Most of the purported health benefits of tea

[bonniewjx]

E --- compounds ... and they (anything wrong with this structure?)

yes, something is indeed wrong.

at best, 'they' is an ambiguous pronoun that potentially refers either to 'antioxidants'/'compounds' or to 'health benefits'. at worst it refers to 'health benefits', the subject of the preceding sentence, by default. either way, you've got problems.

the other problem is that a single dash of the sort that sets off the descriptor in this problem is akin to a single comma: both set off an appositive phrase, which is NOT allowed to contain independent clauses (such as the one beginning with 'they' in choice e). choice d follows the rules here, as, after the dash, it contains only subordinate clauses.

...all kinds of trouble :(

RON, i was taking a "Thursday with Ron" class (November 18,2010) , in which u cited this problem.
U said C and E are not parallel thus they they are dead.
but i think C and E are grammatically correct because:
"inhibit" can be parallel to "comes"(choice C)
",and they inhibit.." can be a dependent clause(choice E)
It's just they are both illogical in meaning..
So, when we see similar structures in other questions, we can not easily kill choice like C and E just because the parts nearest to "and" are not parallel, right?

please correct me if i am wrong..thanks very much..ps: ur lectures help a lot!

[RonPurewal]

When you analyze parallelism, you should start by identifying the items that actually SHOULD appear in parallel.

This is a function of (i) context and (ii) common sense. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the grammar of the original sentence. (Remember, the original sentence is incorrect in 80% of all cases!)

Once you have identified the structures that should be parallel, you should not look at any other structures! Other structures are irrelevant.

In this problem, the sentence presents two interesting facts about antioxidants:
1/ They are also found in xxxxx other things.
2/ They inhibit the formation of yyyy stuff.
It should be 100% clear that these are "#1 and #2", or "bullet points", or however else you intuitively think about parallel structures. If this is not clear, you are not yet ready to look at the answer choices.

So, when you think about parallelism, your eyes shouldn't be going anywhere near "come(s)" in the first place.

[AceTheGM@]

Why C is wrong ?

Let's compare C to the correct answer, D.

C. come from antioxidants"”compounds also found in beta carotene, vitamin E, and vitamin C, and
D. come from antioxidants"”compounds that are also found in beta carotene, vitamin E, and vitamin C and that

Since the word "and" is a parallel marker, we must check parallelism. Notice how D is parallel after the dash:
compounds that are . . . . and that inhibit
We have nice verb parallelism here.

C breaks this parallelism by joining a noun and a verb:
compounds . . . and inhibit

I understand why D is parallel (compounds that are...and that inhibit...), but why isn't C parallel? (compounds also... and inhibit)

[RonPurewal]

There's no verb to be parallel to "inhibit".

"Found" is not a verb (obviously, since compounds can't find things). It's a description of the compounds (they are found in x and y places).

[anshultomar]

Hi Ron,

If answer choice C had been "Compounds that are found < blah blah > and inhibit <blah blah> " then would have been parallel and okay?

We can assume <that> in the second part of the parallel item.

Thanks
AT

[RonPurewal]

Hi Ron,

If answer choice C had been "Compounds that are found < blah blah > and inhibit <blah blah> " then would have been parallel and okay?

We can assume <that> in the second part of the parallel item.

Thanks
AT

technically that would be fine, but it's bad writing. (if you were presented with that sentence——and you weren't already familiar with it——there's no way you would understand it in a single reading; you'd have to go over it several times to understand it.)

[RonPurewal]

^^ and, more generally, this is a good illustration of why you shouldn't "edit" official SC problems, and you shouldn't invent your own answers to them.

in almost all such cases——including the case at hand——the answer is "no, that's wrong, but you don't need to worry about why."

this exam tests a VERY narrow band of the things that can go wrong in written english.

[anshultomar]

Thanks a lot Ron.

I agree that we should not edit Official problems/answers, but I just wanted to clear certain doubts.

Cheers

[tim]

I hope those doubts have been cleared for you. Let us know if you need any further help on this one.

[anshultomar]

Thanks Tim, Its clear now :-)

[RonPurewal]

excellent.

[BhavyaA800]

Ron,

I have read multiple post in which you recommend pronoun ambiguity should not be a decisive factor in ruling out an answer choices. Thus, is there any other rationale for ruling out answer choice E.

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Yes, there is. The clause with "they..." in E makes for bad parallelism and shouldn't be used with a single dash. Read Ron and Stacey's posts above.