ballest127 wrote:
Hi
GMATNinja.
I'm still don't understand why B is incorrect.
IMO, B is better than E in that E compares the phrase between "The US no longer has river as ....... " and " the river winds through the middle of the business district." That is , I think in E there is wrong comparison.
Could be please explain why B is incorrect?
Thank you.
Good question! When we use "like" or "unlike" we have to compare nouns or noun phrases.
For example, "Philadelphia, like Boston, is a wonderful city, but it has an inferiority complex." (In case any Philly people are tempted to throw batteries at me: I LOVE Philly, and have family there. But it totally has an inferiority complex.) In this case, we're demonstrating a similarity between two cities, "Philadelphia" and "Boston." That's fine. What I can't do is write, "Philadelphia, like
in Boston..." because now I'm demonstrating a similarity between a city and a prepositional phrase, and that would make no sense.
(B) has a similar problem. Here we have "Unlike the river..., in San Antonio," so we're comparing "the river" and the prepositional phrase, "in San Antonio." Even if the sentence said, "Unlike the river, San Antonio...," the construction still would be wrong, since we'd be comparing a river to a city.
Because (E) doesn't contain the word "unlike", we're under no obligation to compare nouns directly. Instead, we're comparing contrasting
clauses, as indicated by "but." Because there's a logical contrast in the
ideas expressed in each clause -- in most cities rivers aren't a focal point of life, but in San Antonio they are -- this construction is logical.
I hope that helps!
In Option B, Can't we say the comparison is between "the river in many cities in the United States" and " in San Antonio the river". Can we consider it as a rule that in comparison question using "Unlike", the construction that follows unlike i.e noun or prepositional phrases must be in the same form as the entity that is being compared after the comma ( in this case we have a noun "the river in many cities in the United States" and a prepositional phrase " in San Antonio the river", thus making the comparison incorrect).
Also the usage of "which" in Option B, we have "the river in many cities in the United States, which". The preposition phrase "in many cities" is modifying river and "in the United States" is modifying cities thus indirectly modifying the river. So can "which" jump over these two modifiers and modify river. Thus is the usage of "which" correct?