In feudal Korea, cattle were traditionally used as beasts of burden

Question

In feudal Korea,  cattle were traditionally used as beasts of burden, rather than as a food source, and fish were  the primary source of protein in the typical diet.

A. cattle were traditionally used as beasts of burden, rather than as a food source, and fish were
B. cattle were being used as beasts of burden, rather than as a food source, and fish were providing
C. cattle were traditionally used as beasts of burden, rather than a food source, with fish being
D. the traditional use of cattle was as beasts of burden, rather than for the provision of food, and fish were
E. cattle were traditionally used for beasts of burden, rather than for a food source, and fish were

arvind910619 · Answer

The answer is A
A has proper open parallelism and fish are plural so we need plural verrb
B use of being is wrong past continuous tense is not required .
C as is missing after rather than 
D again as is missing 
E "used for" beasts changes meaning as it suggests they were used for beasts rather than as a beasts

Mona2019 · Answer

Hi,

Could You please help me in ensuring, if as is necessary after rather than in this question.

"cattle were traditionally used as beasts of burden, rather than a food source"

I wanted to know if use of rather than is okay in the above quoted text, or it is erroneous.

Thanks in advance for your help.

MikeHelios · Answer

Hi
You are right in finding out that one of the mistakes in the sentence is the missing 'as' after rather than.
the other being a parallelism problem with ' fish being'

Gauravvinod92 · Answer

why "rather than as" instead of "rather than" in the option A.

AndrewN · Answer

You ask a simple yet complicated question,  Gauravvinod92 . The short answer is that GMAC™ likes to preserve a parallel construct whenever possible, and  as A, rather than  as  B  is perfectly parallel. Furthermore, GMAC™ tends to be more conservative in its adherence to grammatical conventions, an example being something like the  that  that is often omitted in regular speech. (Such an omission is called an  ellipsis , and you can read more about that in  this article  from the Cambridge Dictionary.) A good rule of thumb is that when in doubt, opt for a more conservative construct than a progressive one. This is one of the reasons you cannot let your ear guide you in SC. The way people speak everyday and the way a traditional grammar would express a similar notion are often different, and the GMAT™ is constructed more with the latter in mind.

For those arguing that the omission of  as  is fundamentally incorrect, that is itself an incorrect contention. Rather, the difference between the two clauses below draws attention to a second grammatical condition, this one called  syntactic pleonasm , which occurs when a function word (such as  that  from the above example) is  optional , in terms of expressing the vital meaning of the sentence, but is preserved anyway.

1) cattle were traditionally used as beasts of burden, rather than  as  a food source ( formal : syntactic pleonasm)

2) cattle were traditionally used as beasts of burden, rather than   a food source ( informal : ellipsis)

Notice that for 2) to work, the placement of the comparative phrase is crucial, or else the meaning of the sentence is changed entirely:

3) cattle, rather than a food source, were traditionally used as beasts of burden (incorrect, since a food source cannot be used as a beast of burden)

It is for the sake of clarity that the more formal version is preferred, nothing more. Choices (C) through (E) contain other errors that allow us to eliminate them definitively:  being , a mismatched as/for comparison, and an incorrect idiom in  used for , respectively.

I hope that helps shed some light on the issue. If you have further questions, feel free to ask.

- Andrew

In feudal Korea, cattle were traditionally used as beasts of burden

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GMAT Sentence Correction (SC - EA only) Questions

In feudal Korea, cattle were traditionally used as beasts of burden

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