“Football is like hockey in that it’s an expensive sport to play. You have to have the proper equipment and finding a place to practice and have games.” - Mark Wahlberg, who stars as football player Vince Papale in Invincible, on the challenges of playing the sport in his youth
Mark has made an error in parallelism. He has paired two verbal phrases, but one is an infinitive phrase and the other is a gerund phrase. Similar items in a sentence should have the same structure.
Mark lists two items after the subject and verb in the second sentence:
- [You have] to have the proper equipment [This is an infinitive phrase.]
- [You have] finding a place to practice and have games [This is a gerund phrase.]
The two verbal phrases are different in structure, and the syntax created by the use of the gerund phrase as the second item does not make sense. To create a parallel structure, change the gerund phrase into an infinitive phrase.
“You have to have the proper equipment and find a place to practice and have games.”
This sentence features two infinitive phrases as the compound direct object of “you have.” Notice that the word “to” is implied before “find.” Also notice the compound infinitive phrase “to practice and have games” that functions as an adjective modifying the noun “place.” The word “to” is implied before “have” in this phrase.
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