Historians and economists have disagreed about whether the 1929 collap

Question

Historians and economists have disagreed about whether the 1929 collapse of stock prices caused the international catastrophe known as the Great Depression or  did it simply reflect the underlying weakness of  the United States economy.

A. did it simply reflect the underlying weakness of
B. simply reflected the underlying weakness of
C. was simply reflecting the weakness underlying
D. if it was simply reflecting the weakness underlying
E. whether it simply reflected the weakness which underlay

Hello, I'd like to know the difference between A&B. Because I thought its structure should be "whether S+V or S+V" so I chose A but the answer is B.

Chethan92 · Answer

janeyeo , Can you underline the sentence, which needs to be corrected?

m1033512 · Answer

IMO B .

This is to check the whether ---- Or usage

underlined part starts from "did" in the original passage.

I understood it from the given option in A.

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sanjayparihar16 · Answer

B.
My thought process - “Or” is used for listing two items, so I thought both of them should be parallel structured. Thus introduction of “it” was not justified IMO and only B seemed to be right. I know its not a solid justification but this came first to my mind.

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janeyeo · Answer

Afc0892 haha it should be A.

Thanks for checking and it's amended !

MahmoudFawzy · Answer

Can someone reply to  janeyeo  's question?

GKomoku · Answer

hello janeyeo , Mahmoudfawzy83 I'm not an expert, but try to help Historians and economists have disagreed about whether the 1929 collapse of stock prices caused the international catastrophe known as the Great Depression or did it simply reflect the underlying weakness of the United States economy. Meaning: 1. Historians and economists have disagreed about something 2. this something whether the 1929 collapse of stock prices 3. caused the international catastrophe known as the Great Depression 4. or did it simply reflect the underlying weakness of the United States economy A.JPG I think you've confused with usage of either ... or neither ... nor whether is used when the intent is to depict a choice, an alternative or a possibility. Two specific situations in which whether should be used: 1. After prepositions 2. After verbs in the given sentence we have only one //ism marker "or" we have "caused" and "did" // to each other - fine so far this "or" is NOT part of the 'weather or not' 'weather or not' -- 'or not' of the weather is usually ellipsed, but we have to keep in mind that the meaning demands so. in our case: weather the collaspe {caused or did} or not But to me the main problem with (B) is pronoun "it" it - refers to what? --> collapse ? collapse did collapse e simply reflect the underlying weakness of the United States economy -- seems not so logical We have more clear and concise (B) B.JPG

GMATRockstar · Answer

Usually with "whether" we get a parallel structure: WHETHER X...OR Y, and we are looking for two Parallel verbs. We don't need to repeat the word "whether" in the second-part of the idiom.

EX: Whether I will go to the store or visit the mall.

But also the modifiers could be parallel:

EX: Whether he studies today or tomorrow, he will still do well on the exam. (Here it's understood the "studies" applies to the second part of the idiom, so we don't have to repeat it.)

Anyway, let's look at choice (A):

Historians and economists have disagreed about whether the 1929 collapse of stock prices caused the international catastrophe known as the Great Depression or did it simply reflect the underlying weakness of the United States economy.

Let's strip out some non-essentials:

Historians and economists have disagreed about whether the collapse caused... or did it reflect....

As written we have "collapse caused" parallel with "did it reflect." This is not perfectly parallel, and we should look for a better option. (B) gives is to us by placing "reflected" in parallel with "caused" without screwing up the nice idiomatic structure of "WHETHER X...OR Y...."

VerbalBot · Answer

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Historians and economists have disagreed about whether the 1929 collap

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Historians and economists have disagreed about whether the 1929 collap

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