There's a female T.V. personality who (every 10 minutes, apparently) comes on and shills for a certain weight-loss program. She shows a dated photo of herself and says "That was the old me... out of shape and too much weight."

Although those two terms, in real life, usually go together hand-in-hand, they nevertheless seem to me to be somehow incompatible linguistically. Can somebody out there with a better command of the language than I have please tell me exactly what (if anything) is wrong with this pairing? Would it not be better for her to have said "Too heavy"?

"That was the old me... out of shape and too much weight."

Well, it's an elliptical construction. The verb phrases for the two clauses (or sentences) have been left out. This is common in speech. Presumably the non-elliptical construction would be something like:

"That was the old me. [I was] out of shape and [I had gained] too much weight."

What makes it sound strange is that usually the verb phrases which are left out are the same, but in this case we have the copula (be) with an adjective predicate and a transitive verb (gain) with a direct object. So not only are they different verbs, but they differ syntactically. I'm not sure there's a term for this, but maybe one of the other rare-word collectors can chime in.

quote:

Originally posted by zmježd:


Well, it's an elliptical construction. The verb phrases for the two clauses (or sentences) have been left out.........

Thank you! Thank you! I just KNEW there was something screwy about that construction. But, that is my condition...I can recognize lotsa literary and linguistic hanky-panky but I can't name the exact offense.
Two questions: 1)Can I put you on retainer? 2)If you find that the T.V. chick's construction is unknown, can you name it after the discoverer...ME!?

I think that would be called nonparallel construction (faulty parallelism). Parallel construction, I think, would require the use of the same verb for each clause. [I was] out of shape and [I had gained] too much weight can be made parallel by rewriting it as [I was] out of shape and [I was] overweight (as it appears on this site).

Construction is parallel on this site also, since the phrases appear as adjectives modifying condition.

quote:

A combination of dancing and Nutrisystem is what helped Osmond combat her out-of-shape and too-much-weight condition. She looks great.

Is there a difference between nonparallel construction and faulty parallelism?

quote:

That was the old me... out of shape and too much weight

Perhaps the parallelism the writer had in mind was something like that was the old me: out of shape(check!); too much weight(check!)...