2 whethers in one sentence

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viidyasagar: Community Manager; Posts: 156; Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 6:06 amFollowed by: 3 members; Location: Mumbai, India; Thanked: 16 times; GMAT Score:700

by viidyasagar » Sat Jan 02, 2010 6:29 am

Want to know whether the following sentence needs correction or not

Source: Primary objective in the CR bible

Determine whether a stimulus contains an argument or if it is just a set of factual statements

Is the "if" correct here??? can a statement have 2 "whethers"

How about
"Determine whether a stimulus contains an argument or is it just a set of factual statements"

SC experts, kindly offer help

Tx

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Sentence Correction | Sat Jan 02, 2010 6:29 am

mohit11: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 293; Joined: Thu Jan 14, 2010 9:08 amFollowed by: 5 members; Location: India; Thanked: 36 times; GMAT Score:730

by mohit11 » Sat Mar 13, 2010 9:16 pm

viidyasagar wrote:Want to know whether the following sentence needs correction or not

Source: Primary objective in the CR bible

Determine whether a stimulus contains an argument or if it is just a set of factual statements

Is the "if" correct here??? can a statement have 2 "whethers"

How about
"Determine whether a stimulus contains an argument or is it just a set of factual statements"

SC experts, kindly offer help

Tx

I am not expert, but i'll give it a shot. firstly the part before and after "or" should have similar construction. Hence there is no need to use whether again

"Determine whether a stimulus contains an argument or if it is just a set of factual statements"

"Determine whether X or Y, we should use if in "Y part of the sentence" because if here represents uncertainty or conditionality.

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fibbonnaci: MBA Student; Posts: 403; Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2009 7:32 pmFollowed by: 22 members; Thanked: 98 times

by fibbonnaci » Sat Mar 13, 2010 10:46 pm

'If' need not be used. the term 'Whether' is sufficient to employ the choices.
Moreover 'If' when used as a conditional also needs the 'then' clause. If X then Y. however in our sentence we do not have any clause that supports the 'If' clause.

Whether X or Y, here X and Y need to be parallel.
I would rewrite the sentence this way:
Determine whether a stimulus contains an argument or just a set of factual statements

Here the parallelism occurs after 'contains'. Rewritten it would read,

Determine whether a stimulus contains an argument
OR
Determine whether a stimulus contains just a set of factual statements.

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