VECHAMSRIRAM wrote:
Hello GMAT Ninja team and Charles,
I wanted to understand when doing parallelism questions. how do we know from where we need to look at the antecedent.
for example if there is a sentence that goes xyz....noun phrase.....verb phrase.....noun phrase and verb phrase....., how do we know the "and" was refering to the verb phrase and not the "noun phrase", or since they are placing noun phrase with verb phrase the option should be wrong.
Basically how far back in the sentence we need to check to know if the parallelism rule has been violated or respected.
Whatever comes
after the "and" will determine what you're looking for earlier in the sentence. If, for instance, a sentence starts with, "On Thursdays Tim likes to go for a run and..." there's no way for me to know what should come next. None.
I could see a full clause, "
On Thursdays Tim likes to go for a run, and
on Fridays he swims in a lake."
I could see a verb phrase, "On Thursdays Tim
likes to go for a run and
then cooks three omelettes."
Both are fine. There's no way for me to know I'm looking for a parallel construction until I get to the "and." Once I do, I want to pay attention to the portion in red and then let my eyes drift back to the left in search of the same grammatical component in blue. A clause in the first sentence. A verb phrase in the second. (The example you listed is more like the second sentence above, since a verb phrase follows the "and.")
Once I see the two parallel elements, I'll ask myself if it's a logical pairing. If it is, great. The parallelism is fine, and I'm on to other issues. If it isn't logical, the option is out.
The takeaway: you're not expected to read minds! The only way to figure out what portions should be parallel is to note what comes after the "and," and then work your way back until you find something playing a similar role. And while there's no rule that limits how far back you can look for this element, the harder it is to find the parallel piece, the more likely it is that there's another answer choice that's clearer and less confusing.
For more on parallelism, check out
this older live video or
this newer parallelism video (and its sequels).
I hope that helps!