Types of Conjunctions

Study the following sentences:

A vulture perching high on broken bone and nestled close to his mate.

Full gorged they chose their roost and keeping the hollowed remnant in easy range of cold telescopic eyes…

What seems awkward in the sentences above? If you have noticed, the faulty structure of the words and phrases makes the sentences seem awkward. In other words, the elements or components in the sentences are not balanced and parallel.

When the elements or components of a sentence do not harmonize, the sentence suffers from a grammatical flaw called faulty parallelism. This refers to a grammatical construction in which two or more sentence elements or components do not correspond with each other or are not parallel in form and function.

As seen in the sample sentences, the verbs perching and nestled, and gorged and keeping have different forms. To make the elements parallel, the verbs perching and keeping should be in the simple past form as in perched and kept (irregular verb).

The following are some guidelines that may help you in recognizing and constructing parallel structures.

1. Words and phrases that come in a series and are connected by and or or should be parallel in form.

   Examples:

   a.	The vultures perched on the tree, gorged on food, and nestled close to each other. In the sentence above, the italicized words have the same verb forms: perched, gorged, and nestled.
   b.	Yesterday, they picked the eyes of a swollen corpse, ate the things in its bowel, and chose their roost in easy range of cold telescopic eyes. The preceding sentence has a balanced structure as shown by the following groups of words: picked the eyes, ate the things, and chose their roost.

2. Two or more verbs used in a sentence must be of similar or parallel structure—infinitives with infinitives, gerunds with gerunds, and participles with participles.

   Faulty :	The Commandant going home from Belsen Camp, with fumes of human roast clinging rebelliously to his nostrils, and pick up a chocolate for his tender offspring...
   Parallel :	The Commandant going home from Belsen camp, with fumes of human roast clinging rebelliously to his nostrils, and picking up a chocolate for his tender offspring...

3. Two or more adjectives modifying the same noun should have a parallel construction.

   Faulty :	The Commandant is unfeeling, cruel, and hated by many.
   Parallel :	The Commandant is unfeeling, cruel, and hateful.

4. Two or more adverbs in –ly form used in a sentence should have a balanced structure.

   Faulty :	The Commandant worked methodically, offensively, and without feeling any remorse.
   Parallel :	The Commandant worked methodically, offensively, and remorselessly.