vote and the statement), could be eavesdropping now, and could eavesdrop in the future. We want eavesdrops

C) enabling it to eavesdrop on telephone calls without a court warrant and pass along evidence from those calls
it is a singular pronoun and has a clear singular antecedent in NSA.
those calls is clearly linked with the calls that the NSA eavesdrops on
enabling it to
1. eavesdrop on telephone calls without a court warrant; and
2. pass along evidence from those calls
These are parallel in the format verb+prepositional phrase
Nice and clear. Will need something phenomenal to beat this

D) enabling them to eavesdrop on telephone calls without a court warrant and be passing along evidence from those calls
Same as A.

E) enabling it to eavesdrop on telephone calls without a court warrant and to be passing along evidence from those calls
This is the same as C, bar changing pass to to be passing. Use of the present participle is unnecessary and destroys the parallelism described in C

C

Many United States Congressmen recently voted to give the National Security Agency new powers enabling them to eavesdrop on telephone calls without a court warrant and pass along evidence from the calls to other government agencies.

pointer 1: parallelism powers enabling them "to eavesdrop... and pass.."
pointer 2: enabling who? the NSA (singular) ; them (plural) does not match. has to be "it"
pointer 3: which calls were passed to govt, agencies?The ones that were eavesdropped. pronoun:those


Nice and clear. Answer is C.

Quick read through shows that the sentence tests parallelism and meaning. Quick scan of answer choices shows that we have "enabling" in every choice, so modification is fine. However, we clearly spot the 2-3 split which deals with pronouns "it" and "them". Agency is singular, so we need to use "it".

Paraphrased and simplified, the sentence looks as follows: Politicians voted to give the Agency powers enabling it [Agency] to do A and B. So, A and B must be parallel. Let's look at the option choices.

A) enabling them to eavesdrop on telephone calls without a court warrant and pass along evidence from the calls
Wrong because of the pronoun error. Parallelism is correct.

B) enabling it to eavesdrop on telephone calls without a court warrant and pass along evidence from the calls on which it eavesdropped
Ugh, from the calls on which it is too wordy. Also, what does pronoun "it" refer to?

C) enabling it to eavesdrop on telephone calls without a court warrant and pass along evidence from those calls
enabling it to eavesdrop and pass along - parallelism is correct.

D) enabling them to eavesdrop on telephone calls without a court warrant and be passing along evidence from those calls
Wrong because of the pronoun error. Parallelism is also wrong.

E) enabling it to eavesdrop on telephone calls without a court warrant and to be passing along evidence from those calls
to be passing is fatal because it is not parallel to to eavesdrop.

The official explanation is here.