By the age of twelve, he was 6 ft 2 in tall, weighed 220 lb, and had...

[NAL123]

Here I saw this sentence:

1) By the age of twelve, he was 6 ft 2 in tall, weighed 220 lb, and had chest hair.

Can I write it as follows?

By the age of twelve, he was 6 ft 2 in tall, weighing 220 lb, and having chest hair.

 

[jutfrank]

No, I wouldn't do that. The verbs are better all the same, in the past simple tense.

 

[Annabel Lee]

I agree with Jutfrank. By converting the second two past tense verb phrases to participial phrases, the ideas are thereby subordinated, but all the ideas stand on the same level and so there is nothing for them to be subordinated to. Contrast:

By the age of twelve, he was 6 ft 2 in tall and by no means scrawny or effeminate, weighing 220 lb and having chest hair.​

 

[NAL123]

I agree with Jutfrank. By converting the second two past tense verb phrases to participial phrases, the ideas are thereby subordinated, but all the ideas stand on the same level and so there is nothing for them to be subordinated to. Contrast:

By the age of twelve, he was 6 ft 2 in tall and by no means scrawny or effeminate, weighing 220 lb and having chest hair.​

Do you mean there's nothing grammatically wrong with the sentence:
By the age of twelve, he was 6 ft 2 in tall, weighing 220 lb, and having chest hair.
only that it doesn't sound as good as sentence (1) in the OP, or probably only sounds unidiomatic?

What about this sentence of mine:
(2) I am a veterinarian. I primarily treat monkeys with skin diseases.

Can I write (2) as:
I am a veterinarian, primarily treating monkeys with skin diseases.

 

[Annabel Lee]

Do you mean there's nothing grammatically wrong with the sentence:

By the age of twelve, he was 6 ft 2 in tall, weighing 220 lb, and having chest hair.

That depends on whether you include semantics in your concept of grammar in addition to syntax. I meant to imply that there is nothing syntactically wrong with your sentence, but there is something semantically wrong with it.

only that it doesn't sound as good as sentence (1) in the OP, or probably only sounds unidiomatic?

No, I meant just what I said. There is no apparent sense in which the ideas of weighing ever so many pounds and having chest hair are subordinate to the idea of being ever so many feet and inches tall. All those attributes are on the same level. But when you add a predicate such as I did, about being by no means scrawny or effeminate, all of a sudden the "weighing" and "having" predicates are subordinate. Weighing 220 lb is inconsistent with being scrawny, and having chest hair is inconsistent with being effeminate. Consider the opening of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land:

April is the cruellest month, breeding​

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing​

Memory and desire, stirring​

Dull roots with spring rain.​

The "breeding," "mixing," etc., phrases express ideas which support the proposition that "April is the cruellest month." They are not on the same level; they are subordinate, semantically, to April's being the cruellest month. They would have appeared to be on an equal footing with that idea had Eliot used this hideous version instead:

April is the cruellest month, breeds​

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixes​

Memory and desire, [and] stirs​

Dull roots with spring rain.​

 

[NAL123]

April is the cruellest month, breeding​

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing​

Memory and desire, stirring​

Dull roots with spring rain.​

A slightly off-topic question: the bolded present participles above appear to be "dangling modifiers". Am I right?

 

[emsr2d2]

... and having chest hair is inconsistent with being effeminate.

I don't know what the situation is in the US, but the OP should note that in the UK the word "effeminate" is commonly seen as a derogatory term. It is rarely heard when referring to a man's behaviour or characteristics. The same is true of the word "camp" which has a crossover in meaning. I suspect that the main reason it's seen as derogatory is that it seems to connect looking/behaving like a woman with weakness. In the 21st century, the idea that men/women should be, look or behave in a certain way is outdated.

For what it's worth, I disagree with Annabel Lee's statement that the two are inconsistent. Whilst the word does refer to physical characteristics (an example I found online included having small delicate hands), it is/was more often used to refer to behaviour. Having or not having chest hair has absolutely no bearing on someone's behaviour.

 

[Annabel Lee]

A slightly off-topic question: the bolded present participles above appear to be "dangling modifiers".

No, there's nothing ungrammatical, or even grammatically improper, about the first sentence of the most highly regarded twentieth-century poem in the English language. Eliot's participial phrases do not dangle. They are simply adverbial, and their implied subject is "April," just as "he" is clearly the implied subject of your participial phrases in the OP. Here's a paraphrase of Eliot's sentence: "By virtue of its breeding lilacs out of the deadland, mixing memory and desire, and stirring dull roots with spring rain, April is the cruelest month."

 

[Annabel Lee]

I don't know what the situation is in the US, but the OP should note that in the UK the word "effeminate" is commonly seen as a derogatory term. It is rarely heard when referring to a man's behaviour or characteristics. The same is true of the word "camp" which has a crossover in meaning. I suspect that the main reason it's seen as derogatory is that it seems to connect looking/behaving like a woman with weakness. In the 21st century, the idea that men/women should be, look or behave in a certain way, is outdated.

For what it's worth, I disagree with Annabel Lee's statement that the two are inconsistent. Whilst the word does refer to physical characteristics (an example I found online included having small delicate hands), it is/was more often used to refer to behaviour. Having or not having chest hair has absolutely no bearing on someone's behaviour.

My point is that the participial phrases, being adverbial syntactically, should have a semantic basis for being so, whether or not my quick attempt at rendering them so will be perceived by all parties viewing the post as impeccable and polically correct.

 

[5jj]

my quick attempt at rendering them so will be perceived by all parties viewing the post as impeccable and polically correct.

I don't think anyone has suggested that they are not.

 

[NAL123]

I am a veterinarian, primarily treating monkeys with skin diseases.

This sentence in my post #4 is ok, right?

 

[5jj]

This sentence in my post #4 is ok, right?

It is.

 

[emsr2d2]

This sentence in my post #4 is ok OK/okay, right?

As the first word of a sentence, write "OK" or "Okay". Anywhere else in a sentence, write "OK" or "okay". Just remember that "ok" is always incorrect.

 

[Annabel Lee]

I am a veterinarian, primarily treating monkeys with skin diseases.

The participial phrase works differently there, in my opinion, from how the participial phrase works in your example in the OP. I'm inclined to parse the one here as a nonrestrictive participial relative clause related to "a veterinarian," such that it could be paraphrased like this: "I am a veterinarian, who primarily treats monkeys with skin diseases."

If you take out the comma ("I am a veterinarian primarily treating monkeys with skin diseases"), the participial relative clause becomes restrictive and defines what type of veterinarian the speaker is: "I am a veterinarian who primarily treats monkeys with skin diseases."

However, with the comma, the idea expressed in the nonrestricitive relative clause comes as an afterthought or supplemental detail rather than as an identification of veterinarian type. Compare: "I am a teacher of grammar, who works primarily with ESL learners." That's a little different from defining myself as an ESL grammar teacher.

Can I write it as follows?

By the age of twelve, he was 6 ft 2 in tall, weighing 220 lb, and having chest hair.

Here's the OP example again (the second one, that is). Notice that there is no noun phrase preceding the coordinated participial phrases. Instead we have the predicate "was 6 ft 2 in tall." There being no noun for it to modify, there is no sense in which "weighting 220 lb, and having chest hair" can sensibly be analyzed as a participial relative clause.

On the other hand, I have encountered traditionalists who say that participial phrases are always adjectival. Somebody in that camp might try to say that "weighing 220 lb, and having chest hair" modifies "he," the subject of the sentence. I find such an analysis incorrect, even though I fully acknowledge that "he" is the implied subject of the participles.

I personally do not find the sentence to be equivalent in meaning to: "By the age of twelve, he, who weighed 220 lb and had chest hair, was 6 ft 2 in tall." Rather, the participial phrases seem to me to stand in a relationship of adverbial modification to the predicate "was 6 ft 2 in tall"; that's why I find it awkward as written. For the following makes no sense:

By the age of twelve, he was 6 ft 2 in tall, given that he weighed 220 lb and had chest hair.​

​

When I made the revision I did in post #3, I sought to supply the sentence with a predicate that would allow for such a paraphrase of the participial phrases ("given that" or "insofar as" followed by grammatically commensurate finite subordinate clauses). Yet I do not wish to deny the possibility of another analysis.

Maybe there is room for an adjectival analysis. Maybe we can, after all, treat the participial phrases as backgrounded (and extraposed -- shifted to the end of the sentence) nonrestrictive participial relative clauses related to "he." Does that analysis work for anyone as an alternative? I don't mean to try to save your sentence, but maybe it deserves a chance.

 

[jutfrank]

Maybe there is room for an adjectival analysis. Maybe we can, after all, treat the participial phrases as backgrounded (and extraposed -- shifted to the end of the sentence) nonrestrictive participial relative clauses related to "he." Does that analysis work for anyone as an alternative?

I'm in complete agreement with you on the grammar side of things. The only further point I would make is that there's absolutely no use, and moreover no right or wrong way, to analyse a sentence that's wrong in the first place! The original correct sentence was written as it is for a reason. Great post, however.

 

[Tarheel]

I would say I am six feet tall.