Sentence Correction

In 1850 Lucretia Mott published her Discourse on Women, arguing in a treatise for women to have equal political and legal rights and for changes in the married women’s property laws.
A.arguing in a treatise for women to have equal political and legal rights
B.arguing in a treatise for equal political and legal rights for women
C.a treatise that advocates women’s equal political and legal rights
D.a treatise advocating women’s equal political and legal rights
E.a treatise that argued for equal political and legal rights for women

the answer is D, but i choose E.

my rationale on this question is based on parallelism " for....and for..."

any one give me an explanation? thank you very much

:

a treatise cannot argue, i believe people argue
hence E is incorrect.

but still confused between C n D.



Thanks!

sorry, it is my fault. i have checked my answer again, the right one is E according to parallelism ' for ... for..."

loki.gmat :

actually, you've got a wrong point here, the key issue is that the direct subject of "argue" is "the treatise", then what we need to do here is to compare the five choices, then select the best one - the tidiest one, that is the parallelism structure.

Cathy: Even B has a parallel contruction right ?
how did you correctly pick the option E ?
Could you explain ??

thankyou

I do think it's a parallelism issue. Something argues "for rights...and for changes"

B is not correct because the part after the comma should correctly modify "her Discourse on Women". "a treatise" is the best description of the discourse, so the right answer should begin with a treatise.

you are right!!

and also...another flaw in B is that... the phrase " arguing in A TREATISE..........." means to say that she argued in a different treatise not the Discourse of Women.

In E how can the treatise argue

A treatise that argued seems incorrect meaning. Can someone please explain.

Sumative Modifier:

COMMA + Concrete NOUN

Comma + concrete NOUN modifies the previous NOUN before comma. So, Discourse on Women is a NOUN and after comma "a treatise that" is correct.

This kills A and B.---> Besides, COMMA + VERBING modifies the entire preceding clause. On this ground A and B can also be eliminated.

COMMA + CONCRETE NOUN --takes a "THAT" after it. So, D is out.

C is wrong for the following reasons:

It changes the intended meaning of the sentence. Think "women's X" and "X for women" are NOT the same. "Women's X" means women already have X and someone is saying about that. On the other hand "X for women" means someone is saying that women need X. So, it is changing the meaning of the sentence.

Correct answer is E.

A> The construction is "arguing"+"in a treatise..." or participle + prepositional phrase. Or simply, it's a participial phrase. Now, the participial phrase most likely modifies the subject, which is "Lucretia Mott". Now the question is - Is Lucretia Mott arguing or is the argument in her book? When we look at the phrase "arguing in a treatise" , it is apparent that Lucretia is not arguing. Also, to+be construction is wordy. Be watchful

B> Same as above. The participial phrase as a modifier is not doing the justice.

C> An appositive "a treatise that.." is fixing the above problem. But it is introducing another problem. "a treatise that advocates women's equal political and legal rights and for changes in the married women's property laws". It is important to understand the construction of appositive. An appositive could be simply noun or noun+modifier. Here, we can write - a treatise (noun) that that advocates women's equal political and legal rights (relative or adjective clause) and (a treatise) for changes in the married women's property laws (prepositional phrase). As you can see, a treatise for changes in the married women's property laws (prepositional phrase) does not make any sense. To correct this, we need (a treatise) that advocates for changes in the married women's property laws (adjective clause)
D> It is having the same problem as C. A treatise for changes in the married women's property laws (prepositional phrase) does not make any sense.
E> This answer choice fixed both problem. It introduced appositive correctly. Also, a parallelism is established with two prepositional phrases "for equal political and legal rights for women" and "for changes in the married women's property laws" that are modifying verb "argue" and act as a adverbial modifier.