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Taka Posted 20 years ago
Grammar

parallelism

(1) Try to imagine someone you love.
(2) Try to imagine that you are talking to her.

Is it grammatically possible to combine these two into one sentence as:

Try to imagine someone you love and that you are talking to her.

?

Isn't it going to be against the parallelism?
  

Top answer

I think it's feasible.

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6 Answers
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I think it's feasible.
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Hi Taka,

It doesn't sound discordant. The 'that' underlines the fact that the latter part is a noun clause.

But to my mind, it wouldn't sound good if you omitted 'that'.

Best wishes, Clive
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You may want to think about the more compact:
Try to imagine someone you love and talking to her.
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I agree with Clive's comments. The more compact form doesn't flow as smoothly. Taka's original construction seems fine.
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Also:
Try to imagine someone you love and imagine yourself talking to her.
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The lack of parallelism is not objectionable here because the that clause not only adds information to the noun phrase but also refers back to it with the pronoun her. This is a fairly common pattern.

Compare:

Consider making this investment and what it will mean for your children.
We need to study this new social phenomenon and how it wil
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