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Comment on Constructing a New Bridge
Hello Brent,
I am confused about why "discussions are to be postponed "is not correct?
Good question.
Good question.
This is a matter of idiomatic construction. The correct idiom is "proposed that X be Y."
As with all idioms, there isn't a nice grammatical rule that governs this construction; that's just the way it is.
For more on idioms, watch: https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gmat-sentence-correction/video/1180
Does that help?
Cheers,
Brent
Do you happen to have a video
We don't have a video on the
We don't have a video on the command subjunctive. From what I've seen (with regard to official GMAT questions), these fall under the idiom category.
Cheers,
Brent
Hi brent,
Two questions:
1.) If the question stem read: Councilor Davison concluded that discussions..........are to be.....
Would this make sense over: concluded that discussions.....be.... ?
Concluded seems like more like an authoritative decision to make single handedly rather than proposing something which sounds more like a result of a cooperative discussion.
Am i overthinking this ? Should i just understand that "That x be y" is the idiom no matter what verb preceeds that ?
2.) usage of that makes sense since we are restricting the scope of the proposed action isnt it ? Councilors proposal could be anything but using that narrows it to what it is about.
Also, upon eliminating the "that" clause, the sentence makes no sense.
Am i correct in thinking like this ?
1) I would say that, in the
1) I would say that, in the spirit of concision, "concluded that discussions.....be postponed" is preferred.
Also, CONCLUDED can be associated with a single entity or a group.
For example we can have, "The 10 members of the committee CONCLUDED that discussions be postponed."
Or we can have, "Joe CONCLUDED that discussions be postponed."
2) I believe you may be thinking of a different usage of THAT
You're referring to the THAT vs WHICH usage, in which THAT is used to take a group of nouns and restrict the topic of discussion to a smaller group.
For example: This is the shirt THAT I bought in Paris.
In the "Councilor Davison" sentence, THAT is part of the PROPOSED THAT idiom
Does that help?
Cheers,
Brent