dhaval.shownkani wrote:I don't understand the application of parallelism here. Most of the questions with appositives that I have seen are something like the below.
Thelonious Monk, the jazz pianist and composer,
produced a body of work that was rooted both..
What if the sentence was something like - Some anthropologists believe that the genetic homogeneity evident in the world's people is the result of a "population bottleneck"- a phenomena bla bla.. There would have been no need for parallelism then right ?
APPOSITIVES are noun forms that appear side-by-side, with the second serving to explain or define the first.
Some anthropologists believe that the genetic homogeneity evident in the world's people is the result of a "population bottleneck", a catastrophic event that greatly reduces the size of a population.
Here,
a catastrophic event is in apposition to a "population bottleneck," serving to explain that a "population bottleneck" is a type of
catastrophic event.
While this sentence is correct, it does not fully convey the intended meaning of the SC above.
The purpose of the second
that-clause in the OA above is not merely to define "population bottleneck" but to explain why anthropologists hold the belief conveyed by the first
that-clause (
that genetic homogeneity is the RESULT of a "population bottleneck").
ZEUGMA is a rhetorical construction in which parallel structures are governed by the SAME WORD, PHRASE OR CLAUSE.
In many cases, the parallel structures will NOT be linked by a conjunction.
The OA above is an example of zeugma.
Some anthropologists believe that the genetic homogeneity evident in the world's people is the result of a "population bottleneck"-- that at some time in the past our ancestors suffered an event that greatly reduced their numbers.
Here, the two
that-clauses are governed by the same verb (
believe).
Each serves as a direct object for this verb.
The two
that-clauses are linked not by a conjunction but by a dash.
The lack of a conjunction implies that the second
that-clause is serving to explain the first.
For this reason, we can consider the second
that-clause an APPOSITIVE for the first.
Other official examples of zeugma:
The hognose snake puts on an impressive bluff, hissing and rearing back, broadening the flesh behind its head the way a cobra does.
Here, the two modifiers in red are not linked by a conjunction.
Both are governed by the preceding clause, serving to express HOW the hognose snake puts on an impressive bluff.
So dogged were Frances Perkins' investigations of the garment industry, so persistent her lobbying for wage and hour reform, that Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt recruited Perkins.
Here, the two
so-clauses are not linked by a conjunction.
Both are governed by the following
that-clause.
The following meanings are conveyed:
So dogged were Frances Perkins' investigations that Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt recruited Perkins.
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