Subjunctive Mood and parallelism

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Blue_Skies: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 81; Joined: Thu May 03, 2012 1:48 pm; Thanked: 4 times

Subjunctive Mood and parallelism

by Blue_Skies » Sun Jun 09, 2013 1:53 pm

Hello everyone,

I had a small doubt with respect to parallelism in a sentence in the subjunctive mood.

Which of the following is grammatically correct?
A) Our Principal suggests that we prepare rigorously and take good sleep.
B) Our Principal suggests that we prepare rigorously and that we take good sleep.

Which one is correct ?

Thanks!

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Sentence Correction | Sun Jun 09, 2013 1:53 pm

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lunarpower: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 3380; Joined: Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:20 am; Thanked: 2256 times; Followed by:1535 members; GMAT Score:800

by lunarpower » Wed Jun 19, 2013 3:02 am

i received a private message about this thread.

* grammatically, both of these sentences are just fine. the second one is a bit wordy, but wordiness alone is not an error.

* "take good sleep" is not idiomatic in american english. i don't know if that's a thing in other countries, but americans don't "take" sleep. (the gmat doesn't test aspects of english that vary substantially among countries, though, so this isn't something worth worrying about.)

Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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arun@crackverbal: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 234; Joined: Fri Jun 10, 2011 8:50 am; Location: Bangalore; Thanked: 47 times; Followed by:60 members

by arun@crackverbal » Wed Jun 26, 2013 3:30 am

There is a semantic difference between the 2.

If the principal suggested the 2 things together then I would use the 1st form i.e. "The coach suggested that the batter strike the ball well and run very fast".

If the principal suggested the 2 things independently then you can use the 2nd form i.e. "The doctor recommended that the patient take his medicines regularly and that he stay away from his dog that caused the allergy".

But remember GMAT is NOT going to test you on this

Arun

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lunarpower: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 3380; Joined: Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:20 am; Thanked: 2256 times; Followed by:1535 members; GMAT Score:800

by lunarpower » Sat Jul 27, 2013 4:57 am

Received a private message about this thread --

What Arun says is basically correct. The difference is not 100% firm -- this is really more a matter of writing style than anything else -- but, in essence, yes.

However, the most important sentence in the post above is this one:

arun@crackverbal wrote:But remember GMAT is NOT going to test you on this :)

yep. that.

(one point that is perhaps obvious, but bears making explicit, is this: if the two parallel things have two different subjects, then you need the second construction (...that xxxx and that yyyy).