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Difficulty: MediumParallel Structure and Coordinate Elements

Consider the following sentence from an academic essay proposal:

"To address the rising operational costs, the director recommended that the research team consolidate existing laboratory resources, streamline experimental protocols, and that automated data collection tools be adopted across all departments."

Which of the following revisions best corrects the sentence by establishing proper parallel structure across coordinate elements?

  1. the director recommended that the research team consolidate existing laboratory resources, streamline experimental protocols, and establish automated data collection tools across all departments.Answer
  2. B
    the director recommended that the research team consolidate existing laboratory resources, streamlining experimental protocols, and that automated data collection tools be adopted across all departments.
  3. C
    the director recommended that the research team consolidate existing laboratory resources, streamline experimental protocols, and establishing automated data collection tools across all departments.
  4. D
    the director recommended consolidating existing laboratory resources, to streamline experimental protocols, and establish automated data collection tools across all departments.
  5. E
    the director recommended that the research team consolidate existing laboratory resources, streamline experimental protocols, and automated data collection tools should be adopted across all departments.

Answer

The revision that lists three parallel base verbs ('consolidate', 'streamline', and 'establish') following the subordinator 'that the research team' correctly restores parallel structure.
The correct option preserves parallel structure by maintaining a consistent series of three parallel subjunctive base verbs ('consolidate', 'streamline', and 'establish') that all depend logically on the introductory phrase 'that the research team'.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the governing clause structure and coordinate elements in the original sentence.
The governing subordinator phrase is 'that the research team [verb]'. The list contains three actions.
Parallel structure requires items in a coordinate series to share the identical grammatical form.
2
Analyze the grammatical forms of each element in the original list.
Element 1 is a base verb ('consolidate'), Element 2 is a base verb ('streamline'), but Element 3 shifts into a subordinate clause ('that automated data collection tools be adopted').
Mixing verb phrases with a full subordinate clause violates syntactic parallelism.
3
Select the option that converts all coordinate elements to the same grammatical structure.
Matching three base verbs ('consolidate', 'streamline', and 'establish') completes the series parallelly.
All three items now seamlessly follow 'that the research team'.

Key Concept

Parallelism in coordinate series governed by a shared subordinator
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Topics

Parallel Structure and Coordinate Elements

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