Sentence Correction

Manifestations of the British Empire's colonial policy in the latter half of the second millennium led to the settlement of the eastern colonies of North America, the island of Hong Kong, the bulk of the Indian subcontinent, the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa, and the occupation of Egypt in northern Africa.

A.Manifestations of the British Empire's colonial policy in the latter half of the second millennium led to the settlement of the eastern colonies of North America, the island of Hong Kong, the bulk of the Indian subcontinent, the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa, and

B.Manifestations of the British Empire's colonial policy in the latter half of the second millennium led to the settlement of the eastern colonies of North America, the island of Hong Kong, the bulk of the Indian subcontinent, the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa, and also

C.In the latter half of the second millennium, the British Empire's colonial policy was manifested in the settlement of the eastern colonies of North America, the island of Hong Kong, the bulk of the Indian subcontinent, and the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa, and in

D.In the latter half of the second millennium, manifestations of the British Empire's colonial policy led to the settlement of the eastern colonies of North America, the island of Hong Kong, the bulk of the Indian subcontinent, the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa, and

E.In the latter half of the second millennium, manifestations of the British Empire's colonial policy led to the settlement of the eastern colonies of North America, the island of Hong Kong, the bulk of the Indian subcontinent, the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa, and also

Hello

I seem to have lost my way in the pool of parallelism here.

My analysis :

A)I found no error in this sentence. Isn't the sentence framed in the following manner : Manifestations.........led to the settlement of......and (led to) the occupation of .....

B) Incorrect usage of 'also'

C) I saw this option and noticed a shift in the placement of the modifier 'in the latter half of the second millenium' , which really does not make much of a difference here. Besides that, there is a change in meaning here. Did the manifestations lead to all of this or was the policy manifested in all of this...? Unsure

D)'the' is missing . Incorrect

E)Incorrect usage of 'also'.

Hence, I was left confused between options A and C.

Could the experts throw light on the difference between the two options?

Thank you.

David@GMATPrepNow wrote:Hi parul1591,

There are two instances of broken parallelism to watch out for here, and you spotted one of them right away - good work!

The instance you spotted was the incorrect use of the word "also" in answers B and E. The use of "also" makes both answers incorrect because it it a violation of parallelism - there is no need to add "also" to the last clause in those answers, because the previous clauses do not use the word. Eliminate answers B and E.

That leaves us with answers A, B and D to consider. Here is where the second instance of broken parallelism comes into play, and it is a subject-verb form of parallelism, i.e. subjects and verbs always need to agree with respect to being singular or plural. The key word to focus on in the remaining answers is "manifestation."

What is being manifested? It is the British Empire's colonial policy. Notice that "policy" is singular. Even though the sentence gives us multiple examples of how the policy is manifested, it is still just a singular policy, so the manifestation of that policy needs to be singular.

Answer A says "Manifestations of..." (plural) so it violates the subject-verb agreement. Eliminate A.

Answer D says "...manifestations of..." (plural) so it violates the subject-verb agreement. Eliminate D.

That leaves us with Answer C. C says "...was manifested..." which does not violate the subject-verb agreement. Both the subject - "the policy" - and the verb - "was manifested" - agree.

Answer C is correct.

Thank you for your explanation.

I have a major doubt though. Is manifestation being used as a verb or as a noun ?

If one policy is manifested in several ways, can we not say 'manifestations of the policy' ?

Can you explain this using a similar example which does not use the word manifestation?

Appreciate your help.