The social activist ran in the election to enable his country’s people : Sentence Correction (EA only)

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Re: The social activist ran in the election to enable his country’s people [#permalink]

13 Mar 2020, 05:24

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A.

We can start by comparing the last parts. There is a split between due to and because of. Due to means ‘caused by’, which does not fit here. So B and D can be eliminated.
The next split is instead of and rather than. On the SC Questions, rather than is always preferable to instead of. So C can be eliminated.
E looks close because of the apparent parallel structure- by having rather than by preventing. However, when two verbs are joined in parallel structure with the help of conjunctions such as ‘rather than’, they must refer to the same subject. ‘By having equal opportunities’ refers to the voters. Voters would have equal opportunities. But ‘by preventing from progressing’ is not being done by the voters. Voters are not preventing progression. Rather they are being prevented from progressing (by the lack of a democratic system). Thus, in A,
the first verb is active ‘having equal opportunities’ and the second verb is passive ‘be prevented’.

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Re: The social activist ran in the election to enable his country’s people [#permalink]

10 Jun 2020, 00:31

May I know the source of this question? I cannot locate the source of this sentence. Seems its not from the OG or any published article. The sentence structure is weird and can only be analyzed from the grammar standpoint.

However, from the meaning standpoint, it seems nonsensical to compare "to realize" with "to be prevented from."

Besides, can any expert cite other examples with the same sentence structure that compares "to (verb)" and "to be (verb-ed)"?

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Re: The social activist ran in the election to enable his country’s people [#permalink]

20 Jun 2020, 04:59

Hi Experts,

The reason I rejected A was because 'by having equal economic opportunities rather than be prevented from progressing' did not seem parallel enough. Maybe I am comparing the wrong elements.

Can any of the experts please weigh in.

Thanks in advance,
Akash

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Re: The social activist ran in the election to enable his country’s people [#permalink]

22 Jun 2020, 07:09

MentorTutoring wrote:

AkashM wrote:

Hi Experts,

The reason I rejected A was because 'by having equal economic opportunities rather than be prevented from progressing' did not seem parallel enough. Maybe I am comparing the wrong elements.

Can any of the experts please weigh in.

Thanks in advance,
Akash

Hello, Akash. I will admit to taking a whopping 2:12 to work through this one. Yes, I did answer correctly, but the process of elimination took me much longer than usual. My timing on a Sentence Correction question tends to hover around a minute; this speaks to the complex construction of the sentence by the e-GMAT question-writers. Regarding your concern, first, be careful not to be too quick to the draw to eliminate seemingly non-parallel elements. Sometimes they come in disguise. Parallelism is a secondary or tertiary concern: the expression of vital meaning should always come first. Second, in this particular sentence, you can check for parallelism by removing the first apparent parallel element and replacing it with the second. Consider the correct sentence with your proposed parallel elements:

The social activist ran in the election to enable his country’s people to realize the essence of democracy by having equal economic opportunities rather than be prevented from progressing because of the concentration of wealth with a select few.

Now, tease apart the two and check the meaning:

1) The social activist ran in the election to enable his country’s people to realize the essence of democracy by having equal economic opportunities √

The meaning is clear, and the sentence is seamless.

2) The social activist ran in the election to enable his country’s people to realize the essence of democracy rather than be prevented from progressing √

The meaning is clear once again, and we have unwittingly revealed the parallel elements in the process. Notice that the two phrases in the comparison begin with an infinitive form of a verb, to realize and [to] be. Now we can appreciate how the sentence is wound together:

The social activist ran in the election to enable his country’s people to realize the essence of democracy by having equal economic opportunities rather than be prevented from progressing because of the concentration of wealth with a select few.

You might wonder why the first parallel element is not to enable. Why would that not work? Because the comparison in the sentence focuses on his country's people, not on the social activist himself. We understand that the activist ran to allow the people to realize or achieve an aim, rather than be denied that opportunity. If we attempt to make the first parallel element to enable, then we have the following sentence that distorts the meaning I just described:

The social activist ran in the election to enable his country’s people to realize the essence of democracy by having equal economic opportunities rather than be prevented from progressing because of the concentration of wealth with a select few.

Now we are saying that the politician ran so as not to be prevented from progressing, and that misses the heart of the comparison. I hope that all makes sense. If not, feel free to follow up.

- Andrew

Hi Andrew,

Thank you for the wonderful reply!

To compare 'to realize..' and '[to] be..' makes perfect sense. To be honest I did not fully understand what the sentence was trying to say after 'rather than', but now I do.

Appreciate the help!

Regards,
Akash

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Re: The social activist ran in the election to enable his country’s people [#permalink]

22 Jun 2020, 12:29

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AkashM wrote:

Hi Andrew,

Thank you for the wonderful reply!

To compare 'to realize..' and '[to] be..' makes perfect sense. To be honest I did not fully understand what the sentence was trying to say after 'rather than', but now I do.

Appreciate the help!

Regards,
Akash

Glad to hear it, Akash. As I said above, this question took me a moment to size up myself, so I empathized when I read your post. Just remember, do not settle on anything you know is incorrect, but it is okay to admit (whether to yourself only or to others as well) that your understanding may need a little fine-tuning. The community is here to help.

Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

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Re: The social activist ran in the election to enable his country’s people [#permalink]

19 Jul 2020, 11:27

ajaygaur319 wrote:

The social activist ran in the election to enable his country’s people to realize the essence of democracy by having equal economic opportunities rather than be prevented from progressing because of the concentration of wealth with a select few.
(A) to enable his country’s people to realize the essence of democracy by having equal economic opportunities rather than be prevented from progressing because of
(B) to enable his country’s people to realize the essence of democracy by having equal economic opportunities instead of to prevent from progressing due to
(C) that would enable his country’s people to realize the essence of democracy by having equal economic opportunities instead of to prevent from progressing because of
(D) so that his country’s people are allowed to realize the essence of democracy by having equal economic opportunities rather than preventing them from progressing due to
(E) enabling his country’s people to realize the essence of democracy by having equal economic opportunities rather than by preventing them from progressing because of

Hello GMATNinja,

Is option E wrong just because it lacked COMMA between election and enabling ?

I chose E over A. I thought option E has better parallelism than option A.

...by having equal economic opportunities rather than by preventing them from....

thanks,

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Re: The social activist ran in the election to enable his country’s people [#permalink]

16 May 2021, 12:06

Hey AndrewN, egmat
Can you help me in ascertaining the parallelism issue in some choices in here.
For C, what is 'to prevent' parallel to. My thinking is, it is parallel to 'to realize'.
But going through its explanations, that doesn't seem to be case as 'to prevent' is parallel to 'that would enable'.
I know that would enable sets up a relative pronoun clause. But can that clause in itself contain a list?
Or if the sentence is getting splitted on the word instead of, so is the sentence sounding something like: "The social activist ran in election to prevent from progressing because of...."[because if we break sentence from the connector word, it should get split into two sentence].

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The social activist ran in the election to enable his country’s people [#permalink]

17 May 2021, 03:43

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penco wrote:

Hey AndrewN, egmat
Can you help me in ascertaining the parallelism issue in some choices in here.
For C, what is 'to prevent' parallel to. My thinking is, it is parallel to 'to realize'.
But going through its explanations, that doesn't seem to be case as 'to prevent' is parallel to 'that would enable'.
I know that would enable sets up a relative pronoun clause. But can that clause in itself contain a list?
Or if the sentence is getting splitted on the word instead of, so is the sentence sounding something like: "The social activist ran in election to prevent from progressing because of...."[because if we break sentence from the connector word, it should get split into two sentence].

Hello, penco. The reason you are having so much trouble with (C) is that to prevent is not logically parallel with anything. Yes, grammatically speaking, it is parallel with the infinitive to realize, but the meaning breaks down when you interpret the sentence through such a lens. Just as I did in my earlier post above, I will test the parallel elements in succession against the same stem:

1) The social activist ran in the election that would enable his country's people to realize the essence of democracy by having equal economic opportunities

The above sentence could work. What if we swap out one infinitive and replace it with another?

2) The social activist ran in the election that would enable his country's people to prevent from progressing

Now, this one makes no sense, specifically the relationship enable to prevent from progressing. That is, enable and prevent typically go in opposite directions, and such is the case here. We can conclude that to realize and to prevent are NOT parallel elements.

Likewise, a cursory glance at the clause that would enable and the infinitive to prevent should tell you that something is off, regarding parallelism. The GMAT™ prefers a tight, parallel structure whenever possible, so clause should go with clause and infinitive with infinitive.

I would not bother about (C) any further, to be honest. Your goal, after all, is not to find ways to justify incorrect answers, but to see which answer choice of the five given is the least debatable, and in this case, we have found an easy target in parallelism and the meaning it conveys that causes (C) to break down.

To answer your question about parallel elements and branching, yes, that can occur. I have seen questions that follow an X, Y, and Z parallel construct in which one element contains extra information, but the parallelism makes it clear what belongs with what. I would worry about such cases only if I saw them in practice.

I hope that helps. Thank you for thinking to ask.

- Andrew

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Re: The social activist ran in the election to enable his country’s people [#permalink]

17 May 2021, 12:37

AndrewN wrote:

penco wrote:

Hey AndrewN, egmat
Can you help me in ascertaining the parallelism issue in some choices in here.
For C, what is 'to prevent' parallel to. My thinking is, it is parallel to 'to realize'.
But going through its explanations, that doesn't seem to be case as 'to prevent' is parallel to 'that would enable'.
I know that would enable sets up a relative pronoun clause. But can that clause in itself contain a list?
Or if the sentence is getting splitted on the word instead of, so is the sentence sounding something like: "The social activist ran in election to prevent from progressing because of...."[because if we break sentence from the connector word, it should get split into two sentence].

Hello, penco. The reason you are having so much trouble with (C) is that to prevent is not logically parallel with anything. Yes, grammatically speaking, it is parallel with the infinitive to realize, but the meaning breaks down when you interpret the sentence through such a lens. Just as I did in my earlier post above, I will test the parallel elements in succession against the same stem:

1) The social activist ran in the election that would enable his country's people to realize the essence of democracy by having equal economic opportunities

The above sentence could work. What if we swap out one infinitive and replace it with another?

2) The social activist ran in the election that would enable his country's people to prevent from progressing

Now, this one makes no sense, specifically the relationship enable to prevent from progressing. That is, enable and prevent typically go in opposite directions, and such is the case here. We can conclude that to realize and to prevent are NOT parallel elements.

Likewise, a cursory glance at the clause that would enable and the infinitive to prevent should tell you that something is off, regarding parallelism. The GMAT™ prefers a tight, parallel structure whenever possible, so clause should go with clause and infinitive with infinitive.

I would not bother about (C) any further, to be honest. Your goal, after all, is not to find ways to justify incorrect answers, but to see which answer choice of the five given is the least debatable, and in this case, we have found an easy target in parallelism and the meaning it conveys that causes (C) to break down.

To answer your question about parallel elements and branching, yes, that can occur. I have seen questions that follow an X, Y, and Z parallel construct in which one element contains extra information, but the parallelism makes it clear what belongs with what. I would worry about such cases only if I saw them in practice.

I hope that helps. Thank you for thinking to ask.

- Andrew

Thanks a lot for this.
It certainly helps.
I knew the meaning was already off.
I was trying to make sense grammatically and I was not able to find the specific reason why I should go for "that would enable" instead of "to realize" to ascertain the parallelism.

So, grammatically, we can try to replace the infinitives but that would totally distort the meaning. I thought there might be some other scholarly grammar rule lurking around the corner that would prevent the parallelism.

I totally missed the enable-realize opp. words.

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Re: The social activist ran in the election to enable his countrys people [#permalink]

01 Jun 2023, 01:06

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Re: The social activist ran in the election to enable his countrys people [#permalink]

01 Jun 2023, 01:06

GMAT Sentence Correction (EA only) Questions

The social activist ran in the election to enable his country’s people