Hi Stuart,Stuart Kovinsky wrote:I agree with the answer, but not the reason why (b) and (e) are wrong.
There will be cases in which we insert a word between "but" and "also", but only when doing so is necessary to preserve the meaning or paralellism of the rest of the sentence.
For example:
"Not only does Bob go to the gym 3 mornings a week, but he also runs on the weekend."
Of course, we also could have said:
"Bob not only goes to the gym 3 mornings a week, but also runs on the weekend."
Either of those sentences could appear on the GMAT (and we wouldn't have to choose between them).
The real problem with (b) and (e) is the ambiguous pronoun "them", which could refer to either customers or companies.
In this particular sentence, we don't want "it" between "but" and "also" because the antecedent (company) comes BEFORE "not only". If the company had come AFTER not only, then the it would have been appropriate.
In other words, if the sentence had begun:
"... not only has the company captured..."
then the second part would have read:
"... but it also forced...".
Thanks for clarifying details about 'not only-but also' construction. You mentioned that we can split not only if its necessary to maintain the parallelism or meaning.
"Not only does Bob go to the gym 3 mornings a week, but he also runs on the weekend."
How the parallelism is processed in the above sentence?
Is "does Bob go" parallel to "he also runs"
Or "does Bob go" and "runs" are parallel?
What are the parallel elements? And how they are treated?
Also, If we take out "he" from the second part in the above sentence, would that be considered parallel?
"Not only does Bob go to the gym 3 mornings a week, but also runs on the weekend."
