Sentence Correction

Ideally, the professional career diplomat should help in the ongoing maintenance of an effective American foreign policy despite changes in administration.

(A) in the ongoing maintenance of
(B) in the maintaining of
(C) maintain
(D) to maintain and continue
(E) the maintenance of

[spoiler]OA: After some discussion. Please explain each answer choice[/spoiler]

C maintain?

A: This sounds like a machine repair.
B. in the maintaining of: Wrong usage. in maintaining is the correct form.
C: Correct.
D: maintain already signals continuity. and continue is redundant.
E: Wordy.

Ideally, the professional career diplomat should help in the ongoing maintenance of an effective American foreign policy despite changes in administration.

(A) in the ongoing maintenance of -- ongoing is redundant
(B) in the maintaining of -- maintaining is not cool
(C) maintain
(D) to maintain and continue -- continue is not needed
(E) the maintenance of -- changes meaning , diplomat cannot help maintanence .

IMO C.

This question doesn't look good and seems confusing...please try to understand my reasons...

In this question, SHOULD HELP is the VERB..please note:- According to Oxford, HELP and MAINTAIN BOTH ARE VERBS...HELP in some cases work as NOUN but in this sentence its clearly VERB..MAINTAIN is always VERB and Word MAINTENANCE is a NOUN.

Now look in this part "effective American foreign policy"...here policy is NOUN.

Now from this above operation we can conclude that the underlined portion (different uses of type - MAINTAIN) should act as an ADVERB...just try and you realize that the underline set has to describe our VERB HELP..

For Op C, i don't think...help maintain...here maintain is VERB...i don't know is this use

SHOULD PLUS VERB PLUS VERB IS LEGAL..????

OP A, B and E are NOUNS Plus Op D uses Infinitive which i don not think its correct.

So NONE of the choices seems good to me, rest some expert can explain and if you find me wrong please correct me...Thanks

Hi Vineeshp,

Can you please explain how "maintain" and "continue" are redundant. I am not able to know

@ aspirant

"ongoing maintenance" is redundant, and so is "maintain and continue." as a matter of fact, you can sometimes use them interchangeably......if ur maintaining something then ur keeping it the way it is~ more or less similar to continue/d

C is correct? I doubt on that.
After reading the posts, I concluded E.
A and D out for redundancy issue.
B in the maintaining of = this is wrong, when we have the noun, we should use noun(maintenance)

I cannot imagine C is correct, I mean, what sort of structure is this?
Base form of VERB + base form of another VERB?
What is the main VERB in this sentence?

May be D would be right, if we had "to maintain"

tetura84 wrote:C is correct? I doubt on that.
After reading the posts, I concluded E.
A and D out for redundancy issue.
B in the maintaining of = this is wrong, when we have the noun, we should use noun(maintenance)

I cannot imagine C is correct, I mean, what sort of structure is this?
Base form of VERB + base form of another VERB?
What is the main VERB in this sentence?

May be D would be right, if we had "to maintain"

Hi post the same doubt (see 2post above your post) and still waiting for an answer.

OP, E is awkward..somewhere illogical to say

diplomat help the maintenance of policy

Thanks

C is correct. I think we need expert help in such topics.

@aspirant2011

can u please PM some expert to clarify the concept...thanks

My answer differs from everyone else which is A!

Since I dont see OA, waiting for expert's opinion.

Hi,

can anyone tell me how can I pm an expert...........i am not able to find the same option

aspirant2011 wrote:Hi,

can anyone tell me how can I pm an expert...........i am not able to find the same option

You just click on the expert from whom u wanna get the explanation and then on that expert's page u find an option "send message"....so email him the link plus the query or the confusion.

Thanks
Atul

yup thanks a lot Atul, I have sent a pm to an expert.........waiting for his response

aspirant2011 wrote:Ideally, the professional career diplomat should help in the ongoing maintenance of an effective American foreign policy despite changes in administration.

(A) in the ongoing maintenance of
(B) in the maintaining of
(C) maintain
(D) to maintain and continue
(E) the maintenance of

[spoiler]OA: After some discussion. Please explain each answer choice[/spoiler]

In A, ongoing maintenance is an error of redundancy. Eliminate A.

In D, maintain and continue are redundant. Maintain means to cause or enable to continue. Eliminate D.

In E, help the maintenance makes no sense. How do you help the maintenance?

Between B and C, B is needlessly wordy, and whereas C uses a verb (maintain), B uses a noun (maintaining). If you're down to two answer choices, and one is more concise, eliminate the longer answer choice and choose the more concise answer. If you're down to two answer choices, and one uses a verb while the other uses a noun, eliminate the answer choice that uses the noun unless the noun is grammatically necessary. Eliminate B.

The correct answer is C.

In C, maintain is the infinitive form of the verb to maintain without the word to: help maintain = help to maintain. An infinitive that omits the word to is known as a bare infinitive. Here are other examples of the bare infinitive:

I saw you kiss her. (kiss = to kiss without the word to)
You made me love you. (love = to love without the word to)
I let you eat my cookie. (eat = to eat without the word to)