Question
Many experts regarded the increase in credit card borrowing in March not as a sign that households were pressed for cash and forced to borrow, rather a sign of confidence by households that they could safely handle new debt.
Option A
Option B
Option C
Option D
Option E
(This question is from Official Guide. Therefore, because of copyrights, the complete question cannot be copied here. The question can be accessed at GMAT Club)
Solution
Sentence Analysis
- Many experts regarded (Main Clause. Subject – “experts”; Verb – “regarded”)
- the increase in credit card borrowing in March (The object of “regarded”. This is X in “regarded X not as Y but as Z”)
- not as a sign that households were pressed for cash and forced to borrow, (This is Y in “regarded X not as Y but as Z”)
- rather a sign of confidence by households that they could safely handle new debt. (This should be Z in “regarded X not as Y but as Z”. As is, this is not parallel to “not” part)
- the increase in credit card borrowing in March (The object of “regarded”. This is X in “regarded X not as Y but as Z”)
The basic structure of the sentence is: Many experts regarded X not as Y rather Z. The sentence has the following errors:
- The structure “not X rather Y” is non-idiomatic. The correct structure is “not X but Y”.
- The element after ‘not’ i.e. “as a sign…” is not parallel to the element after ‘rather’ i.e. “a sign…”
Option Analysis
(A) Incorrect. For the errors mentioned above.
(B) Incorrect. For the following reasons:
- “not X yet Y” is non-idiomatic.
- The structure in the “not” part has a clause after “sign” whereas in this option, the structure in the “yet” part has a prepositional phrase after “sign”. Even though this is not a deterministic error, it is better to have as much parallel structures as possible.
- “sign of households’ confidence that it was safe for them” is an indirect and wordy way to express the same idea expressed directly and concisely in option D.
(C) Incorrect. For the following reasons:
- The element after ‘not’ i.e. “as a sign…” is not parallel to the element after ‘but’ i.e. “a sign…”
- Problem no. 2 of option B
(D) Correct. The structures after “not” and “but” are completely parallel. “not X but Y” is the correct idiom.
(E) Incorrect. For the following reasons:
- “not X but also Y” is non-idiomatic. This structure also distorts the meaning since “also” indicates that the second part is in addition to the first part. On the contrary, the second part is a alternative to the first part.
- The position of “safely” is incorrect. “safely” should appear after “to”.
Hi CJ
Is this whole sentence one IC or that introduces dependent clause in option 1st
If “that” introduces a DC in this sentence , then what is they referring to ?(that they could safely handle new debt. ). it should refer to the subject of IC ?
We can call the whole sentence one IC, or we can just call the part containing the main subject and the main verb IC. Either way, it’s fine.
“they” refers to the subject of the preceding ‘that’ clause i.e. ‘households’.
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