Sentence Correction

Judge Bonham denied a motion to allow members of the jury to go home at the end of each day instead of to confine them to a hotel.

(A) to allow members of the jury to go home at the end of each day instead of to confine them to
(B) that would have allowed members of the jury to go home at the end of each day instead of confined to
(C) under which members of the jury are allowed to go home at the end of each day instead of confining them in
(D) that would allow members of the jury to go home at the end of each day rather than confinement in
(E) to allow members of the jury to go home at the end of each day rather than be confined to

OA E


In this question can someone please tell me if [spoiler] option A had "rather than" then which one of the two options A or E would have been correct as the explanation given for this question said that the word "be" is required here. [/spoiler][/spoiler]

Here's the version that would be created via using choice A if instead of were replaced with rather than.

Judge Bonham denied a motion to allow members of the jury to go home at the end of each day rather than to confine them to a hotel.

The new version is still not correct, because there are a couple of issues.

For one thing, there is a tricky parallelism issue.

to allow almost seems parallel to to confine, but actually they are not parallel.

The to before allow is part of a motion to, while the to before confine is part of an infinitive, to confine. The second to is unnecessary.

A more correct contrast would be allow rather than confine.

Alternatively, the second to could be seen as indicating that the jurors are confining themselves, as if the meaning were the following. The jurors with be allowed to go home at the end of each day rather than to confine them to a hotel.

Either way, by removing the second to, one can create a more correct version, although even in this version who is doing the confining is maybe still slightly ambiguous, and the jurors could somehow be the ones doing the confining.

Judge Bonham denied a motion to allow members of the jury to go home at the end of each day rather than confine them to a hotel.

The construction using be confined in the version created using choice E solves that ambiguity problem, because that version clearly conveys that the motion is to allow the jurors to go home rather than be confined.

Judge Bonham denied a motion to allow members of the jury to go home at the end of each day rather than be confined to a hotel.

I am not sure which I like better actually, the corrected choice A version or the choice E version, but that's what's going on in this question, and the simple answer to your question is that simply replacing instead of with rather than in choice A would not make the choice A version correct.

Hi Marty,

Can you please tell me how to choose between ""to allow" and "that allow" here?

vishalwin wrote:Hi Marty,

Can you please tell me how to choose between ""to allow" and "that allow" here?

This is probably not a distinction that you would need to be aware of to answer any question on the actual GMAT, but here's the answer to your question.

A motion does not allow anything. A motion is more like a suggestion or a request to do something.

So a motion to allow is something like a request to allow.

Just as a request to allow something would not be a what actually allows that thing, a motion does not allow anything. So the expression, a motion that allows, does not make sense.

Similarly, you would not have a motion under which something is allowed.

Fortunately, as is the case with many GMAT sentence correction questions, there are multiple decision points in the answer choices that include motion that allows and motion under which. So you can use those other decision points to eliminate those answer choices.

Among other issues, in B, confined to is not parallel to anything, in C, the members of the jury seem to be confining themselves, and in D, what confinement is being contrasted with is not clear.