Not only do deep-sea divers risk nitrogen narcosis, often called "raptures of the deep", if they descend below 200 feet, but they also fall prey to decompression sickness, commonly known as the "bends", if they ascend too quickly.
a] Not only do deep-sea divers risk nitrogen narcosis, often called "raptures of the deep", if they descend below 200 feet, but
b] Deep-sea divers risk nitrogen narcosis, often called "raptures of the deep", if they descend below 200 feet, but
c] Nitrogen narcosis, often called "raptures of the deep", is risked by deep-sea divers if they descend below 200 feet, in addition
d] Descending below 200 feet causes deep-sea divers to risk nitrogen narcosis, often called "raptures of the deep" and
e] Not only does a deep-sea diver risk nitrogen narcosis, often called "raptures of the deep", if they descend below 200 feet, but
Hi Priyanka, The reason why this question is troubling you is that you've learned along the way that the correct usage is "not only ...but also.." (additional knowledge: not X but Y and not only x but also Y are conjunctions. we use conjunctions when we want to connect things that are linguistically equal)
However, on GMAT there is another construction besides not only X but also Y that is also correct: not only X but Y
Now lets analyze the original sentence.
Not only do deep-sea divers risk nitrogen narcosis, often called "raptures of the deep", if they descend below 200 feet, but they also fall prey to decompression sickness, commonly known as the "bends", if they ascend too quickly.
I've divided the sentence into different sub-parts. Parts with similar color are parallel (or at least they should be).
I am listing these sub-parts one below the other.
do deep-sea divers risk nitrogen narcosis
color=blue] they also fall prey to decompression sickness[/color]
Deep sea divers = They (which is correct, no pronoun ambiguity or subject verb error)
risk = fall (same tense, parallel parts)
nitrogen narcosis = decompression (parallel)... So we are okay.
Next bit,
often called "raptures of the deep",
commonly known as the "bends"
Often called = commonly known (parallel, no errors)
"raptures..." = bends (no issues here).. So again we are okay..
if they descend below 200 feet
if they ascend too quickly.[/brown]
These two are pretty much parallel word-to-word... So we are okay.
Possible issues.. Well the only issue i can see is that this sentence uses an inverted If..then structure. i.e. then comes before if .. but grammatically that's okay. But lets evaluate other options.
b] Deep-sea divers risk nitrogen narcosis, often called "raptures of the deep", if they descend below 200 feet, but
This option is the popular wrong choice. The reason to eliminate this sentence is the intent of the author. Author is comparing two things here, --> what happens when divers dive below 200 feet and what happens when they ascend too quickly.
The intent is to show that not only does X happen but Y also happens.
When we use but .. we are in effect saying that X happens but not yet.. .or X does not happen but Y happens...
So we can rule this out.
c] Nitrogen narcosis, often called "raptures of the deep", is risked by deep-sea divers if they descend below 200 feet, in addition
If you analyze this sentence by dividing it into sub-structures like we did for sentence A, you would realize that this is not parallel. Out of sheer laziness i am not redoing the process here. If you run into trouble. Let me know. So we can rule this option out
d] Descending below 200 feet causes deep-sea divers to risk nitrogen narcosis, often called "raptures of the deep" and
This option is an easy one to rule out, the lack of parallelism just jumps out. Eliminate.
e] Not only does a deep-sea diver risk nitrogen narcosis, often called "raptures of the deep", if they descend below 200 feet, but
This option is again easy to eliminate because of subject-verb agreement error. a deep-sea diver is singular and "they is plural" eliminate.
Last edited by
mohit11 on Thu Sep 02, 2010 6:38 am, edited 2 times in total.
