OG12 93

innerwarrior

再问下，they are paying的语义不是很奇怪嘛，pay又不是一个持续性动作～

guojinxin

今年用的是are paying 按照出题者的逻辑，去年指定得是were paying

zhongshanlh

嗯，同意，manhattan中助动词那章专门有讲到这点

其实，动词省略保留助动词是有条件的，就是在前面能找到相应的被省略动词，用did的话，那就意味着前面是paied了，但是没有paied，所以用were

-- by 会员 billntt (2010/7/5 16:22:48)

TONYKMF

切尔西 发表于 2010-4-21 09:19
这个感觉应该因为前面是现在进行时，后面对应的就应该是过去进行时吧，否则时态上不能形成对称吧，另外这个 ...

八年后再来回复一下，对比中时态不一致是可以的，参考曼哈顿SC 比较的那个章节，B真正错误的在其他的地方，摘自gmatclub:
Quote:
(A) Heating-oil prices are expected to be higher this year than last because refiners are paying about $5 a barrel more for crude oil than they were

The pronoun “they” always jumps off the page at me, and in this case, it seems to refer to “refiners”, the most recent plural. That’s fine.

I’m also OK with the comparison: “refiners are paying… more for crude oil than they were [paying] last year.” I don't think that it’s ideal, but it’s definitely not wrong, and the GMAT would argue that the word “paying” is implied after “were.” Again, I’m not crazy about it, but it conveys the meaning clearly enough.

So let’s keep (A), I guess.

Quote:
(B) Heating-oil prices are expected to rise higher this year over last because refiners pay about $5 a barrel for crude oil more than they did

The phrase “expected to rise higher this year over last” is definitely a mess. You would never say that prices “rise higher.” They either just rise, or they just ARE higher. I’m also not sure why we would use “over last” instead of “than last.”

The placement of “more” is also really confusing. “More” modifies “pay about $5 a barrel”, and there’s no good reason to stick the word “more” so far away from the phrase it logically modifies.

But for whatever it’s worth: “they” still seems to refer perfectly reasonably to “refiners.” And the word “did” replaces the verb “pay” (or “paid”, since “did” is past tense). So those things are OK.

But I don’t think we can get over the silly placement of “more” and the "rise higher" mess at the beginning of the sentence. So (B) is out.