Sentence Correction

185. By 1914, ten of the western states had granted women the right to vote, but only one in the East.
(A) only one in the East
(B) only one eastern state
(C) in the East there was only one state
(D) in the East only one state did
(E) only one in the East had

OA is E

is it coz of parallelism??

(E) only one in the East had
Due to verb-form parallelism, it will be proper to add "had". Hence E the answer;

IMO Answer: E

yes it parallelism/comparison.

10 in west...had : one in the east had

A, B, C don't seem to compare same things, first part has states with women votes and second just states in east.

Hi Vinayak,

I have a small doubt.

There is something called ellipse construction. Where you omit some words in the repetition. Can't we omit had here? Which will make "A" and "B" also among the choices in the race for winning position.

Why something like below does not apply in this sentence:

"I have seen more movies than you."

The above I think is a grammatically correct sentence and we are not specifying the activity seeing again in the second part of the comparison.

Please tell what I am missing here.

Thanks
Mohit

IMO E is correct and A, B are wrong because the clause following comma has missing working verb (had)

In example I have seen more movies than you, 'have' acts as a working verb for subject 'I', that is why it is correct to say like this
But if u have clause like but only one in the East, one in the East what? verb missing.

goelmohit2002 wrote:Hi Vinayak,

I have a small doubt.

There is something called ellipse construction. Where you omit some words in the repetition. Can't we omit had here? Which will make "A" and "B" also among the choices in the race for winning position.

Why something like below does not apply in this sentence:

"I have seen more movies than you."

The above I think is a grammatically correct sentence and we are not specifying the activity seeing again in the second part of the comparison.

Please tell what I am missing here.

Thanks
Mohit

Good one!

No idea why, but i guess (not sure) reading your sentence it sounds normal and acceptable and does not leave anything for guessing, but A does not sound acceptable. If anyone can shed some light on this that will be great

Vinayak

rahulg83 wrote:IMO E is correct and A, B are wrong because the clause following comma has missing working verb (had)

In example I have seen more movies than you, 'have' acts as a working verb for subject 'I', that is why it is correct to say like this
But if u have clause like but only one in the East, one in the East what? verb missing.

Hi Rahul,

Can you please elaborate a bit more in detail.

Like movies example.... you have seen....

similar to here in the above example why it cannot be "but only one in the East had granted XYZ..."

Please tell if I am misinterpreting you or what I missing here.

ellipse sentences should be short ..they particularly accepted because of extensive uses in day to day communication....
if a sentence is long and have a comma in between its fragments then we must avoid ellipse structure..

guys i have a doubt here.I'm not sure about rejecting D & going for E. The reason is according to me, 'had' is the auxiliary verb here & the primary verb is 'granted'. Hence to parallel this clause you should use 'do' & not 'had'.
e.g.

(1)while the number of cars i have is three,its just one that my brother have.
(2) I have chosen the same colour as you did a month back.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Hello Samyak,
I guess it is the other way.
When a 'had, has, or have' is used as an auxiliary verb, we should we should repeat the same - like you mentioned in your first example.
But 'had, has, or have is not an auxiliary verb, we can replace 'do' in the second part of the comparison.

example
He has written more books than I have --> 'has' as auxiliary verb
He has more books than I do --> 'has' is NOT auxiliary verb here.

Hope this helps.


Hello oelmohit2002,

We can not write a sentence line "I have seen more movies than you." because it is ambiguous.
Primary sentence of this sentence is to compare I and you. Since the verb here is transitive (seen) and subsequently we have an object in the sentence (movies), the sentence seems like comparing movies to you.

In other words, when ever we have a transitive verb and an object in a sentence comparison, we have to repeat the verb.

example.
He smiles better than me - correct
He plays cricket better than i do - correct
He plays cricket better than i - wrong

Hope this helps.

thanks

I thought the correct answer that followed parallelism would say:

By 1914, ten of the western states had granted women the right to vote, but only one eastern state had.

Referring to chapter 11 of the MGMAT SC book, I think "One in the East" is unnecessarily short.

samyak wrote:guys i have a doubt here.I'm not sure about rejecting D & going for E. The reason is according to me, 'had' is the auxiliary verb here & the primary verb is 'granted'. Hence to parallel this clause you should use 'do' & not 'had'.
e.g.

(1)while the number of cars i have is three,its just one that my brother have.
(2) I have chosen the same colour as you did a month back.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Chapter 13 in MGMAT has an example similar to this one. I have never seen..., but my father has.

missionGMAT007 wrote: example
He has written more books than I have --> 'has' as auxiliary verb
He has more books than I do --> 'has' is NOT auxiliary verb here.

Thanks for the rule....

One confusion with E :

E is :

By 1914, ten of the western states had granted women the right to vote, only one in the East had [ granted women the right to vote ]

Both of the clause are in past perfect.
I have always read that 'past perfect' will always come with 'simple past'

Please share your thoughts.

paes wrote:One confusion with E :

E is :

By 1914, ten of the western states had granted women the right to vote, only one in the East had [ granted women the right to vote ]

Both of the clause are in past perfect.
I have always read that 'past perfect' will always come with 'simple past'

Please share your thoughts.

hi paes
you are almost right about using past perfect with past sipmle to show the order of events, but sometimes the role of past simple plays the exact date.or exact time of reference to time period
by 1945, the USA had been at war for several years.

here the use past perfect is justified as we have the order of events

for exact description apply to the MS sentence corrrection chapter 7 page 110