Parellelism

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amontobin: Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts; Posts: 23; Joined: Thu Jun 01, 2017 9:36 pm; Followed by:1 members

Parellelism

by amontobin » Tue Jul 18, 2017 6:17 pm

Under the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, the NFL Commissioner's Office has the responsibility both to administer penalties unilaterally for a wide range of infractions deemed harmful to the league and its image and that they review their own decisions when subject to appeal from players.

A that they review their
B for a review of their
C they should review their
D it should review its
E to review its

Confused about the meaning of an orgainzation reviewing itself, Experts?

Quote

Source: Beat The GMAT — Sentence Correction | Tue Jul 18, 2017 6:17 pm

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ceilidh.erickson: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 2095; Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2012 3:22 pm; Thanked: 1443 times; Followed by:247 members

by ceilidh.erickson » Wed Aug 02, 2017 10:43 am

The major signal that PARALLELISM was being tested here was the use of BOTH _______ AND _________. Whenever you see this structure, know that whatever comes directly after "both" must match what comes directly after "and."

We can break the sentence down like this:

...NFL Commissioner's Office has the responsibility both
1. to administer penalties unilaterally (for a wide range of infractions deemed harmful to the league and its image)
and
2. that they review their own decisions when subject to appeal from players.

The second item in this list must be an infinitive beginning with "to." That rules out everything except E.

To your question about whether a commissioner's office can review itself... the GMAT isn't always entirely consistent on that. With purely inanimate objects, we wouldn't want to use active verbs: "the house needs to protect itself against burglars" is illogical. We'd say "we need to protect our house against burglars."

But since offices / commissions / committees, etc., are made up of groups of people, the GMAT generally allows them to use active verbs (much like I did with "the GMAT allows" in this sentence). If the office can "administer penalties" in the non-underlined portion, we can hardly quibble with it reviewing itself in the underlined portion.

Does that help?

Ceilidh Erickson
EdM in Mind, Brain, and Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education