Question: Caring for Carpeting

Comment on Caring for Carpeting

Do we need parallelism here? Can't I say the "only way to maintain X is buying Y". I eliminated B and D, because "is if..." doesn't mean anything. A for S-V agreement and E for meaning. But I didn't understand why we need parallelism in that part I mentioned above.

Thanks in advance, great work btw!
gmat-admin's picture

Yes, I believe we need parallelism here (the only way TO X is TO Y). That said, there are additional issues that still point us to the correct answer.

Hello Sir, I understand the elimination of answer choices A, B, D, E. However, I am a little bit confused as in "C" the word "it" looks ambiguous to me.
gmat-admin's picture

That's a good idea, but the only other noun that IT could refer to is HOMEOWNERS, and that word is plural.

Not one of the potential investors "is expected to make an offer to buy First Interstate Bank until a merger agreement is signed that includes a provision for penalties if the deal were" not to be concluded.

A. is expected to make an offer to buy First Interstate Bank until a merger agreement is signed that includes a provision for penalties if the deal were

B. is expected to make an offer for buying First Interstate Bank until they sign a merger agreement including a provision for penalties if the deal was

C. is expected to make an offer to buy First Interstate Bank until a merger agreement be signed by them with a provision for penalties if the deal were

D. are expected to make an offer for buying First Interstate Bank until it signs a merger agreement with a provision for penalties included if the deal was

E. are expected to be making an offer to buy First Interstate Bank until they sign a merger agreement including a provision for penalties if the deal were

sir here option b is incorrect due to "they"?
gmat-admin's picture

B is incorrect for two reasons:

1) The idiom is "make an offer TO BUY" not "make an offer FOR BUYING"

2) THEY (plural) represents ONE (singular)

Cheers,
Brent

Hi, Brent.
I was confused by thinking that "compounds" here is a verb, but from your explanation it is a noun. So it looks like "... compounds and soil accumulate" Is it correct?
gmat-admin's picture

That's a very reasonable assumption, since COMPOUNDS can be either a verb or a noun.
In this case, the adjective ODOROUS is a nice hint that COMPOUNDS is a noun in this sentence.

Cheers,
Brent

Hi Brent ,

Isn't ... of their carpeting" a prepositional phrase and to ignore it? Then it should be them because X and Y of their carpeting , which is plural because it uses "and" to combine 2 items.

Eg : arms and legs of a man should be "are" and not "is" ?


Thanks
gmat-admin's picture

While it's true that we can ignore prepositional phrases in order to better understand the structure of a sentence, we must still keep in mind that the latter part of a sentence may still refer to something in that prepositional phrase.

That's the case with this sentence. Once we get to the words VACUUM THEM, we should ask ourselves "What exactly is getting vacuumed?"
We certainly aren't vacuuming the HOMEOWNERS, and we can't vacuum CLEANLINESS and APPEARANCE.

Since it must be the case that we're vacuuming the CARPETING (singular), we need the singular pronoun IT.

Does that help?

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