grammaticality - How to combine in a sentence two verb–preposition pairs that have the same object?


Examples:




  1. Data can be imported to and exported from the application.

  2. Data can be imported and exported from the application.

  3. Data can be imported to the application and exported from it.




  1. The manager defined the products that should be added to and removed from the store.

  2. The manager defined the products that should be added and removed from the store.

  3. The manager defined the products that should be added to the store and removed from it.



I assume that the third sentence is correct in my examples. My question is whether the two other sentences are correct.



Answer



Examples #1 is correct in both sections, and are examples of basic parallelism. However, example #2 is wrong is both sections.


The basic test is if you can deconstruct your parallelism into two grammatical sentences without adding new words:


Example #1 works



Data can be imported to and exported from the application.



deconstructs to



Data can be imported to the application. Data can be exported from the application.



Example #2 is awkward



Data can be imported and exported from the application.



deconstructs to



Data can be imported from the application.
Data can be exported from the application.



Note the "import from" wordage above. This is awkward because the idiom here is "import to the application" or "export from the application". Even worse is the idea of adding something "from" a store.


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