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)
Last edited by
GMATGuruNY on Thu Apr 07, 2011 10:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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