Sentence Correction

[Saurav]

Q. Federal authorities involved in the investigation have found the local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and are suspicious of strangers.

A. the local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and are
B. local witnesses to be difficult to locate, reticent, and are
C. that local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and
D. local witnesses are difficult to locate and reticent, and they are
E. that local witnesses are difficult to locate and reticent, and they are

What would be the correct answer to this?

[Guest]

that is required...

eliminate A, B and D

next thing to look for is... parallelism...

eliminate E... "they"

C is nice and clear.... to locate, reticent, and suspicious

To is used for the first verb and no need to repeat for other verbs... to A, B and C...

[Pras]

Step 1 - Split btw "and vs and are vs and they are".
- They is ambiguous as we do not know if it refers to the federal authorities or the local witnesses. Hence eliminate D and E.
- The redundancy of "are" in A is unnecessary and incorrect. Hence Eliminate A.
-Use of 1st verb as are is correct than the use of to. Also, existence of two Tos is unnecessary in B.

Therefore, C is the correct answer.

[Saurav]

That was helpful.

[JonathanSchneider]

Excellent explnations above. Sometimes I'm so proud of our users : )

[ravikumar.sv1985]

Q. Federal authorities involved in the investigation have found the local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and are suspicious of strangers.



A. the local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and are

B. local witnesses to be difficult to locate, reticent, and are

C. that local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and

D. local witnesses are difficult to locate and reticent, and they are

E. that local witnesses are difficult to locate and reticent, and they are



What would be the correct answer to this?

Hi

I am trying to understand why C has proper parallelism.
local witnesses are difficult to suspicious of strangers in option C does not make sense to me.

I am thinking "suspicious" is adjective and using it looks awkward for me. because locate & reticent are verbs.

Request your help regarding this.

Thanks,
Ravi Kumar

[shubham_sagijain]

Q. Federal authorities involved in the investigation have found the local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and are suspicious of strangers.

A. the local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and are
B. local witnesses to be difficult to locate, reticent, and are
C. that local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and
D. local witnesses are difficult to locate and reticent, and they are
E. that local witnesses are difficult to locate and reticent, and they are

What would be the correct answer to this?

'C' for sure.
'that' is required after found so we boil down to C and E.
In E, 'they' is ambiguous. So, we are left with only 'C'

Thanks,
Shubh

[ravikumar.sv1985]

after "found" that makes sense but that doesn't mean that rest of the sentence will be correct :)

My question is with choice C especially in the parallelism part of it :)

Thanks,
Ravi Kumar

[shubham_sagijain]

after "found" that makes sense but that doesn't mean that rest of the sentence will be correct :)

My question is with choice C especially in the parallelism part of it :)

Thanks,
Ravi Kumar

Ravi,

reticent is an adjective too :)

Thanks,
Shubh

[ravikumar.sv1985]

Thanks for correcting...:)

Still It doesn't solve my problem. how can
to locate (to + verb form)
parallel to
to reticent and
to suspicious of strangers(which are in to+adjective form)

Ravi Kumar

[nakul.maheshwari000]

I am kind of siding with Ravi on this one too.

- I agree that "they" is ambigious but in C how can you say "to...suspicious"

[pras1387]

Q. Federal authorities involved in the investigation have found the local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and are suspicious of strangers.

A. the local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and are
B. local witnesses to be difficult to locate, reticent, and are
C. that local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and
D. local witnesses are difficult to locate and reticent, and they are
E. that local witnesses are difficult to locate and reticent, and they are

What would be the correct answer to this?

the items that are parallel are all qualities of local witnesses i.e.
1. difficult to locate,
2. reticent, and
3. suspicious of strangers

they are parallel in C

E uses ambiguous /incorrect they, hence incorrect.

[shubham_sagijain]

I am kind of siding with Ravi on this one too.

- I agree that "they" is ambigious but in C how can you say "to...suspicious"

aah...nw i understand what parallelism Ravi and you are looking at....i guess u need to check for 'difficult to relocate', 'reticent' and 'suspicious'...hope you got it now !

Thanks,
Shubh

[ravikumar.sv1985]

Thanks :D

I get it now. I got misled by previous post.

Ravi Kumar

[tim]

thanks for working with each other on this one. let us know if you have any further questions..