A recent poll indicates that many people in the United States hold a combination of conservative and liberal political reviews; i.e., [u][i]they[/i] [b]denounce[/b] big government, [b]saying [/b]government is doing too much and has become too powerful, while at the same time [b]supporting[/b] [/u]many specific government programs for health care, education, and the environment.

Hi there!

Here, I am not able to recognize that what? should parallel what?
Is it “saying” parallel to “supporting”?

Or, “they denounce” should be made parallel to support, using a conjunction?

I have a few more queries (these may sound absurd)

what is the referrant of "[i]they[/i]"?

Can "[i]they[/i]" refer to reviews?

What is the function of "while at the same time"?

Thanks! in advance

choices are:

they denounce big government, saying government is doing too much and has become too powerful, while at the same time supporting

they denounce big government—they say that government is doing too much and has become too powerful— but supporting at the same time

they denounce big government, they say that government is doing too much and it has become too powerful, while they support at the same time

while they denounce big government, saying that government is doing too much and has become too powerful, at the same time supporting

while they are denouncing big government—they say that government is doing too much and it has become too powerful—supporting at the same time

I think this one's more of a function of proper sentence structure when combining complex parts of sentences into one long sentence.

Also, is "reviews" supposed to be "views?" "Reviews" doesn't make sense. [Edited by Stacey to delete a sentence I wrote that was completely wrong! :)]

B is wrong because the main sentence reads "they denounce big government but supporting at the same time." "But" is a coordinating conjunction, used to connect two independent clauses, but the second half of this sentence "supporting at the same time..." is not an independent clause (that is, it cannot function as a stand-alone sentence).

C is a run on: "they denounce, they say" Both of those - "they denounce big government" and "
they say that government is doing too much" - are independent clauses and need to be connected either via a coordinating conjunction or a semi-colon. See, for example "they say that government is doing too much and it has become too powerful" - those are two independent clauses connected by the coordinating conjuction "and."

D is wrong because the main sentence reads "they denounce big government at the same time supporting" - you need a contrast word such as "while" between government and at. Same reason for E.

Hi Stacey,

Thanks for your elaborate reply. You really do a wonderful! job

I still have a few questions, regarding structure

please have a look at this sentence:

the birds from the region X have migrated to the region Y, bringing the number of birds to 4443 in the region X and have made new beautiful nests on the trees there

Is this sentence grammatically correct?

Or we need to introduce a participle phrase like "bringing..."after the second clause --"have made new beautiful nests on the trees there"-- to show parallelism?

And just one more :?:

Is it OK to use clause enclosed in dashes

—they say that government is doing too much and has become too powerful—

sorry! forgot typing Username in the above reply

Stacey is the GMAT Queen!

hi Dan

you are absolutely right!

It would be great if you also provide regal insights in to the above question.


thanks n regards
rajan

Rajan, the error in the sentence below has nothing to do with verb tense; instead, the error is one of punctuation. Currently, the sentence is correlating bringing with have made because the phrase that begins with brining is not separated by commas. To correct this error, a comma must be placed after the region X in this phrase. By doing so, the sentence will correctly correlate have migrated with have made.

As for the second question, I would not recommend using the dash to separate clauses in such a manner. Dashes are normally used either to emphasize a point or to set off an explanatory comment (ie. Physics is a difficult subject to master - an exceptionally difficult subject) or to separate elements in an appositive phrase (ie. The three students - Stacey, Dan and Jad - plan to take the GMAT next week).

-dan

Thanks Dan.

I really admire genuineness of MGMAT staff in answering the questions.

regards
Rajan

No Problem!

How come "that" is omitted in A?
What's the rule to decide when to omit "that"?

In C, couldn't 'while' be used as a subordinating conjunction to show contrast?

similarly, in D, I don't undersatnd why 'while' has to be placed between 'government' and 'at' --> couldnt it be placed at the beginning to signal contrast?

I guess my quesiton is, how is 'while' generally used on the GMAT - to show contrast? at the same time (if so, isnt 'while at the same time' redundant?)

thanks.

you can construe it that way if you want; that's not the problem with choice (c).
the problem with that choice is that it's a run-on: it takes two independent clauses (i.e., two things each of which is a standalone sentence on its own) - the two clauses beginning with 'they' - and just slaps them together with a comma. you can't do that; as stacey said above, you need some sort of connecting structure.


no; the sentence is ungrammatical if you do that.
if 'while' is placed at the beginning, as it is in choice (d) as written in the first post, then the sentence becomes a fragment. specifically, 'while they ... too powerful' is a subordinate clause, which means that the rest of the sentence must be an independent clause (i.e., a clause that could be its own standalone sentence) to make grammatical sense. unfortunately, it isn't; there is no main verb, only a present participle ('supporting').



the best, and most relevant, answer i can give to your query about redundancy is this: they use 'while at the same time' in an officially correct answer, so they don't consider it redundant.
they write the test, and you and i don't - meaning that their opinion is the only one that matters. them's the breaks.

if you're looking for an actual reason that 'while at the same time' is allowed, the best reason i can give (actually the second best reason, after 'because they said so') is that it has a clear rhetorical purpose: it adds a great deal of emphasis to the contrast between the seemingly contradictory views described in the sentence. if you take out the words 'at the same time', you lose the sense of stark contrast offered up if those words are there.

Hi Stacey,

Thanks for all your explanations..

In the above post you have mentioned the below

"In any event, "they" cannot refer to either views or reviews - "they" has to refer to people (both that literal word in this sentence, and as a general concept - his, her, and they have to refer to people or animals of some sort. We use it / its for inanimate things)"


So if I were to refer back to inanimate things, How would I do that ?

For eg.. Clothes made in Paris are the costliest and they command a high price..

Is this sentence wrong ? Do I have to repeat the word "Clothes" everytime I want to mention Clothes in a sentence..

Thanks..

Ron/Stacey Help please...

Thanks

Wow - I must've been really tired when I wrote that. I think I was mixing up the single him/her/it issue in my brain. (You do use it for inanimate in the singular and not him/her.) They can be used for both people and inanimate things in the plural. Sorry about that! I'll edit the original post so other people don't get confused.