一道 官方题目，不懂，有没有人能解释下！！！！在这谢谢了

zxtcomeo

Intended primarily to stimulate family summer travel,
the new airfare, which allows both an adult and a
child to fly for the price of one ticket, and also
shortens the advance-purchase requirement for family
travel to a minimum of seven days rather than
fourteen.
(A) and also shortens the advance-purchase require-
ment for family travel to a minimum of seven
days rather than
(B) and also lessens the advance-purchase
requirement for family travel to a seven-day
minimum from
(C) also shortens the advance-purchase requirement
for family travel to a minimum of seven days
rather than that of
(D) also lessens the advance-purchase requirement
for family travel to a seven-day minimum from
(E) also shortens the advance-purchase requirement
for family travel to a minimum of seven days
rather than
答案是E 有没有人可以解释下？我选的是d

silent7706

According to Longman, "lessen" is used to express "to become smaller in size, importance, or value, or make something do this."

Ex: "Exercise lessens the risk of heart disease."  

So i guess that "shorten" is a better choice than "lessen" to describe "days", hence "day" is a countable noun.

zxtcomeo

i suppose the lessen describe the requirement not the day ,as you mention above ,do you think the lessen is better than shorten in describing  the requirement ??

silent7706

i suppose the lessen describe the requirement not the day ,as you mention above ,do you think the lessen is better than shorten in describing  the requirement ??

-- by 会员 zxtcomeo (2010/8/10 15:34:44)

Hmm...I think that the requirement we are talking about here is about "days", so it is better to use "shorten" than "lessen".

There are some other cues that may help us eliminate D) as well. In D), there is nothing that parallels to the non-underlined part "fourteen," while in E) "seven days" is paralleled to "fourteen (days)". In addition, as you may have noticed that Gmat prefers such construction as "a minimum of seven days" to that of "seven-day minimum."