PARALLELISM OR PARALLEL STRUCTURE

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PARALLELISM OR PARALLEL STRUCTURE

• Prepared by Ms. Teref

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What do we already know?

• He had been prepared to lie, to bluster, and to
  remain sullenly unresponsive but, reassured by
  the good-humored intelligence of the Controllers
  face, he decided to tell the truth,
  straightforwardly.
• By Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
• What effect does the repetition of infinitives
  (to lie, to bluster, to remain) in the first
  clause have on the meaning of the sentence? How
  do these infinitives prepare you for the
  infinitive phrase (to tell the truth) in the
  second clause.
• What is the function of the semicolon in Huxleys
  sentence?

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What do we know about this repetitive structure?

• Turn to your neighbor and discuss
• what is being repeated
• if there is a list (like a shopping list)
• what effect the repetition has
• what is being emphasized
• With your neighbor, to the best of your ability,
  write your own definition of parallelism. Begin
  like this
• - Parallelism is __________________. The purpose
  of this structure is __________________.

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Lets dig deeper see what lurks beneath

• Could the sentence
• He had been prepared to lie, to bluster, and to
  remain sullenly unresponsive
• be broken down into
• He had been prepared to lie.
• He had been prepared to bluster.
• He had been prepared to remain sullenly
  unresponsive?
• Does the above look like a list?

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What does each of the sentences below have in
common?

• He had been prepared to lie.
• He had been prepared to bluster.
• He had been prepared to remain sullenly
  unresponsive.
• Could we think of He had been prepared as a
  common denominator for the following list
• - to lie
• - to bluster
• - to remain ?

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Recap

• When you ELIMINATE the repetition He had been
  prepared in order to merge it into one phrase,
  what are you left with?
• -He had been prepared to lie,
• to bluster
• and
• to remain sullenly unresponsive
• - BTW, what do we call AND (as well as BUT, OR,
  NOR and other FANBOYS)?

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Conclusion Parallel Ideas in a List

• Parallel ideas are ideas which are equal in rank,
  and they form a list to lie, to bluster, to
  remain.
• The ideas are joined by AND, BUT, OR , NOR
  (coordination, option 1).
• In parallel structure, it is important to group
  similar ideas and items together so that they
  look like a list. 
• The items in the list must be all nouns, all
  adjectives, all infinitives, all prepositional
  phrases, all ing phrases, or all clauses. 

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ASSESSMENT Warriners p. 372-3

• Revise the following sentences by correcting
  faulty parallelism. DO NOT COPY THIS SENTENCE!!!
• One of the accident victims suffered a broken
  arm, several broken ribs, and one of her lungs
  was punctured.
• Pioneers came with hopes of being happy and to
  attain freedom in the new world.

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Practice time Warriners, p. 371,Exercise 1

• Lets REVISE (key word on the ACT) the following
  sentences
• 1, 2, 4, 5, 6
• Please, do NOT copy the sentences from the book
  because they are INCORRECT. Rather, revise them.

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Another Type of Parallelism Correlative
Construction

• What conjunctions are usually paired with the
  conjunctions below?
• e.g Fermina Daza is BOTH beautiful _____ smart.
• both
• either
• neither
• not only
• more
• as
• as much
• no sooner
• whether

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Another Type of Parallelism Correlative
Construction

• both X and Y
• either Xor Y
• neither Xnor Y
• not only Xbut Y
• more Xthan Y
• as Xas Y
• no sooner X than Y
• whether X or Y

These words that go together are called
correlatives. CO together RELATIVES related
to each other, like relatives
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Correlatives what about them?

• Rule 1 X AND Y must be the same grammatical
  form. (teachers examples)
• Rule 2 Correlatives must be placed IMMEDIATELY
  BEFORE X AND Y
• e.g.Florentino Ariza is both persistent and
  patient.
• both X and Y
• both
  adjective and adjective

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Correlatives one more example

• e.g. Neither does Dr. Urbino feel threatened by
  Florentino Ariza, nor does he think about him.
• Neither X nor Y
• Neither clause nor clause

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ASSESSMENT Warriners p. 372-3

• Revise the following sentences by correcting
  faulty parallelism. DO NOT COPY THESE SENTENCES!
• Her friends not only were shocked by her failure
  but they felt a great disappointment.
• The team both felt the satisfaction of victory
  and the disappointment of defeat.

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Practice time Warriners, p. 371, Exercise 1
and p. 373, Exercise 3

• Lets REVISE (key word on the ACT) the following
  sentences
• p. 371, 1 3, 8, 9, 10
• p. 372, 3 2, 14
• Please, do NOT copy the sentences from the book
  because they are INCORRECT. Rather, revise them.