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imhimanshu
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Parallel Structure - Doubt 01 Apr 2013, 07:10
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Hi Experts,

Request you to please share your thoughts on the below two sentences.

1) They contended that the committee was biased and that it should be disbanded.

2) They contended that the committee was biased and it should be disbanded.


Just wanted to make sure, if we can remove "that" from the second sentence without any ambiguity. Please explain. I have seen official questions following the same sentence structure.

Thanks
Himanshu

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Parallel Structure - Doubt 01 Apr 2013, 07:17
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Quote:
1) They contended that the committee was biased and that it should be disbanded.
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this is perfect

Quote:
2) They contended that the committee was biased and it should be disbanded.
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this is outright wrong
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Parallel Structure - Doubt 01 Apr 2013, 07:42
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Quote:

this is outright wrong
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Would like to know ..Why, it is wrong?

Moreover, adding an excerpt by Stacey Koprince of MGMAT - this is what she says about the below sentence-
Quote:


I think that X and that Y.
I think that the GMAT is hard and that I should study a lot.

In the example I just gave, the sentence is so short that we could probably get away with "I think that the GMAT is hard and I should study a lot." When the sentence is really copmlex though (like the one we did above), then the presence of the word "that" at the beginning of both X and Y makes it very clear to me what X and Y are - and I might not be able to figure that out otherwise.
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Thanks
H
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Parallel Structure - Doubt 01 Apr 2013, 08:09
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Quote:
They contended that the committee was biased and it should be disbanded.

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the reason why it is wrong is because it is missing logical parallelism. parallelism is of two types :structural and logical .while this sentence it structurally parallel but logically it is trying to connect two weird and independent ideas !! this is not acceptable
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Parallel Structure - Doubt 01 Apr 2013, 14:25
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imhimanshu
Hi Experts,

Request you to please share your thoughts on the below two sentences.

1) They contended that the committee was biased and that it should be disbanded.

2) They contended that the committee was biased and it should be disbanded.


Just wanted to make sure, if we can remove "that" from the second sentence without any ambiguity. Please explain. I have seen official questions following the same sentence structure.

Thanks
Himanshu
Show more

Himanshu,
Good question. IMO, we should retain the "that" to establish the parallelism clearly. So I would write sentence 1) instead of 2). However, that being said, if you have seen constructions similar to 2) in official questions, then you should bring those up here so that we have a much closer look at them and justify the same on solid grounds. So I look forward to seeing the official questions that prompted this question.
Thanks,
Payal
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imhimanshu
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Parallel Structure - Doubt 02 Apr 2013, 05:42
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egmat

Himanshu,
Good question. IMO, we should retain the "that" to establish the parallelism clearly. So I would write sentence 1) instead of 2). However, that being said, if you have seen constructions similar to 2) in official questions, then you should bring those up here so that we have a much closer look at them and justify the same on solid grounds. So I look forward to seeing the official questions that prompted this question.
Thanks,
Payal
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Thanks Payal, I'l get back to you with the Official Question.

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