Find the part of the sentence that contains an error:
What renders the draft legislation particularly contentious is not its proposed realignment of fiscal powers per se, (1)/ but that it presumes, without empirical substantiation, (2)/ of a fiscal equivalence among states whose developmental baselines are (3)/ incommensurable by any normative metric. (4)
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
The correct answer is option 2 i.e. (2)
Error is related to / concept: The error lies in faulty parallelism after the correlative conjunction “not... but”.
What is wrong:
The structure following “not” and “but” must be parallel — that is, grammatically similar. Here, the first part (“not its proposed realignment…”) is a noun phrase, while the second part (“that it presumes…”) is a clause.
Grammatical concept:
After “not... but”, both elements must be of the same grammatical kind.
- Correct: “not X but Y”
- Incorrect: “not [noun phrase] but [independent clause]”
Incorrectness of the concept in context:
Since “not” introduces a noun phrase (“its proposed realignment…”), the element after “but” should also be a noun phrase, not a full clause beginning with “that.”
How to correct + extra concept:
To maintain parallelism, we can replace “but that it presumes” with “but its presumption”.
Correct phrase / correction:
“…but its presumption, without empirical substantiation, of a fiscal equivalence among states…”
Final sentence:
What renders the draft legislation particularly contentious is not its proposed realignment of fiscal powers per se, but its presumption, without empirical substantiation, of a fiscal equivalence among states whose developmental baselines are incommensurable by any normative metric.