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OG 10 SC # 29

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OG 10 SC # 29

by laxmanrr » Mon May 31, 2010 10:39 am
In three centuries--from 1050 to 1350--several million tons of stone were quarried in France for the building of eighty cathedrals, five hundred large churches, and some tens of thousands of parish churches

A) for the building of eighty cathedrals, five hundred large churches, and some

D) so that there could be built eighty cathedrals, five hundred large churches, and

B, C, E - are easy mistakes. So no point in showing them here.

The official answer is A

What is the trouble with D ?

Please help explain.

Thanks!
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by SmarpanGamt » Mon May 31, 2010 11:17 am
laxmanrr wrote:In three centuries--from 1050 to 1350--several million tons of stone were quarried in France for the building of eighty cathedrals, five hundred large churches, and some tens of thousands of parish churches

A) for the building of eighty cathedrals, five hundred large churches, and some ( look carefully " Building in a noun and out here used as verb ...thus the option has parallelisum issue"D) so that there could be built eighty cathedrals, five hundred large churches, and ( where as this option is idiomatic and holds parallelisum)

B, C, E - are easy mistakes. So no point in showing them here.

The official answer is A

What is the trouble with D ?


It's an amusing question remembers me : In THAILAND people make mistake for built as building for using in continuous tense. only under construction infrastruture is building other wise built.:)

Please help explain.

Thanks!
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by laxmanrr » Mon May 31, 2010 12:10 pm
But, the OG answer is A and not D :(

:) Just like people at Thailand, we too tend to do the mistake you pointed out. (Trying to write sentences like GMAT) :shock:

If you really do not mind, i would suggest that you use 'reminds me' instead of 'remembers me' in your sentence. I had this problem for a long time, before i could correct it.

Hope i did not offend you. I couldn't send a private message.

Regards!
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by Patrick_GMATFix » Tue Jun 01, 2010 4:19 am
SmarpanGamt is right to say that building in A is a noun as indicated by the article "the". "the" building will always be a noun (gerund). this doesn't cause any parallelism issue because this noun is not even part of the list. The list begins with "eighty cathedrals" and is a list of things that get built: the building of
  • eighty cathedrals
  • five hundred churches
  • and tens of parish churches.
People may be turned off A because it uses "some tens of parish churches" however there is no grammatical problem with this; "some" is used to emphasize that the number is an approximation, not exact data. This would be similar to simply writing "some churches"

In short there is nothing wrong with A.

D is worse than A because D is passive, wordy (so that there could be built vs for the building of)

D is also worse than A because it is very awkward: "so that there could be built cathedrals" would be much improved if it had been "so that cathedrals could be built"
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