There is a widespread belief in

[WhiteZ807]

There is a widespread belief in the United States and Western Europe that young people have a smaller commitment to work and a career than their parents and grandparents and that the source of the change lies in the collapse of the "work ethic."

A a smaller commitment to work and a career than their parents and grandparents

B less of a commitment to work and a career than their parents and grandparents

C a smaller commitment to work and a career than that of their parents and grandparents

D less of a commitment to work and a career than their parents and grandparents had

E a lessening of the commitment to work and a career that their parents and grandparents had

OA: D

Could you plz explain why the verb in D is "had" instead of "did" and why B is wrong?
Thank u!

[RonPurewal]

There is a widespread belief in the United States and Western Europe that young people have a smaller commitment to work and a career than their parents and grandparents and that the source of the change lies in the collapse of the "work ethic."

A a smaller commitment to work and a career than their parents and grandparents

B less of a commitment to work and a career than their parents and grandparents

C a smaller commitment to work and a career than that of their parents and grandparents

D less of a commitment to work and a career than their parents and grandparents had

E a lessening of the commitment to work and a career that their parents and grandparents had

OA: D

Could you plz explain why the verb in D is "had" instead of "did" and why B is wrong?
Thank u!

"Had" is the past tense of "have". It's not a helping verb here.

"Did" would work, too.

[RonPurewal]

B is wrong because it's impossible to determine what B is trying to say.

B could mean ...

1/
... than to their parents and grandparents
(i.e., they are more worried about taking care of their aging elders than about making their own living)

... or ...

2/
... than their parents and grandparents did/had
(the meaning in the correct answer)

Neither of these interpretations is crazy or absurd, so the ambiguity kills the sentence.

[RonPurewal]

Obviously this is not something you'll need to think about in every problem; in most problems, the meaning will be perfectly clear, and you'll be concerned only with sentences that have the wrong (= crazy/ridiculous) meaning.

In fact, this whole "ambiguity" situation is something you'll need to think about only in this EXACT situation (= comparison WITH helping verb vs. comparison WITHOUT helping verb).

This is not an isolated example; see also #103 in the OG verbal supplement (2nd edition), which is testing exactly the same issue. So, it's a thing.

[WhiteZ807]

Thank you for your nice explanation, Ron!

[jlucero]

Glad that it made sense.

[WenT360]

C a smaller commitment to work and a career than that of their parents and grandparents

D less of a commitment to work and a career than their parents and grandparents had

what's the split between C and D?

1) a smaller commitment to VS less of a commitment to ?
OR
2)than that of their parents and grandparents VS than their parents and grandparents had?

Thx~~~

[RonPurewal]

#1 is there to distract you.

for #2—'that of their parents and grandparents' is 'the ____ of their parents and grandparents'.
for this to work in a comparison, it should be compared with 'young people's ____'.

e.g.,
Because of the tech boom, many young people's net worth is already greater than that of their parents or grandparents.

we don't have that here.

in the correct answer, on the other hand, the parallelism is absolutely perfect:
young people have || their parents and grandparents had

[aflaamM589]

Hello Ron/ experts,
I hope you guys are doing good.
Sorry to dig this old one.
You said that in this SC, both had and did would work; is this always the case in comparisons (interchangeability of have/had with did) or depends on some condition etc?
Thanks in advance

[RonPurewal]

is this always the case in comparisons (interchangeability of have/had with did)

no, definitely not. it's only the case here because the verb is actually "have", so, the past tense of that verb is literally "had".

analogy:
i run faster now than i ran last year.
i run faster now than i did last year.
the "had" in this example works like "ran" here. "ran" is the past tense of "run", just as "had" is the past tense of "have". (you could NOT write this sentence with "had".)

[aflaamM589]

is this always the case in comparisons (interchangeability of have/had with did)

no, definitely not. it's only the case here because the verb is actually "have", so, the past tense of that verb is literally "had".

analogy:
i run faster now than i ran last year.
i run faster now than i did last year.
the "had" in this example works like "ran" here. "ran" is the past tense of "run", just as "had" is the past tense of "have". (you could NOT write this sentence with "had".)

Thank you very much for your reply,

Also, do we have to repeat the subject in second part of the comparison as is the case in your examples?
My understanding is that, if their is explicit shift of time, as is in your examples, then we have to repeat the subject.
Is my understanding correct?
Thanks in advance.

[RonPurewal]

there are a couple of correct official sentences in which that doesn't happen -- e.g., i vaguely remember one sentence saying that "prices will be higher this year than last" -- but those are NEVER presented as required decisions between the answer choices.

remember --

• you do not have to know HOW TO WRITE comparison sentences.
...because this is a multiple-choice exam.
you only must be able to compare answer choices and make relative judgments. (this is a good thing, because writing comparison sentences is VERY hard--even for native speakers of english--and is nearly impossible for english learners to master fully. on the other hand, it's not nearly as hard to make relative judgments.)

• MOST IMPORTANTLY

Don't make comparisons more complicated than they need to be. Just use pure parallelism to make this decision.

...really, not kidding-- don't make this harder than it needs to be.

[aflaamM589]

there are a couple of correct official sentences in which that doesn't happen -- e.g., i vaguely remember one sentence saying that "prices will be higher this year than last" -- but those are NEVER presented as required decisions between the answer choices.

remember --

• you do not have to know HOW TO WRITE comparison sentences.
...because this is a multiple-choice exam.
you only must be able to compare answer choices and make relative judgments. (this is a good thing, because writing comparison sentences is VERY hard--even for native speakers of english--and is nearly impossible for english learners to master fully. on the other hand, it's not nearly as hard to make relative judgments.)

• MOST IMPORTANTLY

Don't make comparisons more complicated than they need to be. Just use pure parallelism to make this decision.

...really, not kidding-- don't make this harder than it needs to be.

Thank you very much Ron,
Feeling reassured and confident now.
: )

[RonPurewal]

excellent.

[aflaamM589]

T

Could you plz explain why the verb in D is "had" instead of "did" and why B is wrong?
Thank u!

"Had" is the past tense of "have". It's not a helping verb here.

"Did" would work, too.

Ron, allow me to ask another question:
Kids have less of a commitment to work than had their grandparents
Kids have less of a commitment to work than their grandparents had
Kids have less of a commitment to work than did their grandparents
Kids have less of a commitment to work than their grandparents did
all are correct and all have same meaning, right?