kvcpk wrote:After several years of rapid growth, the health care company became one of the largest health care providers in the metropolitan area, while it then proved unable to handle the increase in business, falling months behind in its payment to doctors and hospitals.
A. while it then proved unable to handle the increase in business, falling months
behind in its payment to
B. while it then proved unable to handle the increase in business and fell months
behind in its payment to
C. but then it proved unable to handle the increase in business, falling months behind
in its paying
D. but then proving unable to handle the increase in business, falling months behind
in paying
E. but then proved unable to handle the increase in business, falling months behind
in paying
Source: GMATPREP
Please provide detailed explanations.
I got a pm asking me to provide a detailed explanation regarding this question. I will only focus on C and E, because most of you have already eliminated A,B correctly because "while" does not show the contrast required by the question. Also, you did eliminate D because of the incorrect usage of "verb+ing form in "then proving unable....". So let's focus on C and E.
E is the correct answer here. It is the official answer for good reason. It corrects two problems with C which disqualify that option. Let's take a look at those problems.
Let's look at the full sentence with C fit in:-
After several years of rapid growth, the health care company became one of the largest health care providers in the metropolitan area, but then it proved unable to handle the increase in business, falling months behind in its paying doctors and hospitals.
There are two problems here:
A. First, "it" has an ambiguous referent. Here, "it" may very well refer "metropolitan area", thereby modifying the intended meaning.
B. Second, "its paying" is not concise. It is borderline redundant. Typically, in my opinion, GMAT would throw such a sentence in the "awkward" category in a heartbeat.
The very two reasons above also lead us to select E as the correct answer because:
a. the sentence gets rid of the ambiguous antecedent.
b. the sentence uses a more concise expression.
Now if you are not entirely convinced of the first and primary reason for rejecting C, bear with me. Here are a few examples that might persuade you in a different direction.
The shop is in the city, but it is very dirty.
The duck had a child, but it was very weak.
I am sure most of you will agree that in both the sentences above, we can't say for certain what is dirty and which animal is weak. Option C isn't any different than these examples above.
Now that we have correctly eliminated C and established E as the answer, I want to answer a specific query regarding the sentence possibly being a run-on. Here's the answer.
Even though C is incorrect, it is NOT a run-on.
We have two independent clauses.
"The health care....area" and
"It proved.......business"
They are correctly joined by a comma and a conjunction "but". The construction is correct. It is the ambiguity which kills any chances the sentence may have had.
Remember that it would be a run-on if there was no conjunction linking the two independent clauses, but we do have a conjunction in "but". So, if we had "The health care....area, then it..... business." as the sentence (where I have omitted the "but"), the sentence would indeed be a run-on.
I hope this clears your doubts!
Cheers!