Parallelism, Chapter 4, PG 60, #14

[chitrangada.maitra]

Problem: The consultant is looking for a cafe where there are comfortable chairs and that provides free internet access.

Answer: The consultant is looking for a cafe that has comfortable chairs and that provides free internet access.

My question is: Is there a need to repeat 'that'?

Can we say: The consultant is looking for a cafe that has comfortable chairs and provides free internet access.

[gokul_nair1984]

Can we say: The consultant is looking for a cafe that has comfortable chairs and provides free internet access.

The usage of "that" is better off in the above sentence.This is because there may be room for slight confusion whether the chairs provide free internet( I know, it sounds weird!!!). The reason is that there are 2 antecedent nouns that "that" could refer (cafe or chairs)

This clarifies the entire meaning , leaving no room for ambivalence.

The consultant is looking for a cafe (that has comfortable chairs) and that* (provides free internet access).

*Here the second that refers to Cafe

however, on simpler sentences you might as well negate the extra "that":
eg:

I know that you are good looking and that you are intelligent.(Wordy)...
I know that you are good looking and intelligent.(Clearer and less wordy construction)

[tim]

Sorry, Gokul, the "that" is neither necessary nor unnecessary, and there is NO confusion either way. Think of a typical sentence as a single track. When you encounter parallelism, you are effectively splitting the sentence into parallel tracks. It is important to identify where the sentence split into parallel tracks, but depending on where you choose to split the sentence there may be multiple correct ways to write the sentence. In this case, we could split the sentence before the word "that", which would require a "that" in both parallel tracks. Or we could split the sentence after "that", allowing the "that" to apply to both parallel tracks. The important thing to keep in mind here is that you must not eliminate an answer choice just because the answer chooses to split into parallel tracks at a different point than you would choose to. As long as the option presented can be parallel under some valid interpretation, it does not violate parallelism..

In this case, the real reason you have to repeat "that" is because it’s not underlined. :) Very good lesson to keep in mind on the GMAT and life in general - don’t spend any time worrying about things you can’t change.. :)