Sentence Correction

mundasingh123 wrote:Scientists believe that unlike the males of most species of moth, the male whistling moths of Nambung,
Australia, call female moths to them by the use of acoustical signals, but not olfactory ones, and they
attract their mates during the day, rather than at night.

(A) by the use of acoustical signals, but not olfactory ones, and they attract
"they" is ambiguous - could refer to males of most species, male whistling moths, or female moths. By the use is awkward and lengthy. Both of these are style issues, and the right answer could stand to live with them, but an answer choice that fixes these issues is superior to A.

(B) by the use of acoustical signals instead of using olfactory ones, and attracting
Fragment at the end of the sentence "and attracting their mates during the day rather than at night - there's no verb. Can also be vieweind as a parallelism issue with "call.....and attracting"

(C) by using acoustical signals, not using olfactory ones, and by attracting
Correct grammatically, but illogical: implies that the male whistling moths call female moths to them by the use....and by attracting the females during the day. A moth cannot call a female to him by attracting her during the day.

(D) using acoustical signals, rather than olfactory ones, and attract
Correct answer. The "and" connects "call"....and "attract" as two separate things that scientists believe the male whistling moth does. Better stylistically than A, as removes the potentially ambiguous pronoun "they" and shortens "by the use of signals" to "using signals"

(E) using acoustical signals, but not olfactory ones, and attracting
Same problem as B.

I want Explanations

(A) by the use of acoustical signals, but not olfactory ones, and they attract
"they" is ambiguous - could refer to males of most species, male whistling moths, or female moths. By the use is awkward and lengthy. Both of these are style issues, and the right answer could stand to live with them, but an answer choice that fixes these issues is superior to A.

mundasingh123 wrote:But Geva

(A) by the use of acoustical signals, but not olfactory ones, and they attract
"they" is ambiguous - could refer to males of most species, male whistling moths, or female moths. By the use is awkward and lengthy. Both of these are style issues, and the right answer could stand to live with them, but an answer choice that fixes these issues is superior to A.

Male moths are the subject of the previous clause , so shouldnt they in the following clause also refer to male moths

mundasingh123 wrote:But Geva

(A) by the use of acoustical signals, but not olfactory ones, and they attract
"they" is ambiguous - could refer to males of most species, male whistling moths, or female moths. By the use is awkward and lengthy. Both of these are style issues, and the right answer could stand to live with them, but an answer choice that fixes these issues is superior to A.

Male moths are the subject of the previous clause , so shouldnt they in the following clause also refer to male moths

prashant.mishra wrote:precisely, that's the confusion... "they" could refer to the subject or the noun of the predicate.. Besides this error, there are other errors in A as well.."by the use of" is wordy while "using" is more direct and thus better.. A also mentions "but not" which is unidiomatic... "rather than" is better.. Hence D. Please let me know if there are any further confusions..

mundasingh123 wrote:But Geva

(A) by the use of acoustical signals, but not olfactory ones, and they attract
"they" is ambiguous - could refer to males of most species, male whistling moths, or female moths. By the use is awkward and lengthy. Both of these are style issues, and the right answer could stand to live with them, but an answer choice that fixes these issues is superior to A.

Male moths are the subject of the previous clause , so shouldnt they in the following clause also refer to male moths

[email protected] wrote:Hi Md Raihan Uddin,

This SC can be solved with just one grammar rule: Parallelism

1) Parallelism: We're told that male whistling moths call female moths by doing 2 things. We have to present these 2 ideas in Parallel format. The first is "CALL female moths....", so the second has to use the same structure. Looking at the 5 answer choices, only one presents the verb in the proper way - "ATTRACT....." Eliminate A (the extra pronoun is redundant/unnecessary), B, C and E.