GMAT Prep Practice CAT

When the temperature of a gas is increased, it is either accompanied by an increase in pressure if the gas is enclosed in a container, or an increase in volume of the gas able to expand.

A) Same
B) When the temperature of a gas is increased, it is accompanied either by an increase in pressure if it is enclosed in a container or
C) When the temperature of a gas is increased, the increase is either accompanied by an increase in pressure if the gas is enclosed in a container or by
D) Any increase in the temperature of a gas is either accompanied by an increase in pressure if it is enclosed in a container or by
E) Any increase in the temperature of a gas is accompanied either by an increase in pressure if the gas is enclosed in a container or by

I chose C. The correct answer is E. Could somebody please explain the difference between the "openers" of those sentences - how do I know when to use "Any increase in . . . " vs. "When blah, blah". Also, does this have anything to do with the placement of the word "either"?

Thanks.

The two main issues here are pronouns and idioms - you could construct a grammatically correct sentence with either the "when" opener of the "any" opener. This is what I call a "red herring" - an obvious difference in the answer choices, so you agonize over that when you should be focused on something else.

In the original sentence, the pronoun "it" is ambiguous - does "it" refer to the temperature or the gas? Technically it could be either one (although I know it should be referring to temperature just because I've learned about this stuff before).

The next big issue with this one is the lack of parallelism within the idiom "either X or Y." The original sentence says "it is either accompanied by... or an increase..." With these kinds of idioms, you have to be able to write both X and Y as though they are the sole enders of the sentence. So I need to be able to write complete sentences by saying "it is accompanied by..." (which is okay here) and "it is an increase in..." (which is not okay).

B has the same pronoun issue and also messes up the "accompanied by" idiom - it needs to say "accompanied either by X or by Y."

C (awkwardly) eliminates the pronoun issue but still messes up that idiom.

D eliminates the pronoun issue but still messes up that idiom.

E fixes both the pronoun ambiguity and the idiom error.

Hi..

Is there a trick to spot inverted sentences...
I thought the above is an inverted sentence...but not sure... could you please verify

further..in E

"Any increase in temperature of a gas IS..."

Could you please clarify what is the main subject and predicate here... as I am getting lost because of the preposition and its object...

thanks in advance,
Anon

Core of the sentence: Any increase is accompanied either by X or by Y

"in the temperature" and "of a gas" are both prepositional phrases. But "any" is not a preposition. Any is a quantity word or qualifier and can be used to introduce the noun (subject in this case) increase. In terms of part of speech, it's equvalent to saying "an increase is..." or "the increase is..."

It is very tough to spot inverted sentences. The two most obvious markers are the words "here" or "there" followed by a verb. The words "here" and "there" don't function as subjects. Having only prepositional phrases before the verb is also another clue - so it's good that you were looking for that. It just turns out that we had something else besides prepositional phrases here... and that was the subject, of course.

Thanks a ton for the explanation Stacey.. :)

Anon

We're glad it helped!