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Difficulty: HardConjunctions and Clause Structure

Complete the sentence below by supplying the correct conjunction to fill the blank space.

Answer:The committee's failure to reach a consensus was attributable not so much to a conflict of ideological principles 【as】 to a total breakdown in communication among its members.

Answer

The correct conjunction to complete the sentence is 'as'.
The word 'as' is the correct conjunction because 'not so much... as...' is a fixed correlative construction used to join parallel prepositional phrases, indicating that the second explanation is more appropriate than the first.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the sentence structure and identify the correlative pattern.
The sentence introduces a comparative formula beginning with 'not so much [Phrase A]'.
Correlative structures rely on specific paired elements to connect parallel grammatical units.
2
Determine the standard paired conjunction for 'not so much'.
The expression 'not so much' pairs idiomatically with 'as' to form 'not so much... as...'.
This correlative conjunction clarifies that the second phrase is a more accurate explanation than the first.

Key Concept

Correlative Conjunctions and Parallel Clause Structure
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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Topics

Conjunctions and Clause Structure

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