AbdurRakib wrote:
With the patience of its customers and with its network strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives trying to relieve the congestion that has led to at least four class-action lawsuits and thousands of complaints from frustrated customers.
(A) the patience of its customers and with its network strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives trying to relieve
(B) the patience of its customers and its network strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives that try to relieve
(C) its network and the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives to try to relieve
(D) its network and with the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of initiatives to try relieving
(E) its network and its customers’ patience strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives to try relieving
1. In option A,
With the patience of its customers and
with its network strained to the breaking point -- The modifier 'strained to the breaking point" applies to just "with its network" or both "With the patience of its customers" and "with its network" ?
2. Since we have parallel marker "AND" in the prepositional phrase that starts with "WITH", so what is the level of parallelism we want in the 2 parts separated by the conjunction "AND" ? i.e. If the first part (preceding the parallel marker) has a prepositional phrase followed by a modifier, does the second part(following the parallel marker) SHOULD also have modifier ?
Or is it okay if both the parts that follow the preposition are nouns ?
- Natalie studied ballet as a child, studies pilates now, and will study cooking someday.
** Verbs in parallel can belong to different tenses.
** But the parallel parts MUST make sense with the stem that precedes those parts.
- The angry politician,
frustrated by the opposition's parliamentary tactics and
screaming about the other parties unconstitutional behavior, is both a hypocrite and a narcissist. -- here both frustrated and screaming are modifiers that modify the politician, but we CANNOT replace screaming by "who screamed" because 'frustrated" will not be parallel to "who screamed".
The angry politician,
who was frustrated by the opposition's parliamentary tactics and
who screamed about the other parties unconstitutional behavior, is both a hypocrite and a narcissist.-- But this is correct because we have 2 who phrases in parallel ?
3. In option B, With the patience of its customers and its network strained to the breaking point --- here the With prepositional phrase "With the patience" will apply to both its customers and its network?
But since With the patience of its network DOES NOT make sense, we can read as With its network strained to the breaking point?
AjiteshArun ,
GMATNinja ,
MagooshExpert ,
VeritasPrepBrian,
GMATGuruNY ,
VeritasKarishma ,
DmitryFarber ,other experts - please enlighten
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