分享一道题目，希望大家都可以学到点东西

kluivert

我在gmatclub上看到的题目，傻眼了...     死套“公式”而惨死

As criminal activity on the Internet becomes more and more sophisticated, not only are thieves able to divert cash from company bank accounts, they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell the data to competitors.


A.        they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell

B.        they can also pilfer valuable information that includes business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and selling

C.        also pilfering valuable information including business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, selling

D.        but also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans to sell

E.        but also pilfering valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans and selling

kluivert

大神1的解析

So I've seen a lot of test-takers make mistakes on this question, usually because of overreliance on an idiom “rule” that doesn’t really exist. If you see the phrase “not only”, that does NOT automatically mean that you need to have a “but also” somewhere else in the sentence! There’s no reason why you couldn’t use the phrase “not only” by itself, as long as it makes logical sense with the context of the sentence.

Don’t get me wrong: “not… but” phrases are pretty important on the GMAT, but only because they require parallelism. Basically, whatever follows the word “not” (or “not only”) must be structurally parallel to whatever follows the word “but” (or “but also”). (Similar parallelism rules apply to both/and and either/or constructions – more on these in an upcoming Topic of the Week.)

But again, there’s nothing wrong with having “not only” without the “but also.”

Quote:
A. they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell

“They” jumps out at me right away, but I think it’s fine, since it refers to “thieves.” I suppose “they” could also refer to “bank accounts,” but I don’t think the pronoun is automatically wrong. Ambiguity isn’t an absolute rule (see our YouTube webinar on this pronouns for more), and “they” isn’t particularly confusing here.

The parallelism also seems OK, even if it doesn’t sound great. We have two different lists going on in (A). First, we have a pair of parallel verbs: “…they can also pilfer information… and sell data…” That seems fine. We also have a list of the types of information that thieves pilfer: “…such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans…” That’s just three parallel nouns – no problem. Keep (A).

Quote:
B. they can also pilfer valuable information that includes business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and selling

(B) is very similar to (A), except that the final “and” is followed by “selling.” And that’s a problem, because I don’t know what “selling” is parallel to: nothing in the sentence is in the same format. Logically, “selling” should be parallel to “pilfer”, but in that case, it should be “…they pilfer… and sell…”, as in answer choice (A). (B) can be eliminated.

Quote:
C. also pilfering valuable information including business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, selling

The big change here is that “pilfering” and “selling” are now “-ing” words – modifiers, in this case. (Feel free to check out our guide to “-ing” words for more on this topic.)

But that doesn’t really make any sense. “As criminal activity on the Internet becomes more and more sophisticated, not only are thieves able to divert cash from company bank accounts, pilfering valuable information…” For this to be correct, “pilfering valuable information” would have to modify “not only are thieves able to divert cash…” – and it simply doesn’t. These are completely different types of criminal activity, and the “pilfering valuable information” does not modify “diverting cash.”

Similarly, “selling” is basically hanging out on its own. I guess it’s trying to modify the previous phrase beginning with “pilfering”, but I can’t make much sense of that, either. (C) is out.

Quote:
D. but also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans to sell

OK, now we really do have a “not only… but also” structure, which means that we need to think about parallelism again. There’s not much wiggle-room here: whatever follows “not only” needs to be parallel to whatever follows “but also.”

So we have: “not only are thieves able to divert cash… but also pilfer valuable information…” This isn’t awful, but it doesn’t quite seem parallel to me: “not only are thieves” gives us a subject and a verb, but the “but also” is followed only by a verb.

Plus, “to sell” seems to only modify “contract bidding plans”, and that’s not quite right: the thieves are selling the strategies and specifications, too. (A) makes much more sense than (D).

Quote:
E. but also pilfering valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans and selling

The parallelism is much more thoroughly flawed in (E). We have: “not only are thieves able to divert cash… but also pilfering valuable information…” Definitely not parallel. (E) is out, and (A) is the correct answer.

kluivert

大神2 ...得到很多“大拇指”，哈哈

I think, the only reason this is a 700 level question is because of our tendency to blindly go for 'seemingly correct constructions' of Idioms. Here. It was always only between A and D. So lemme talk only about those.

D is wrong for multiple reasons:

D.        but also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans to sell

1) The construction Not only... But also is incorrect
Even if you chose D on the basis of this idiom, you faltered! The correct construction of the idiom "Not only X... But also Y" requires X and Y to be parallel or of similar type.

Here's something from OG15 on this:
Correlatives: Word combinations such as “not only … but also” should be followed by an element of
the same grammatical type.
Examples:
Correct: “I have called not only to thank her but also to tell her about the next meeting.”
Incorrect: “I have called not only to thank her but also I told her about the next meeting.”

Coming back to the question, this is what we have in D-
"Not only are thieves able to... but also pilfer"
i.e. Not only subject/noun/doer... but also verb/action

Thieves not only divert... but also pilfer - Correct
Not only thieves divert... but also they pilfer - Correct

But the mixture of the 2- Incorrect

2) It changes the meaning:

Original meaning: Thieves do X, Y and Z
D says: Thieves do X, Y to achieve Z

"They pilfer the information AND sell" vs "They pilfer the information TO sell"

Quite a big shift, isnt it?

A, on the other hand, has no issue!

鼓手

多谢~ 基础知识的分解和再认识

不要等待验证

感谢分享！               

Lanchenia

选A对吧，分享一下自己的见解：

这道题如果分析句子意思的话是比较好选的，pilfer valuable information such as XXX，and sell the data to competitors. 这两个一定是并列的，所以说，pilfer 和 sell 的形式必须要一致。BCDE 全错。

追梦的Yvonne

我也觉得选A。
not only... (but) also... 主要考平行结构。 不划线部分的前半句not only后面用了主谓倒装结构，那么作为平行结构的后半部分(but)also也应当有主谓结构吧。 然而CDE都没有主谓所以排除。
B的问题出在最后的”and selling“上，应该是动词原形，和之前的pilfer一致。

星星考鸡麦

选出A靠了一点感觉：
As....not only....but also 这个结构对我来说太怪了，一般but后面跟的都是从句或者语义依附于主句的另一个主句，但not only用倒装把主语“藏”在了其引导的主句中，这样子整个句子的结构非常不清晰，读了第一遍都不知道在读什么。
既然改变不了未划线部分，那只能从划线部分下手:
but also前面加个they！

KiaZhu

kluivert 发表于 2018-9-24 11:50
大神2 ...得到很多“大拇指”，哈哈

I think, the only reason this is a 700 level question is because  ...

同意！