re: this
so my best guess is the correct answer here is E, and the OA is just another misprint in OG :)
first --
OFFICIALLY CORRECT ANSWERS ARE CORRECT!
do not question officially correct answers!
far too many students on this forum make the mistake of questioning the correct answers; please note that doing so is a
complete waste of your time and effort. i.e., exactly 0% of the time that you spend posting "isn't this official answer wrong?" is productive, and exactly 100% of that time is wasted.
"is this correct?" is NEVER a productive question to ask about one of GMAC's correct answers -- the answer is always yes.
"is this wrong?" / "is this X type of error?" is NEVER a productive question to ask about one of GMAC's correct answers -- the answer is always no.
instead, the questions you should be asking about correct official answers, if you don't understand them, are:
"
why is this correct?"
"
how does this work?"
"what understanding am i lacking that i need to understand this choice?"
this is a small, but hugely significant, change to your way of thinking -- you will suddenly find it
much easier to understand the format, style, and conventions of the official problems if you dispose of the idea that they might be wrong.
it's true that the answer
explanations in the OG are sometimes flawed, but that's not the same as saying that the answers themselves are incorrect. the official answers are not incorrect!
--
My query : The correct answer of this question doesnot have the parallel construction "X flourished at the same time as the Y did"
in this case, that's fine.
you don't need that helping verb in this case. (the sentence wouldn't be incorrect if that helping verb
were there -- it just isn't necessary.)
conditions under which a helping verb is REQUIRED in a parallel construction:
1) AMBIGUITY
if the sentence is ambiguous
without the helping verb, then you need to add the helping verb.
e.g.
Josh has known Stephanie longer than Tim. --> ambiguous; we don't know whether this means "josh has known stephanie longer that tim has known stephanie" or "josh has known stephanie longer than he has known tim".
Josh has known Stephanie longer than Tim has. --> not ambiguous; correct.
the following sentence is not ambiguous, and so is okay without a helping verb:
Josh has known how to do logarithms longer than Tim.
2) TENSE CHANGE
if the second half of the comparison is in a
different timeframe (i.e., it demands a different verb tense), then you should use the helping verb so that you can change the verb tense. if there is no helping verb, the second half of the comparison is assumed to be in the same tense / timeframe as the first half.
for instance, let's say that the intended meaning of the sentence is that a boy named leroy, who is in high school, runs the 100m dash faster than his father ran that race in high school.
Leroy runs the 100m dash faster than his father did. --> correct; we need a tense change, since the tense of the first half (present tense) is not the same as that of the second half (past tense).
Leroy runs the 100m dash faster than his father. --> incorrect, unless you are referring to the speed at which leroy's father runs the 100m
now.
--
since neither of these conditions holds in the problem at hand, we don't need a helping verb.
OG is phew after this entry
