Research has shown that when speaking, individuals who have been blind from birth and have thus never seen anyone gesture nonetheless make hand motions just as frequently and in the same way as sighted people do, and that they will gesture even when conversing with another blind person.

(A) have thus never seen anyone gesture nonetheless make hand motions just as frequently and in the same way as sighted people do, and that

(B) have thus never seen anyone gesture but nonetheless make hand motions just as frequently and in the same way that sighted people do, and

(C) have thus never seen anyone gesture, that they nonetheless make hand motions just as frequently and in the same way as sighted people do, and

(D) thus they have never seen anyone gesture, but nonetheless they make hand motions just as frequently and in the same way that sighted people do, and that

(E) thus they have never seen anyone gesture nonetheless make hand motions just as frequently and in the same way that sighted people do, and


Could someone explain why the OA is A (highlight)?

Complicated structure.

Research has shown that L (when speaking...people do), and that M (they will gesture...).

Within "that L" there's another structure. "individuals who N (have been blind) and P (have never seen) nonetheless make hand motions Q (just as frequently) and R (in the same... people do)"

So you've got three pairs of "and" phrases or clauses, in which each part of the pair should be parallel.

So, L and M = pair #1, N and P = pair #2, Q and R = pair #3.

They're all correctly parallel in choice A.
B breaks parallelism for L and M (no "that" before M), as well as breaking some other rules
C breaks parallelism for L and M (no "that" before M), as well as breaking some other rules
D breaks parallelism for N and P (individuals who N and "they" P - I shouldn't repeat the subject here b/c "individuals" is outside of the parallel part of the sentence)
E same as D and B/C

Other rules are broken as well in the wrong ones, but you can use this one rule, parallelism, to deal with all 4 wrong choices.

Thanks Stacey. Your explanation is useful.

You're welcome!

Should the verb after "see/saw/seen" in the infinite form? or ing form?

Another question: is "but" redundant because of "nonetheless"?
Thanks in advance.

please elaborate a bit; i don't really understand what you're trying to ask.

thanks.

"but" is actually wrong in this sentence, because it's inserted improperly between a subject and its verb. if you eliminate modifiers, it's easy to see this.
specifically:
...individuals who have been blind from birth and have thus never seen anyone gesture but nonetheless make hand motions...
in this sentence, the modifier has been colored yellow so that it's easier to ignore. the underlying sentence is, therefore, "individuals but nevertheless make hand motions", when it's clearly supposed to be just "individuals nevertheless make hand motions".

it's possible that "but" and "nevertheless" shouldn't be used in a sentence together, but i wouldn't be so bold as to say that's a rule. for instance, the gmat is perfectly fine with "while" and "at the same time" in the same sentence (cf. this thread).

Thanks Ron.



For instance,

1. I saw John running to the classroom.
2. I saw John run to the classroom.

Which one is correct?

I always thought that #1 was correct.

However, the prep question in this thread kind of says that #2 is the correct form or the preferred form.

in formal written english, sentences like #1 are actually incorrect, for at least one (and possibly both) of the following 2 reasons:
(a) ambiguity
this is the problem with this particular sentence #1: it could mean what you want it to mean, but it could also mean that you saw john while you were running to the classroom. this will happen with most situations involving verbs of perception (such as "saw" here).
(b) incorrect reference because you need a possessive
for instance, you can't write "everyone laughed at me going into the girls' bathroom by mistake". weirdly enough, the correct form here is possessive: "everyone laughed at my going into the girls' bathroom by mistake". the former version would actually mean, unambiguously, that everyone laughed at me while they went into the girls' bathroom by mistake.

#2 is better because it's unambiguous, and because it actually communicates your intended meaning.

what does "they" refer to in the second "that" clause- that they will gesture even....?

Does "they" have ambigous meanings that refers to individuals or to sighted people?

-

well, the gmat clearly doesn't regard this as an ambiguity, since it's in the non-underlined portion of the sentence. so, in the eyes of the gmat, the answer to this question is "no".

as in other problems, the gmat seems to regard this construction as ok because "they" is very clearly parallel to "individuals (who have been blind from birth)", and very much nonparallel to any other possible antecedent.

funny that you'd ask this; there's another thread almost exactly contemporaneous with this one that raises the same issue:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/post21468.html#21468
(see also the threads linked in that particular post)