The zoning commission has countered that its consultation process was

Dear manhasnoname,

I'm happy to respond.

The "another" is a tricky word, because it can function both as a pronoun and as a adjective. It's in a category known as indefinite words. See:
GMAT Sentence Correction: Indefinite Pronouns and Agreement
GMAT Sentence Correction: Indefinite Pronouns and Logic

When a noun follows it, the word "another" acts as an adjective, as a noun modifier. The word "still" is an adverb that modifies the adjective. When we have "still another [noun]" we have [adverb][adjective][noun]. If we are assigning grammatically roles to words in isolation, those are the grammatical roles of those three words. Similar structures:
the very intelligent student
a quite lucrative career
Each of these is of the form [article][adverb][adjective][noun]. Again, if we are going to dissect down to the level of individual words, that what we have.

On the other hand, the poet William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850) said, "We murder to dissect." When you focus too much on the grammatical role of each word in a sentence in isolation, you miss the gestalt, the sense of the whole. When we start looking at how the sentence functions as unit, it becomes clear that the any noun plus all its modifiers act as a kind of unit. In this sense, we would refer to this entire string of words as a noun, because together, they play a noun-role in the large sentence, even though each individual word may or may not be a noun by itself. Consider the sentences:
1) The very intelligent student gave the professor a nuanced answer, suggesting that ....
2) A quite lucrative career for young MBA graduates is ....
It's not incorrect to say that the noun that plays the role of the subject is "the very intelligent student" in #1 and "a quite lucrative career" in #2. In each case, that collection of words as a unit acts a noun in the sentence, and in fact, each acts as the subject in its sentence. This is a more holistic way to think about grammar. The reductionistic method is to look at each individual word separately.

From the purely reductionistic view, holism is wrong. From the holistic view, reductionism misses the forest for the trees. A student who can look at a sentence both holistically and reductionistically will have that much deeper an understanding of the sentence.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

I love, but in the same time hate, such type of questions!
You need to be very, very, very attentive not to miss anything.

Let's understand the meaning first.
The ZC said smth. What exactly? (starting a list with 3 entities)
1. that its consultation process was exhaustive
2. that it coordinated and participated in over 250 meetings with (another list here - oh boy! right? :D )
a) leadership councils;
b) business empowerment boards;
c) and other community organizations.
3. and that none of the issued permits ought to have come as a surprise.

looks good so far...let's get to the POE!

A. has countered that its consultation process was exhaustive, that it coordinated and participated in over 250 meetings with leadership councils, business-empowerment boards, and with other community organizations, and that none of the issued permits ought to have come as a surprise
this damn "with" might be easily overlooked! this single word makes the inside list not parallel. As a result, the answer choice A is incorrect...


B. has countered that its consultation process has been exhaustive, that it coordinated and participated in over 250 meetings with leadership councils, business-empowerment boards, and other community organizations, and that none of the issued permits ought to have come as a surprise
alright..this one changes the tense from "was exhaustive" to has been exhaustive - not a big difference..ok..
list 1 is ok
list 2 is ok
looks like we have a winner...better check the other ones as well just to make sure.

C. has countered that its consultation process has been exhaustive, it coordinated and participated in over 250 meetings with leadership councils, business-empowerment boards, and other community organizations, and none of the issued permits ought to come as a surprise
1st error - 1st list is not correct. twice the same error...2nd entity and 3rd entity
2nd error - we have an IC in the middle. this IC is not connected properly to anything...good bye C!

D. countered that its consultation process has been exhaustive, that it coordinated and participated in over 250 meetings with leadership councils, with business-empowerment boards, and other community organizations, and that none of the issued permits ought to have come as surprises
oups!
we either use with for all entities of the list or not use it at all for 2nd and 3rd...
D is out.

E. countered that its consultation process was exhaustive, that it coordinated and participated in over 250 meetings with leadership councils, business-empowerment boards, and other community organizations, and none of the issued permits ought to have come as a surprise
again..a missing that in the third entity of the first list makes this choice incorrect...

B must be the answer!

Don't you think the idiom structure Not Only X but Y requires X and Y to be parallel?
In this case, X is a noun - " workers", whereas Y is an infinitive verb "to prepare". Though this is in the non-underlined portion and is inconsequential to the OA, I believe this is not an accurate construction of this idiom

chetan2u

Dear rahulkashyap,

I'm happy to respond.

The word "none" is tricky. In a way, it originally was a contraction of "not one." True grammatical purists would say that it is always singular. These people would say:
None of the boys is coming.
These say purist would say that "are" in that sentence is wrong. In this way, it's different from the other indefinite pronouns (some, most, many, few, etc.) See:
GMAT Sentence Correction: Indefinite Pronouns and Agreement
Now, this degree of rigor might be too conservative even for the GMAT! I have not seen the GMAT test issues such as "None of the X's is/are ..." Some of the truly rigorous grammatical issues the GMAT tends to sidestep.

Nevertheless, it's good to have this idea of "none" = "not one" in the back of your mind. Setting "none of the X's" equal to some other plural, here "surprises," still sounds awkward.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Dear rahulkashyap,

I'm happy to respond.

The short answer is: what appears in that question is 100% correct--in particularly, it's perfectly correct and particularly sophisticated use of parallelism. This is a very subtle point.

You see, parallelism is NOT a grammatical construction. Parallelism is a LOGICAL construction, a pattern of matching at the level of logic, and the grammar simply has to reflect the pattern in the logic. Grammar always follows logic.

Naturally, in a comparison, we compare like to like, so over 90% of the time, comparing two things that are logically in the same category (two objects, two actions, etc.) requires two sets of words that match grammatically. The grammar is simply following the logic.

In this case, we are talking about two purposes for action. There are a variety of ways for me to express the purpose of my action. I could use a prepositional phrase:
I bought groceries for my sick friend.
I bought groceries for supplies during the upcoming storm.
I could also use an infinitive of purpose.
I bought groceries to help my sick friend.
I bought groceries to stock up before the upcoming storm.
Those are grammatically different but logically equivalent.

In parallelism, the two branches always must be logically equivalent. Once again, 90% of the time, that also means they will be grammatical equivalents, but this is one example, expressions of the purpose of an action, in which two completely different grammatical forms can be logically equivalent.

By contrast, we easily could construct a sentence in which the elements match grammatically but not logically----
I cooked dinner with enthusiasm, with fresh parsley, and with my friend Chris.
Those three prepositional phrases in parallel match grammatically, but it's a complete mismatch logically. In terms of parallelism, that sentence is a complete train wreck, but the problem doesn't show up at the level of grammar.

You see, you can't afford to be fundamentalist about parallelism---the GMAT will punish that kind of thinking. You can't get through GMAT SC at the level of literalism. You always have to be thinking about logic and meaning. All language is about conveying meaning! That's the single most important thing in language, so it's the single most important thing in the GMAT SC. The student who gets stuck on the grammar and ignores the meaning misses the boat!

Does all this make sense?
Mike

AnthonyRitz, VeritasPrepKarishma, GMATNinja, Could verbal expert help to explain the "THAT" clause in this question?

1. The zoning commission has countered THAT its consultation process has been exhaustive, THAT it coordinated and participated in over 250 meetings with leadership councils, business-empowerment boards, and other community organizations, and THAT none of the issued permits ought to have come as a surprise.

2. The BELIEF THAT the Earth is flat is contradicted by EVIDENCE THAT the Earth is round and the DISCOVERY THAT the Earth circles the Sun.

3. Some buildings THAT were destroyed or heavily damaged in the earthquake last year had been constructed in violation of the city’s building code. [Taken from Official Guide Verbal Review 2017 Question 39]

I'm flattered to be mentioned alongside such distinguished authorities! The word "that" can function as a relative pronoun or as a subordinating conjunction (a type of connector). In the first form, "that" begins a relative clause modifier that (usually) describes the adjacent noun (with some small set of exceptions). In the second form, "that" connects a dependent clause to the independent clause that follows, setting up and contextualizing the main idea of the sentence.

Taking your three examples:

In (1), "that" acts as a subordinating conjunction in each appearance (set in parallel by the "and"); the statements that follow are independent clauses.

In (3), "that" acts as a relative pronoun that modifier the immediately proceeding noun in each instance.

In (2), I think relative pronoun.

I hope this helps!

Yup, Anthony has it right!

In #1, "that" just subordinates the clause(s) that follow.

In #2 & #3, "that" functions as a relative pronoun. In other words, "that" just introduces modifiers for the preceding nouns (belief, evidence, discovery, buildings).

VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:

B. This problem tests parallel structure in a series, with the added bonus that two concurrent lists are involved to obscure your task. The zoning commission has countered three things:

1) That its consultation process... 2) That it coordinated... 3) That none of the permits ought to have come as a surprise

You need a sentence that uses "that" for each of them, and C and E each fail to do so.

The second list is of meetings. The commission coordinated and participated in meetings with:

1) leadership councils 2) business-empowerment boards 3) other community organizations

These three also need to be parallel, and since no list of three has a "with" with each, only the "with" after "participated in meetings..." keeps a parallel list. This eliminates A and D, leaving B as the correct choice.

For this question, which is a better choice of tense , simple past or present participle

What is the difference between "was exhaustive" and "has been exhaustive" ?
Although I knew that "that" was missing breaking the parallel structure in E, I still chose E thinking that "has been exhaustive" in B is not correct.

mikemcgarry
GMATNinja
egmat

rsrighosh has been exhaustive means that it was exhaustive and it still continues to be exhaustive. Was exhaustive means that it was exhaustive at some point in the past.

Brian123

Then isn't B changing the sentence meaning of original sentence (by changing the tense) ?

rsrighosh, the original sentence and the option E has a clear cut parallelism error. We need to pick the sentence that is free of grammatical error and communicates a logical meaning. B

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