Among lower-paid workers, union members are less likely

by **pushkalk** Mon Aug 29, 2011 6:05 am

Hey Ron,
(C) that impose stricter limits on medical services, require doctors to see more patients, and (to)spend

I have a doubt on wrong option C.

As I have indicated above I fell into a trap trying to parallel the part in red above.

Option D instead uses a ing modifier to indicate the second part of what the policy requires of doctors.

My question considering your earlier explanation on page 1 of this thread : Do we push "spend" to an 'ing' modier only because we CANNOT have all the 3 actions here in parallel ? In other words is a change in parallelism must to indicate the specific hierarchy of events in any similar construction ?

by **RonPurewal** Sat Sep 03, 2011 8:42 pm

pushkalk Wrote:Hey Ron,
(C) that impose stricter limits on medical services, require doctors to see more patients, and (to)spend

I have a doubt on wrong option C.

As I have indicated above I fell into a trap trying to parallel the part in red above.

Option D instead uses a ing modifier to indicate the second part of what the policy requires of doctors.

My question considering your earlier explanation on page 1 of this thread : Do we push "spend" to an 'ing' modier only because we CANNOT have all the 3 actions here in parallel ? In other words is a change in parallelism must to indicate the specific hierarchy of events in any similar construction ?

you may be overthinking this issue.
if you have a parallel construction of verbs ("VERB1 and VERB2", "VERB1, VERB2, and VERB3", etc.), then all of the verbs must have the same subject.

in this case, the subject of spend must be doctors, but the subject of each of the other two verbs must be insurance plans.

by **aditya8062** Sun Jan 13, 2013 5:08 am

i am copying the question again as there are too many post in this :
Among lower-paid workers, union members are less likely than nonunion members to be enrolled in lower-end insurance plans imposing stricter limits on medical services and requiring doctors to see more patients, and spend less time with each.
(A) imposing stricter limits on medical services and requiring doctors to see more patients, and spend
(B) imposing stricter limits on medical services, requiring doctors to see more patients, and spending
(C) that impose stricter limits on medical services, require doctors to see more patients, and spend
(D) that impose stricter limits on medical services and require doctors to see more patients, spending
(E) that impose stricter limits on medical services, requiring doctors to see more patients and spending

i have read in one of the posts of ron that following construction is wrong :
the construction (preposition) + NOUN + VERBing is WRONG, unless the preposition refers directly to the NOUN
my question is can we eliminate option A and B using this rule ?
but if i did deep into option A and B then i find that the object of the preposition of "in" is the noun "lower end insurance plans " .
so that means that prepositon +noun +verbing construction should have worked here
can ron plz help me understand as what am i missing here
though i got this question correct but the above mentioned doubt perplexed me when i read some of the post that explains this above mentioned concept
thanks and regards

by **RonPurewal** Mon Jan 21, 2013 5:43 am

aditya8062 Wrote: the construction (preposition) + NOUN + VERBing is WRONG, unless the preposition refers directly to the NOUN
my question is can we eliminate option A and B using this rule ?
but if i did deep into option A and B then i find that the object of the preposition of "in" is the noun "lower end insurance plans " .
so that means that prepositon +noun +verbing construction should have worked here

you are correct; that's not an error.

once you figure out the correct meaning, this problem is basically a pure exercise in parallelism.

by **leany2011** Tue May 14, 2013 6:47 am

dear Ron/instructors
I got a question:
why can't I interpret (a) as this:imposing stricter limits on medical services and requiring doctors to see more patients, and (to) spend.
by that I mean:imposing and requiring are parallel; to see and (to) spend are parallel
Thanks a lot!

by **RonPurewal** Thu May 16, 2013 5:53 am

leany2011 Wrote:dear Ron/instructors
I got a question:
why can't I interpret (a) as this:imposing stricter limits on medical services and requiring doctors to see more patients, and (to) spend.
by that I mean:imposing and requiring are parallel; to see and (to) spend are parallel
Thanks a lot!

that interpretation is precluded by the comma before "and". you can't put a comma in a list of only 2 things.

by **leany2011** Thu May 16, 2013 10:58 am

RonPurewal Wrote:
leany2011 Wrote:dear Ron/instructors
I got a question:
why can't I interpret (a) as this:imposing stricter limits on medical services and requiring doctors to see more patients, and (to) spend.
by that I mean:imposing and requiring are parallel; to see and (to) spend are parallel
Thanks a lot!

that interpretation is precluded by the comma before "and". you can't put a comma in a list of only 2 things.

thanks,Ron,you've helped me a lot!

by **jlucero** Thu May 16, 2013 4:40 pm

Glad it helped.

by **mcmebk** Sun Jul 21, 2013 2:21 pm

RonPurewal Wrote:you have to realize which verbs are supposed to be parallel and which aren't. there's no grammatical formula for this; you have to examine the meaning of the sentence to figure it out.
- 'impose' (in whatever form) should be parallel to 'require' (again, in whatever form). these are two different things, both of which are aspects of the plan (= logical parallelism).
- 'spend' should not be parallel to 'see', because it functions as a modifier of 'see' (it's a descriptive adverb modifier, detailing the way in which the doctors see the patients).

choice a: 'spend' is ungrammatical here (it has no logical subject, and isn't parallel to anything).
choice b: imposing, requiring, and spending are all parallel, implying that the insurance plans do all three of these things (an absurdity in the last case).
choice c: all three verbs are parallel again, leading to the same absurdity witnessed in choice b.
choice d (= correct): the parallelism follows the model outlined above: only the verbs that are logically parallel appear in parallel structure.
choice e: 'requiring' and 'spending' are parallel in the modifier, implying that the plans themselves spend time with patients (in addition to requiring blah blah blah). this doesn't make sense.

Hi Ron,

You taught us to analyze the meaning of sentences and then decide what should be in parallel.

When I saw this question, my first reaction was: require doctors to see more patients, spend less time with each are "included" in "impose stricter limits on medical services", since doctors seeing more patients / spending less time with each are sort of description of a doctor's service.

I thought doctors see more patients / spend less time with each are parallel, similar to "As a teacher, I am required to accept less students and spend more time with each"(I made this sentence up.)

So I chose the wrong answer E, and only later realized the problem with the modifier...

Could you please correct my thoughts.

Thank you.

by **RonPurewal** Thu Jul 25, 2013 1:12 am

mcmebk Wrote:I thought doctors see more patients / spend less time with each are parallel, similar to "As a teacher, I am required to accept less students and spend more time with each"(I made this sentence up.)

this analysis is absolutely correct, but, unfortunately, there's one problem -- it's irrelevant to this example.

if choice (e) had "see" and "spend" in parallel -- as in your (correct) example -- you'd have a point here.
but, take a look at (e) again. the two things that are actually parallel in that choice are..
... "requiring xxx", which describes the plans;
... "spending less time", which describes the doctors.
so, it's nonsense to put these in parallel.

there aren't any choices here with the parallelism that you first formulated, so, in this case, you'll have to think of another valid interpretation (= the one that's in the correct answer).

by **mcmebk** Sun Jul 28, 2013 1:27 am

Thank you so much Ron!

by **RonPurewal** Sun Jul 28, 2013 2:36 am

sure.

by **noor_dalhousie** Sun Oct 27, 2013 2:20 pm

Hi Ron

I am sorry but I have not really understood the explanation. I have a doubt. I had opted for option E. My doubt is in option D "that impose stricter limits on medical services and require doctors to see more patients, spending...", what is "spending" modify? As per my understanding till now, present participle after comma is either a cause of the preceding or clause (action) or modifies the subject of the preceding clause. Herein, the subject is insurance plans. But there are two actions (imposing limitations + requiring doctors). So should I interpret "spending" to be the effect of these two actions? I am highly confused. Please help.

by **RonPurewal** Mon Oct 28, 2013 8:37 am

It describes the closest action, "see more patients". Because the doctors have to see more patients, they can't spend as much time with each patient.

by **li.xi811** Wed Feb 19, 2014 9:12 am

RonPurewal Wrote:
leany2011 Wrote:dear Ron/instructors
I got a question:
why can't I interpret (a) as this:imposing stricter limits on medical services and requiring doctors to see more patients, and (to) spend.
by that I mean:imposing and requiring are parallel; to see and (to) spend are parallel
Thanks a lot!

that interpretation is precluded by the comma before "and". you can't put a comma in a list of only 2 things.

Hi Ron,

If there's no comma before "and spend," would A be correct? Or would it still be inferior to D, because "spending less time with each" sounds like a direct and immediate consequence of the action "to see more patients"?

Thanks in advance.

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