The health commissioner said - MGMAT Qtn

[minerr]

The health commissioner said that the government had implemented strict measures to eradicate the contaminated food and, despite the recent illnesses, it will try to prevent the outbreak from recurring in the future.
it will try
that it tried
it had tried
it would have tried
that it would try
---------------------------------
Official answer is E.

I marked A because the phrase 'despite the recent illnesses' with E somehow didn't makse sense to me.
I definitely missed the parallel.

Please help me pon this......

[rfernandez]

The prepositional phrase "despite the recent illnesses" is an adverbial modifier describing that the government would still try to prevent future outbreaks without being deterred by the recent outbreaks. The presence of this phrase does not suggest that a simple future tense (as in choice A) makes more sense. We need a tense that describes a future action stated in the past. That's why "would try" in choice E fits the bill.

Here's an example:

The quarterback said, despite his recent successful season, that he would retire.

[krishnakumarhod]

The health commissioner said that the government had implemented strict measures to eradicate the contaminated food and, despite the recent illnesses, it would try to prevent the outbreak from reccurring in the future.


Is despite a conjuction ?

Wont this sentence "it would try to prevent the outbreak from reccurring in the future." be a run on if it is not ?

[StaceyKoprince]

No, "despite" is not a conjunction. "And" is a conjunction. "And" also indicates that parallelism is required.

The health commissioner said that the government had implemented strict measures to eradicate the contaminated food and it would try to prevent the outbreak from reccurring in the future.

The health commissioner said that X [a clause] and (that) Y (another clause).

Both clauses are things that the health commissioner said. Further, both clauses start with nouns - in particular, nouns that are the subjects of their respective clauses. Finally, the subject "it" in the second parallel clause is referring to the subject "government" in the first parallel clause. (It's not 100% required for the pronoun to refer specifically to the subject in the first clause, but when it does, that's extra-nice parallelism. :)

[krishnakumarhod]

Thanks for the excellent explanation.I guess i had not turned on the feature that says send me a mail when there is activity in this thread.
Now i know it exsists.

I still get a feeling that gmat only uses "Recent" when it is indicating present tense just as it uses "since" to indicate present perfect.

Can you think of any official questions that use "Recent" in the context of past.Because I am training myself to think the "gmat Way" .And my (under construction) Radar indicated me to take present as soon as i saw "recent"

[tim]

I’m not sure I understand your question. In this problem, "recent" is definitely NOT being used to indicate present tense. Can you clarify a little better?

[krishnakumarhod]

Hi Tim

I was just saying GMAT uses certain keywords to indicate cetain things.
For example if i see "since" in a sentence correction question and if the question is testing verb tense then i will assume the sentence is in present perfect tense.It is not that i go for it blindly but i will start thinking in that context.

Similarly I think GMAT uses "Recent" to indicate present .I just wanted to know if thre are any official questions that have "Recent" used in the past.

[tim]

i can't think of any specific examples off the top of my head, but the only way i could see "recent" being used together with simple past tense would be a sentence such as this:

"a recent study indicated that ..."

[sherifmhy]

is it mandatory to use "that" in the second part of the sentence to make it parallel?

also, is it possible to use different tenses in a parallel structure as above (i.e. had implemented vs. would try)?

Thanks in advance

Sherif

[tim]

In this case, "that" is required in order to prevent ambiguity. As for verbs, they do not have to be in the same tense to be parallel..

[thulsy]

I think the correct sentence (Choice E) has misplaced modifier "despite the recent illnesses", which would be better placed after "that".

Version #1. The commissioner said that the government had implemented ... and that, despite the recent illnesses, it would try ...

Version #2. The commissioner said that the government had implemented ... and, despite the recent illnesses, that it would try ...

I think Version #2 (Choice E) is inferior to Version #1. This was the reason that I eliminated choice (E) and got wrong for this question... Dear instructors, please correct me if I am wrong. Thanks.

Reference:
Ron's Thursday lecture on Nov 17, 2011
My friend told me, as we were graduating from college, that she was in love with that man.
My friend told me that, as we were graduating from college, she was in love with that man.

The health commissioner said that the government had implemented strict measures to eradicate the contaminated food and, despite the recent illnesses, it will try to prevent the outbreak from recurring in the future.
it will try
that it tried
it had tried
it would have tried
that it would try
---------------------------------
Official answer is E.

I marked A because the phrase 'despite the recent illnesses' with E somehow didn't makse sense to me.
I definitely missed the parallel.

Please help me pon this......

[tim]

Of course you are wrong. As Ron is fond of saying, don't question official answers; they are by definition correct. In this case, you appear to be trying to impose an alternate interpretation on the sentence that would make the answer choice incorrect. Keep in mind that if there are two possible interpretations of the sentence and one is grammatically correct while the other is not, you should ignore the incorrect interpretation and accept the correct interpretation..

[gmatwork]

No, "despite" is not a conjunction. "And" is a conjunction. "And" also indicates that parallelism is required.

The health commissioner said that the government had implemented strict measures to eradicate the contaminated food and it would try to prevent the outbreak from reccurring in the future.

The health commissioner said that X [a clause] and (that) Y (another clause).

Both clauses are things that the health commissioner said. Further, both clauses start with nouns - in particular, nouns that are the subjects of their respective clauses. Finally, the subject "it" in the second parallel clause is referring to the subject "government" in the first parallel clause. (It's not 100% required for the pronoun to refer specifically to the subject in the first clause, but when it does, that's extra-nice parallelism. :)

I have a question regarding clause parallelism -

In this case if an answer choice gave us an option - it would try. Could that have been correct?

Can we have clause parallelism even without repeating the word "that"? What if we didn't repeat the word "that" in the second parallel part, could we still justify parallelism?

Sometimes we don't repeat helping verbs and prepositions when they are the same across both parallel parts. Can we do the same with clauses in parallel structures OR do we need to repeat the starting word of each clause EVEN if it is the same word (that, who, etc) in both the clauses.

[krishnan.anju1987]

Even I have the same question as Priyanka. Even I am confused whether that needs to be used in both the places. Would it be right if we just wrote "it would" in the second clause where it refers to the government.

[jnelson0612]

No, we have to use the word "that" to start the second clause, as discussed above. The commissioner said THAT X and THAT Y.