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Question

Difficulty: MediumParallel Structure

The chief restorer explained that preserving the ancient tapestry required not only maintaining a stable humidity level in the gallery but also to carefully clean the fragile fibers with a specialized vacuum.

Which of the following options best maintains the parallel structure of the sentence?

  1. A
    NO CHANGE
  2. carefully cleaningAnswer
  3. C
    carefully clean
  4. D
    that they carefully clean

Answer

carefully cleaning
The correct answer maintains grammatical parallelism. The correlative conjunction 'not only... but also' links two elements. Since the first element is a gerund phrase ('maintaining a stable humidity level'), the second element must also be a gerund phrase. The phrase 'carefully cleaning' is a gerund phrase, which matches the structure of 'maintaining'.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Locate the correlative conjunction structure in the sentence, which is 'not only... but also'.
Identified the parallel elements linked by this structure.
Correlative conjunctions must connect grammatically identical elements.
2
Analyze the grammatical form of the first element in the pair.
The first element is 'maintaining a stable humidity level', which is a gerund phrase.
Understanding the first element's structure defines the required structure for the second element.
3
Evaluate the choices to find the one that uses a matching gerund phrase.
The option 'carefully cleaning' is a gerund phrase that fits perfectly after 'but also'.
This maintains parallel structure within the sentence.

Key Concept

Parallel Structure with Correlative Conjunctions
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Topics

Parallel Structure

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