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CAT 1999 — VARC Question 18

ParallelismEasy
Passage / Data

Directions: For each of the two questions, indicate which of the statements given with that particular question is consistent with the description of the unseasonable man in the passage below.

Unseasonableness is a tendency to do socially permissible things at the wrong time. The unseasonable man is the sort of person who comes to confide in you when you are busy. He serenades his beloved when she is ill. He asks a man who has just lost money by paying a bill for a friend to pay a bill for him. He invites a friend to go for a ride just after the friend has finished a long car trip. He is eager to offer services which are not wanted, but which cannot be politely refused. If he is present at an arbitration, he stirs up dissension between the two parties, who were really anxious to agree. Such is the unseasonable man.

Directions: In each of the following sentences, a part of the sentence is underlined. Beneath each sentence, four different ways of phrasing the underlined part are indicated. Choose the best alternative among the four.

Mr Pillai, the president of the union and who is also a member of the community group, will be in charge of the negotiations.

Answer & solution

  • A

    since he is a member of the community group

  • B

    also being a member of the community group

  • a member of the community group

  • D

    in addition, who is a member of the community group

Solution

c (c) is the correct answer choice.
This question tests you for parallelism. There are two possible parallel structures:
(i) Mr Pillai, X and Y, will be ... (phrase X and Y placed in apposition).
(ii) Mr Pillai, who is X and also Y, will be ... (use of who-clause)
There are also other ways to express the same idea but with different shades of meaning/emphasis:
(iii) Since Mr Pillai is X and Y, he will be ... (two main clauses joined by ‘some’ as a conjunction).
(iv) Being X and Y, Mr Pillai will be ... (use of participial clause).
Answer choice (c) matches with (i) above. Other choices do not match with any of the other possible grammatical structures.

CAT 1999 VARC Q18: Directions: In each of the following sentences, a part of the sentence is underlined. Beneath each sentence, f — Solution | TheCATExam