Question

Which of the following sentences shows an example of parallel verbs? A. Once the game was over, Jim had to run home and eat dinner. B. Once the game was over, Jim had to run home and dinner was ready. C. Once the game was over, Jim had to be running home and eat dinner. D. Once the game was over, Jim had to run home in order to eat his dinner.

Answer 1

A "run home" and "eat dinner" are parallel

Answer 2

Answer:

The sentence that shows an example of parallel verbs is sentence A.

Explanation:

Sentence A shows an example of parallel verbs because the verbs taken by "had" are both in the infinitive tense (had to run home and eat dinner).  In "Jim had to run home and dinner was ready" (B), the subject of the sentence is the NP Jim and the predicate is "had to run home and dinner was ready". This sentence does not make sense; it would only make sense if there was a comma between "had to run home" and "dinner was ready" to indicate that they are two independent clauses.  The two words next to the coordinating conjunction must belong to the same word category. This is not the case in B as one of them is a verb and the other one is a noun.  In sentence C, there is no parallelism because one of the verbs is the progressive tense and the other one is in the present simple tense (had to be running, eat dinner).  Finally, sentence D has no parallelism because it takes a purpose clause (jim had to run home to eat his dinner).