While many of the dinosaur fossils found recently in northeast China s

Alternate approach:

A: more likely at this stage
Here, at this stage is an ADVERB modifying likely.
Question: WHEN does the wealth seem LIKELY?
Answer: It seems likely AT THIS STAGE.

B, C and E: birds at this stage
Here, at this stage seems to be an ADJECTIVE modifying birds.
Question: What KIND of birds?
Answer: birds AT THIS STAGE
Not the intended meaning of the original sentence.
Eliminate B, C and E.

A: the wealth....seem
Here, seem (plural) does not agree with wealth (singular).

Hi Ashmit, "likely to...." is the correct idiom and so, I look at A more from an idiomatic issue perspective (other than the issues already pointed out by GMATGuruNY), than from "parallelism" perspective.

Would also be interesting to see GMATGuruNY's other experts' views on this issue.

While there's limited value in considering hypothetical answer choices, I'd say the comparison would go from fundamentally wrong to less than ideal. The reason is that if we don't have a "to" it's difficult to see what actions are being compared, because the actions are so far apart.

Consider an example:

Tim put up a scarecrow in his backyard, more to entertain his kids than frighten any actual birds.

Here, it's pretty clear that a second "to" is implied before frighten. The verbs are so close together, that it's hard to imagine a reader getting confused.

But if the actions were farther apart:

Tim put up a scarecrow in his backyard, more to entertain his kids, who had recently watched the film Children of the Corn and hoped it was actually a documentary, than to frighten any birds.

This time, while I don't need that second "to," I definitely want it there. Otherwise, it's tough to see what "frighten" is doing.

Similar deal in (A), (B), and (C), though those sentences aren't quite as complicated as my example. "More likely to inflame... than to settle," is just clearer than "More likely to inflame... than settle," though I wouldn't say that the latter is definitively WRONG, and I'd be way more comfortable relying on something more concrete to eliminate those options.

I hope that helps!

I think most people are eliminating choice C because of the lack of 'to' before 'settle them', but I don't think that's necessarily wrong.

C is incorrect because it's actually saying:

While many of the dinosaur fossils found recently in northeast China seem to provide evidence of the kinship between dinosaurs and birds, the wealth of enigmatic fossils seems more likely to inflame debates on the origin of birds at this stage rather than settle debates on the origin of birds at this stage.

The position of "at this stage" is incorrect.

The author is trying to say that at the present time (at this stage), the fossils are more likely to provoke debate than settle debate. C changes the meaning by saying the debate is on the 'origin of birds at this stage'.

if you want to use that-clause after "likely", you need a "fake " subject, which refer to no noun in the sentence

it is likely that you come

so, many choices in the problem use that-clause but not with fake subject but with real subject. this is grammatically wrong

AjiteshArun
Thanks for the support.
There could be so many issues here in this case, but can you clarify the THAT clause part, please?

GMATNinja
Thank you sir for the nice explanation.
I know very well that you put the example to make clear the whole things, but I need to know one important things in your own creative example!

In this example, the and is the connector, so we need to parallel the right and left part of the connector, right? In this example, ''who had watched x and hoped (clause-it was actually a documentary)''. The parallelism in verb is ok, but can we put clause like this one? Just a curiosity to know ....

There's really an implied "that" after "hoped" in our example:

"... who had recently watched the film Children of the Corn and hoped that it was actually a documentary... "

The phrase "that it was actually a documentary" serves as a noun phrase here -- it's the thing that they hoped for.

Is that parallelism ideal? Maybe, maybe not. Luckily, on the GMAT, you'll NEVER have to analyze a single sentence in a bubble. That's why looking at one sentence and trying to label it as wrong or right is rarely productive... especially if it's a silly little example sentence from us.

Glad to see that you're paying attention to parallelism, though!

While many of the dinosaur fossils found recently in northeast China seem to provide evidence of the kinship between dinosaurs and birds, the wealth of enigmatic fossils seem more likely at this stage that they will inflame debates over the origin of birds rather than settle them.


(A) seem more likely at this stage that they will inflame debates over the origin of birds rather than

(B) seem more likely that it will inflame debates over the origin of birds at this stage than

(C) seems more likely to inflame debates on the origin of birds at this stage rather than

(D) seems more likely at this stage to inflame debates over the origin of birds than to

(E) seems more likely that it will inflame debates on the origin of birds at this stage than to


Subject, wealth is singular hence A & B are out within no time. Left are C, D & E.
There might be confusion amongst them but if you see closely to D, it sounds perfect as the use of preposition (to) is perfectly placed and sounds parallel.

AjiteshArun
Hello, Can you explain the issue behind it, please?
Thank you..