Market research has shown that the newest model of E-Phone gained

i selected A in this: gained widespread popularity not due to technical superiority but through seamless; however i feel that this is a low quality question. the reason i selected A is that i want to preserve the original meaning and B changes the meaning completely. B is also seems correct and there can be a debate as what exactly is the original meaning of the sentence . there are two school of thoughts on this. some people say that options A is the intended meaning and if i go with that logic then i will select A; however, the second reasoning is that all options in a SC is 20 % probable.

i doubt that, even in OG, if we have two grammatically correct options in a SC problem

PS : BTW usage of "due to" seems wrong in both A and B !!----> hence this SC is NOT CORRECT

this one was tricky, especially for me, since I've went through and memorized a bunch of the idioms already so upon first sight I knew what I was looking for.

the idiom "not X but rather Y" seem to fit here but once you look at D, the wording of it is just awkward so that couldn't be it.

B changed the statements around a little bit in comparison to the other so that's out.

So you're down to A, C, and E.

In E, "gaining" doesn't really work. I don't know the right term for it but it doesn't sound right because I guess "gaining" is something that is continuing in present and in the context of this sentence it doesn't work.

A and C now.

In C, "did not" is cumbersome as compared to A, which just used "not"

Although both A and C sounded pretty damn right to be, it starts getting pretty technical and knit-picking once you get down to the nitty gritty. I ended up choosing A just because of that little bit.

Can someone please explain why A is correct and C incorrect.

Thanks

It's a matter of parallelism: NOT X, BUT Y. The original gives us NOT "due to technical superiority", BUT "through seamless and intuitive design", matching a phrase with a phrase. Choice C presents us with NOT "gained", but "through seamless...", attempting to match a verb with a phrase. That is not parallel and therefore can be eliminated.

KW
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hi
KyleWiddison please shed your views on the usage of "due to" in both A and B . i feel it is wrong here . i feel we should be using "because of"

"due to" cannot modify verb . it can only modify "noun"

You bring up a good point about "due to" on this question. "Due to" can only modify nouns and it seems like "due to" in the sentence is modifying "gained". It's obviously not a tested part of the sentence because all options contain "due to" (not "because of"), so what is "due to" modifying? Popularity: "gained widespread POPULARITY not due to...".

KW
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This is a question of veiled correlative parallelism.

A. gained widespread popularity not due to technical superiority but through seamless -- not due to – ‘not’ followed by a prepositional phrase – but through seamless – but followed by a prepositional phrase – correct choice.

B. gained widespread popularity not only due to technical superiority but also through seamless—not only ….but also—changes the meaning

C. did not gain widespread popularity due to technical superiority but through seamless --- 'Not gain' is a verb –‘but through, a prepositional phrase --un//

D. did not gain widespread popularity in consideration of technical superiority but rather due to seamless ---same reason as in D

E. gaining widespread popularity not due to technical superiority but also through seamless – 1. The relative clause is a fragment. –2. Not due to--- but also = un//
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The text (A) and B are opposite in meaning. A says, the popularity is not due to technical superiorly but only due to seamless design, whereas in B, the popularity is attributed to both technical superiority and seamless design. That is why the change in the meaning in B
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Correct-I am aware of the that. But, how do you know what the intended meaning is? Is A correct because it is the original sentence ? I could not find any flaws with B .

The intended meaning is always what is given in the text unless it absurd. Assuming for argument sake that If both A and B were correct, can it ever be a GMAT question with two correct answers? The author is the decider of what is the intended meaning and we need to stick to that, unless of course, I repeat, the meaning is silly. Let me give you a link to a solid case and Ron’s advice on this altered intent

https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... t3375.html
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In this sentence, it's bit of a non-issue, because all options, other than D (which is anyway not even a contender) use due to.

In any case, to assess the appropriateness of due to, substitute due to with attributable to.

Market research has shown that the newest model of E-Phone gained widespread popularity not attributable to technical superiority but through seamless and intuitive design.

This is correct, because the popularity was indeed not attributable to technical superiority.
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Split is among gained, did not gain and gaining.
first looking at first two items - Gained and did not gain.
Did not gain, changes the meaning as if it did not actually gain popularity. So C and D are out.
E correlative conjunction issue. Is should be not only - but also, so E is out.
Between A and B, B is changing the meaning as if it got the popularity because of both factors which is contradictory to original sentence.
So A is correct answer.

Due to???
I thought it could only modify nouns or noun phrases

"Due to" - Part of Parallel Marker - Not X But Y ..X and Y needs to be parallel - logically (meaning wise) and grammatically. Option A maintains this aspect of parallelism.
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Hi,

To maintain paralleslim in 'Not X but Y' the elements X and Y should be both similar, i.e. both should start with due to. Not due to.. but due to.. would be an appropriate form. I'm not sure why 'not due to.. but through..' are parallel.

Can experts please shed some light here?

Thanks!

Are you saying that we can just ignore whether due to is misused in the first part of the sentence .. Just coz it makes the second part parallel ?


He enjoys not only to player soccer but also to fish ? Not only to..but to.. Parallel .. So even we know enjoy should be followed by a gerund .. As long as the second part is parallel , the sentence is ok ?

We know due to can't follow a clause ... Please help ..I'm really confused . Tks a lot


The game was delayed due to the storm ... Not due to the storm but because of bomb threat ....
The delay of the of the game was due to the storm

sytabish, it's not necessary that both parts of the comparison use "due to." The parallel markers here are just "not . . . but." As long as the two items after the markers both work the same way, they don't have to be the same words. We could say either of these:

The new model gained popularity due to technical superiority.
The new model gained popularity through innovative design.

So we can compare the two:

The new model gained popularity not due to technical superiority but through innovative design.

I'm not sure why people pay so much attention to "due to" and attach so many rules to it. It's simply a phrase meaning "resulting from." We can certainly use it after a clause: The new phone gained popularity. This popularity resulted from (or, in this sentence, didn't result from) technical superiority. There's no flaw there.
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Hi DmitryFarber,
Thanks for the clarification!

Hi newyork2012,

In the given example - "Due to" is not followed by clause. It is followed by phrase. (group of words).

Understand the meaning of the sentence to determine the rules. In this sentence, the reasons of gainig popurality is highlighted using "Not X But Y " parallel marker. Thus, we use the mentioned structure of A.

Also, in order to check "Due to" in a sentence - replace "Due to" by Caused By and check if the sentence makes sense.

Technically - Due to is an adjectival phrase.

Hope this helps.
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