It is unclear whether chimpanzees are unique among nonhuman

[RonPurewal]

if there are two totally different 'this or that' scenarios, then a good writer will write 'whether' twice.
You should not steal, regardless of whether the victim is rich or whether you might be caught.

(without the second 'whether', the sentence would read ...whether the victim is rich or you might be caught. this wording suggests—illogically, of course—that these are two opposing alternatives!)

[RonPurewal]

also—
if you have 2 'whether's in parallel to some other word (who, what, where, etc.), then, of course, you need to write all three of them.

e.g.,
Police investigators still have not determined who set the fire, whether anyone was inside the building at the time, or whether there was a financial motive.

this is just basic parallelism, of course, so there's no need to note it as though it were some sort of special case.

[RajaS909]

Thanks Ron. That helps.

[RonPurewal]

you're welcome.

[inc.manni]

Is the below true:

There are some hard fast rules for If and Then

If (Past Tenses) - Then (Past or Would Verb)

If (Present) - Then (Present/Future Tenses)

If (Past Perfect) - Then Would Have

No other use of if and then apart from above.

Now here we can come down to D&E - as we need something to parallel OR -- Whether has to be used - nothing else fits in.

Now if clause uses past tense were studied and this will necessitate simple would in the then clause.

The use of would be is wrong.

Secondly whether chimpanzees are unique is parallel to whether other animals would exhibit,

rather than

In D - whether chimpanzees are unique OR whether similar patterns would be

Would request experts to comment.

Regards

[RonPurewal]

Is the below true:

There are some hard fast rules for If and Then

...no.
DO NOT try to memorize 'rules' for verb tenses.

verb tenses are determined COMPLETELY by context. if you acquire a basic understanding of each tense, that understanding will be more than adequate for any tense-related decision you have to make on this exam.
WITHOUT context, it is IMPOSSIBLE to determine whether a particular tense, or sequence of tenses, is sensible.

[RonPurewal]

for instance, it's easy to come up with sentences that violate your 'rules':

If (Past Tenses) - Then (Past or Would Verb)

If you saw Sam yesterday, then you will recognize him at the party tonight.

If (Present) - Then (Present/Future Tenses)

If someone is afraid of dogs, then he or she probably did not grow up in a household with dogs.

If (Past Perfect) - Then Would Have

James realized that if he had accidentally turned the phone on, then he had revealed his location to the police by so doing.

...you see the point: trying to make these 'rules' is a waste of your time.
(even if it were possible, it would be a thousand million billion times harder than your actual job on this exam. GMAT problems will not require anything beyond a very basic understanding of verb tenses.)

[RonPurewal]

No other use of if and then apart from above.

Now here we can come down to D&E - as we need something to parallel OR -- Whether has to be used - nothing else fits in.

Now if clause uses past tense were studied and this will necessitate simple would in the then clause.

The use of would be is wrong.

Secondly whether chimpanzees are unique is parallel to whether other animals would exhibit,

rather than

In D - whether chimpanzees are unique OR whether similar patterns would be

Would request experts to comment.

Regards

i'm sorry, but i don't understand any of this.

• please write in complete sentences.

• please ask easily discernible questions that end with "?".
(this is important... right now, i can't even tell which parts of the text are meant to be questions!)

• if you're asking about a pattern or grammatical construction, please provide specific examples.

thanks.

[Gaurav@GMAT]

Hi Ron,
Is there any error with option B other than parallelism?

Option B ) if other animals were studied with as much depth they would exhibit similar patterns.

I eliminated E only because it is using both whether and if. But from context it is pretty much clear why E is right.

[RonPurewal]

well, the 'if' is also nonsense by itself—quite independently of the non-parallelism.

remember:
Xxxx if yyyy is the same sentence as If yyyy, xxxx.

so...
People are unsure if X is true
is the same as
If X is true, then people are unsure.
this is total nonsense, of course (regardless of what 'X' is).

so the 'if' part is 200 percent wrong. (:

('with as much depth' is not a thing, either, but that's the kind of idiom for which you will not be responsible.)

[RonPurewal]

by the way, if you were unaware of the above—or, worse, if you thought 'if' and 'whether' can be used interchangeably—then you can lay the blame squarely on SPOKEN english.

in the US at least (i don't know about other anglo countries) nearly everyone, even highly educated and reasonably careful speakers, treats 'if' as a suitable replacement for 'whether' in these kinds of sentences.

in formal language, of course, 'if' is NEVER equivalent to 'whether'.
in fact, the two are absolutely mutually exclusive. they mean different things. they cannot possibly mean the same thing.

[Gaurav@GMAT]

well, the 'if' is also nonsense by itself—quite independently of the non-parallelism.

Yes, even I sensed some awkwardness while reading option B, but I could not use that awkwardness to eliminate B.

Also I had one thing in mind , in option B there is no comma before they, and whole sentence is written as if there were no if-else case. Is it legitimate way to eliminate option B?, or GMAT tests such subtle errors?.

Thanks a lot .

[Chelsey Cooley]

A 'missing' comma in a sentence like that one is at best a clue that makes you, the reader, do a double take and look harder for a real grammatical issue. At worst, it's a red herring. It's not a grammar issue in itself, at least insofar as what the GMAT cares about.

What do you mean by 'written as if there were no if-else case'? There is a structural problem with the sentence - if you really dig into how the parallelism works, you'll realize that there's no way to read it that makes logical sense - but it doesn't necessarily have to do with whether there's an 'else'.

[RonPurewal]

Yes, even I sensed some awkwardness while reading option B, but I could not use that awkwardness to eliminate B.

Also I had one thing in mind , in option B there is no comma before they, and whole sentence is written as if there were no if-else case. Is it legitimate way to eliminate option B?, or GMAT tests such subtle errors?.

Thanks a lot .

it's not subtle.
this part of B...
if other animals were studied with as much depth they would exhibit similar patterns
...is a complete sentence.

you can't have "whether X will happen OR [complete sentence]". a modifier (= a fraction of a sentence) can never be parallel to a whole sentence.

[sahilk47]

It is unclear whether chimpanzees are unique among nonhuman species in their ability to learn behaviors from one another, or if, when other animals are studied in as much depth, similar patterns would be found.

(A) if, when other animals are studied in as much depth, similar patterns would be found
(B) if other animals were studied with as much depth they would exhibit similar patterns
(C) would similar patterns be found in other animals if they were studied in as much depth
(D) whether similar patterns would be exhibited in other animals that were studied with as much depth
(E) whether other animals would exhibit similar patterns if they were studied in as much depth

official answer is E. why not D?

Ron

I had rejected options (B) and (D) because of the use of phrase with as much depth instead of in as much depth. I thought we do not study something with depth, we study something in depth.

Was this reason appropriate?

Thanks.