Piyatiwari alluded to this in his post, but just to clarify we choose "associated with" not because of any idiom issues. "Costs arising from" and "Costs of" are both idiomatically correct, and in fact "costs of" is even more concise than "costs associated with"!

What makes the difference here is parallelism. We're discussing the costs in two categories: "data-processing equipment" and "development and maintenance of ..." Since the sentence has "and with the development and maintenance ..." we should choose (B) because it is most parallel.

My take? Idioms are difficult (and rare), so think first about other issues.

Cheers,
Mark
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Mark Sullivan | Manhattan GMAT Instructor | Seattle, WA


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Hey All,

We often teach this question in class, so I thought I'd weigh in briefly.

There are two major splits here, the first is subject-verb agreement. You can always recognize this by singular/plural split in either a verb or a noun (singular/verb split in noun can also be a pronoun issue...by the way).

Your technique when faced with something like this should always be to IMMEDIATELY go looking for the verb. In this case, the verb is "are", all the way at the bottom of sentence. This means we need a plural subject: costs. (I'm not sure why some people think cost is plural and costs is singular--with rare exceptions, "s" makes plurality).

From there, we have a split between prepositions (with, of, from). All of these forms are inherently correct, in that costs can "arise from" something, or "be associated with" something, or just be "of" (costs of doing business, for example). The key is parallelism.

When you see the parallelism trigger "and", notice that the word that comes after it is WITH. This means we need to have a "with" in the first portion of the parallelism. You wouldn't want to say "costs associated with BLAH and arising from BLAH" or "costs associated with BLAH and of BLAH". Neither of those would be parallel.

These two splits get us to the correct answer: B.

Hope that helps!
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While larger banks can afford to maintain their own data-processing operations, many smaller regional and community banks are finding that the cost associated with upgrading data-processing equipment and with the development and maintenance of new products and technical staff are prohibitive.

A. cost associated with
B. costs associated with
C. costs arising from
D. cost of
E. costs of

I know that the OA is correct because of parallelism. But my doubt is this:
If we choose C or E, we would be changing the intended meaning of the original sentence, right? Even the meaning in C and E could be ilogical.
Please confirm.

Thanks!

Hi,
Why costs - plural subject ?

associated is the verb right ? So why not cost ?

Thanks in advance.

sir, i have a doubt regarding subject verb agreement if we took the costs associated then associated will be its verb and then are in this sentence make it incorrect please clearify

thanks but if that is the case then the whole clause become subject i think and then only it will make sense because costs are prohibitive doesn't make sense for me and if whole clause is subject then it must be singular as clause or phrase act as a subject then it must be singular. please explain

Hi Rishabh, your question is not very clear. Do you mean that the entire Noun phrase (and not "clause") becomes the subject? Indeed that's the case.

Also, why do you say: costs are prohibitive doesn't make sense for me.
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Ashish
EducationAisle, Bangalore

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Hi bud, let me try to explain this.

While larger banks can afford to maintain their own data-processing operations, many smaller regional and community banks are finding that the costs associated with upgrading data-processing equipment and with the development and maintenance of new products and technical staff are prohibitive.

In the above CORRECT sentence, what is the subject costs doing?
Here we have two ways to answer my above question.

• association?
• prohibition?

Clearly, they are involving in the task 'prohibition' and not 'association.' Here "associated" plays the role of verb-ed modifier.
To simplify further, see the below.

• the costs are prohibitive.
• the costs associated with upgrading data-processing equipment and with the development and maintenance of new products and technical staff

The first sentence is showing a purpose for costs, but what are costs doing in the second sentence? Nothing!

See this article by eGmat: ed-forms-verbs-or-modifiers-134691.html

Hope this helps
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Yours,
Siva Rama Krishna Meka

What are prohibitive? For the sake of subject-verb agreement, the plural noun costs must be used rather than the singular cost: the costs… are prohibitive. The phrase associated with is required to complete the parallel construction costs associated with upgrading… and with the development of… .

A Singular cost does not agree with the plural verb are

B Correct. The plural noun costs agrees with the plural verb are; using costs associated with means that with upgrading is parallel to with the development.

C From upgrading is not parallel to with the development of

D Singular cost does not agree with the plural verb are; of upgrading is not parallel to with the development of

E Of upgrading is not parallel to with the development of

The correct answer is B.
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