The greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease belongs not to the dynamic executive, male or female, nor the single mother, but the married woman who holds a full-time job while still performing most household tasks at home.


A. greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease belongs not to the dynamic executive, male or female, nor the single mother,

B. greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease is not risked by the dynamic executive, male or female, or the single mother,

C. one who most risks developing stress-related heart disease is not the dynamic executive, male or female, or the single mother

D. one who risks the greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease is not the dynamic executive, male or female, nor the single mother

E. one most risking the greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease is neither the dynamic executive, male nor female, nor the single mother

Here The is used and 'the' is always followed by superlative, so use of greater(comparitive form) is incorrect, ruling out options A,B,D
E is out because of use of nor instead of 'or' in male nor female
Answer is C

IMO C

A. Neither ...nor...is the correct idiom usage
B. Subject: greater chance Verb: is not risked. WRONG
C. Correct; or is used to show parallelism
D. Again same as A,
E. Same as B
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The one who most risks developing stress-related heart disease is

not the dynamic executive, male or female, or the single mother
but the married woman

who holds a full-time job while still performing most household tasks at home.

Answer must be (C) for correct Idiomatic usage Not X but Y, further (C) uses correct parallelism structure....
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daagh chetan2u

Can we cross-out all options except C as they lack the use of 'than' when using the comparative form '-er' ?

Diction,proper usage.

A: You don't say "chance of developing stress-related heart disease" belongs to x y or z, especially when are other better options available. You are not showing ownership here, to show that x belongs to y.INCORRECT.

B. greater chance and risk has almost similar meaning, both convey degree of something, hence using both of these is redundant.INCORRECT.

C. Best option. Keep.CORRECT.

D." risks" and " greater chance" are redundant IMO, also sentence is wordy compared to C. "Nor" is incorrect without neither.INCORRECT.

E. " Neither - Nor - Nor " improper. C is certainly better than E. INCORRECT.

Ans-C

Hope it's clear.
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A. greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease belongs not to the dynamic executive, male or female, nor the single mother, - When we use coordinating conjunction pairs (such as Not X... But Y), the clauses taken by the conjunction words must have a similar structure. Here, the clause commanded by the conjunction ''but'' does not have the preposition ''to''.

B. greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease is not risked by the dynamic executive, male or female, or the single mother,- When we use coordinating conjunction pairs (such as Not X... But Y), the clauses taken by the conjunction words must have a similar structure. Here, Here, the word that follows the conjunction ''not'' is a verb, whereas the word that follows the conjunction ''but'' is an article..

C. one who most risks developing stress-related heart disease is not the dynamic executive, male or female, or the single mother - has no error. Hence, (C) is the right answer choice

D. one who risks the greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease is not the dynamic executive, male or female, nor the single mother - ''nor'' is not preceded by ''neither''

E. one most risking the greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease is neither the dynamic executive, male nor female, nor the single mother - the terms highlighted by 'nor' are not equivalent - some contain the article ''the'' while others do not.

The greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease belongs not to the dynamic executive, male or female, nor the single mother, but the married woman who holds a full-time job while still performing most household tasks at home.


A. greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease belongs not to the dynamic executive, male or female, nor the single mother, -- correct idiom should have been "not to X, but to Y"

B. greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease is not risked by the dynamic executive, male or female, or the single mother, -- unnecessary passive construct in underlined part

C. one who most risks developing stress-related heart disease is not the dynamic executive, male or female, or the single mother -- CORRECT, "not" is commonly applied as negation component. "one who most risks.." correctly describes women.

D. one who risks the greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease is not the dynamic executive, male or female, nor the single mother -- "risk the chance" doesn't make sense. "not X nor Y" is not correct idiom

E. one most risking the greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease is neither the dynamic executive, male nor female, nor the single mother -- too many "nor"s and same error as D

So, the answer is C

The greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease belongs not to the dynamic executive, male or female, nor the single mother, but the married woman who holds a full-time job while still performing most household tasks at home.

* Subject Verb Pair [ [u]"greater chance belongs" - not make sense[/u] ; " who holds" ] - incorrect
* Tense Form [ present tense] - conveys intended meaning
* If then conditional - not used
* Subjunctive verb - not used
* Pronoun [ "who" has antecedent ]
* Modifier [ "who holds" correctly modifies "married woman"]
* Parallelism [ "to the dynamic executive, male or female, nor the single mother" not parallel to "the married woman"] - parallelism error
* Comparison - not used
* Idioms ["nor" ....."but" .....] - idiomatic error


A. greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease belongs not to the dynamic executive, male or female, nor the single mother,

1. subject verb pair " greater chance - belongs " - not make sense
2. idiomatic error - "nor"

- Incorrect

B. greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease is not risked by the dynamic executive, male or female, or the single mother,

- Passive verb usage makes incorrect.

C. one who most risks developing stress-related heart disease is not the dynamic executive, male or female, or the single mother

1. Removes the subject verb error
2. using "or" removes the idiomatic error

- Corrects

D. one who risks the greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease is not the dynamic executive, male or female, nor the single mother

- Idiomatic error ;"not.....nor....". Hence incorrect

E. one most risking the greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease is neither the dynamic executive, male nor female, nor the single mother

- Multiple usage of "nor" makes incorrect.


IMO(C)

Here's the official explanation provided by the GMAC for this question:

All but one of the versions of this sentence use the phrase the greater chance. In standard usage, the greater contrasts one quantity with one other, not with multiple others. Unless the risk referred to in this sentence is being compared to the risk incurred by someone in an unseen previous context, the greater is the wrong expression, because the contrast is between the level of risk incurred by one type of person and the levels of risk incurred by two other types of people.

Option A: The chance ... belongs not to ... nor is awkward and unidiomatic. Not is followed by a prepositional phrase starting with to, which is not parallel to the noun phrases following nor and but. The greater is the wrong expression; since three levels of risk are being compared, the appropriate expression would be the greatest.

Option B: The greater chance ... is not risked by is illogically redundant. The greater is the wrong expression; since three levels of risk are being compared, the appropriate expression would be the greatest.

Option C: Correct. This version uses the words correctly and is structured using concise parallel constructions that clearly express the relationships among the levels of risk and among those incurring the risks.

Option D: Who risks the greater chance is illogically redundant. The greater is the wrong expression; since three levels of risk are being compared, the appropriate expression would be the greatest.

Option E: Most risking the greater chance is illogically redundant. In the phrase male nor female, the conjunction should be or instead of nor. The greater is the wrong expression; since three levels of risk are being compared, the appropriate expression would be the greatest.

The correct answer is C.

Please note that I'm not the author of this explanation. I'm just posting it here since I believe it can help the community.
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We're given three categories of people: male executives, female executives, and single mothers; therefore we need 'greatest' or 'most', not 'greater'.

A, B, D, and E all make this error. C uses 'most' instead of greater. C is the answer.
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A. greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease belongs not to the dynamic executive, male or female, nor the single mother: Wrong, 'nor' is not the right choice here, maybe 'or' could ave done the trick. Anyway, the structure of 'belongs to' doesn't seem quite right

B. greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease is not risked by the dynamic executive, male or female, or the single mother: Wrong, 'comparative degree' used in the sentence is not right, it is generally followed by 'than'

C. one who most risks developing stress-related heart disease is not the dynamic executive, male or female, or the single mother: Seems good, this is our answer

D. one who risks the greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease is not the dynamic executive, male or female, nor the single mother: Same error as in the option A

E. one most risking the greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease is neither the dynamic executive, male nor female, nor the single mother: Same error as in the option A

In A and B, the basic issue revolves around a "greater chance". In A- "greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease belongs not to the dynamic executive, male or female, nor the single mother..". In B- "..greater chance of developing stress-related heart disease is not risked by the dynamic executive, male or female, or the single mother..". In both these choices, "greater chances neither doesn't belong to dynamic people nor it is risked by dynamic people. These constructions are illogical.

In the rest of the answer choices, the degree of risk is being compared and hence "greatest" would be ideal. In D and E, there is an incorrect usage of "greater" and in E, the incorrect usage of "nor" between male and female.

C is the correct answer.
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the concept of scope of negation is a basic one in grammar books. its worth reading this part.
"or" is followed by "not' because scope of negation "not" cover all the clause
I do not eat or drink now.
neither must go with nor
I learn neither english nor french. in this sentence, there is no negation word such as "not" which cover all clause, so , negation is a couple "neither...nor".

"nor" can follow "not" if the second clause appear
I do not learn french now, nor do I speak english.
in this complex senentence, "not" cover all the first clause but do not cover the second clause, so , "nor" must be used to continue the negation.

Hi! Is "not or" correct idiom usage? I believe it is not nor which is correct.