imo E

"that" is required to follow "local politicians"

"their" is required to match with it's preceding "confront"

Hope this helps

It should be (D) if parallelism is taken into account as we use
growing .... leading

Whats the OA?

armaan700+ wrote:Municipal governments are beginning to confront the growing pension liabilities; this leads local politicians throughout the country to become increasingly vocal about restraining costs and limiting services.

the growing pension liabilities; this leads

their growing pension liabilities; leading

the growth in their pension liabilities, which leads

their growing pension liabilities, leading

their growing pension liabilities, that leads

Some thoughts: begining to confront what? Here we requires an object noun, or an noun clause, that way the subject is a must, all but B and D E have subject,

Out of B and D, B is wrong, as starting with leading the following clause can not be an independednt clause, the squinter modifier separated with commad does the work in D. Idiomatic, concise, clear D should be the credited answer.

In E, after comma a that clause is not idiomatic.

the growing pension liabilities; this leads

their growing pension liabilities; leading

the growth in their pension liabilities, which leads : which modifies liablities. this is awkward.

their growing pension liabilities, leading : correct

their growing pension liabilities, that leads : cannot use , with restrictive that.

D looks good

Municipal governments are beginning to confront the growing pension liabilities; this leads local politicians throughout the country to become increasingly vocal about restraining costs and limiting services.

the growing pension liabilities; this leads

their growing pension liabilities; leading

the growth in their pension liabilities, which leads

their growing pension liabilities, leading

their growing pension liabilities, that leads


Basically this sentence is the case of Modifier and Meaning. I do not know how this is the case of parallelism. It is a modifier problem and not parallelism.

Option A: This leads is the wrong usage as the second clause is somewhere dependent on the first clause. the second clause does not have a subject. 'this' means what. Also the meaning of the sentence is a bit not clear but ambigiuous.

Option B: a ';' and leading is wrong usage. In a modifier , + ing form modifies the whole first clause or the first part. A ';' intends at beginning a totally new clause or a sentence.

Option C: wrong modifier and intending a wrong meaning. which only modifies the word 'liabilities' and not the whole first part. The whole thing 'Municipal governments are beginning to confront the growing pension liabilities' is resulting in something and not only the liabilities. That is the change of meaning in the sentence.

Option E: The same thing is happening in the sentence E. same as option C.

Option D is modifying the overall first clause. It is certainly getting rid of all the errors and also conveying the correct meaning unambiguously.

I dont know how is this a case of parallelism. This is the case of Modifier and Meaning.

Hope this post really would help...

Municipal governments are beginning to confront the growing pension liabilities; this leads local politicians throughout the country to become increasingly vocal about restraining costs and limiting services.

the growing pension liabilities; this leads - ELIMINATE because pronoun is missing (the growing liab- whose liab?)

their growing pension liabilities; leading - ELIMINATE because of wrong usage of semicolon. Semicolon is used for connecting 2 independent clauses. The second clause is not independent in this case.

the growth in their pension liabilities, which leads - ELIMINATE because not clear on what 'which' refers to.

their growing pension liabilities, leading - CORRECT

their growing pension liabilities, that leads - ELIMINATE Not clear on what 'that' is referring to