Page 303 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

COHESION ANDCOHERENCE 289
Natural laws applied to all people and were grasped through reason.
[Parallel verb phrases in the predicate position: Both consist of a past tense verb + a prepositional phrase; however, the first verb is in the active voice and the second in the passivevoice.]
In the tradition of Socrates, the Stoics believed people to be morally self-sufficient and capable of regulating their own lives.
[Parallel adjective phrases in the predicate infinitive phrase (see chap. 4): The first adjective phrase has no prepositional phrase and the second one does—of regulating ...]
TheRomansvaluedtheStoicemphasisonself-discipline andthemoldingofcharac- ter according to worthy standards.
[Parallel noun phrases inside two parallel prepositional phrases on self-disci- pline and [on] the molding of character, the second of which is omitted. Also, the second prepositional phrase includes two additional prepositional phrases at lower levels of importance of character and according to....]
(Adapted from Perry et al., 1999, p. 141)
If the string of parallel elements consists of more than two phrases, commas are used to separate them, and the conjunction comes before the last item (this is how readers know that they have arrived at the last item in the string):
Stoicism gave expression to the universalism of the Hellenistic Age, and it held that Greeks, barbarians, senators, patricians, gladiators, or slaves were essentially equal because they all had capacity to reason.
In constructions with parallel noun (or more rarely) adjective clauses, clause markers must be retained (even when they are identical in form and function) because dependent clauses are marked as clauses by means of these subordinators. For example:
[Augustine] cautions the optimist that progress is not certain, that people, weak and ever prone to wickedness, are their own worst enemies, that success is illusory, and that misery is the essential human reality. (Perry et al., 2000, p. 192)
DunsScotus(1265-1308), aScottishFranciscan,heldthathumanreasoncannot prove that God is omnipotent, that heforgives sins, that he rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, or that the soul is immortal. (Perry et al, 2000, p. 289)
Such structures usually occur following reporting verbs (e.g., cautions, holds, mentions, notes, states [see chap. 8]), and, in general, in these and other contexts parallel clauses are not very common. In L2 prose, they may be particularly rare (Hinkel,2002a).
Common Types of Errors in Parallel Structures
Common student errors found with the parallel structure largely involve similar problems when their parallel elements (head words or phrases) be-
TLFeBOOK