My inner linguist is interested in the syntax of the expression, “X went from being A to being B.” That second instance of “being” bothers me. It feels like a placeholder word, used only to preserve symmetry. Is it really necessary?
I would rather say, “X went from being A to B.” But now something seems to be missing. So how do others express this idea? I searched went from being a and found these:
He went from being a singing shoeshine boy to being a popular singer, just as he went from Gennaro Vitaliano to Jerry Vale. (Gus Graybill, on Jerry Vale)
He went from being a tag along kid whose constant presence was grudgingly accepted by his older brother’s friends to someone able to pursue appropriate social relationships on his own. (Jason “J-Mac” McElwain)
Anne was thirteen when she came here and fifteen when she was taken away. In those two years she went from being a child to being a young woman. (Anne Frank House)
In her lifetime she went from being a respected rock photographer to the supporting wife to one of the most famous men on the planet, enjoying a celebrity relationship that lasted until her death. (H2G2, on Linda McCartney)
I went from being a Republican to being a Maoist, then back to being a Republican again. (P. J. O’Rourke)
She went from being a nurse that wanted to be a good person and help people to a murderer. (Sword and Scale, on Vickie Dawn Jackson)
He went from being a co-ruler with the Creator of the Universe, to being a slave of Satan; from being perfect to being flawed and broken in every way; from being a friend of God to being an enemy of God. (Oasis of Faith, on Adam)
I went from being a bully to a medium-level juvenile delinquent. (Shaquille O’Neal)
She went from being a cuddle-bunny to being skittish, unfriendly, and growling a lot. (Joanne and Mike Juhnke, on their pet rabbit Baby)
She went from being a naughty girl to a good girl which is of course simplistically stated, but that’s something that many of us aspire to do. (Fox News, on Snooki)
I learned two things from these examples. Sometimes the extra being sounds right and sometimes it doesn’t. If there is a subordinate clause after the from being part, you can more easily dispense with the to being, but that does not seem to be an ironclad rule.
The other thing I noted was how often people seem to go from being one thing to being the completely opposite thing. In other words, X goes from being A to Not-A.
I’m still reading Pinker’s “The Language Instinct” and he discusses and even diagrams a lot of issues like this (though not this one that I recall, 37% through the book). This feels to me like a style/formality and emphasis issue in most of the examples you gave. You could omit the second “being” and in nearly every case, the meaning is still clear. There was probably some subjective or emotional difference to Jerry Vale in “being” (experiencing the state of being) a popular singer, as opposed to the fact of his popularity (e.g., from Billboard charts, Vegas bookings, or whatever). It seems a bit like the word “that” which I find I use more often than many writers, e.g., “I think that we have discussed that already” vs. “I think we discussed that already.” The latter is less formal, less emphatic. I think the second “being” plays a similar role, in addition to the effect of sentence complexity or “distance” from the other “being.” In shorter sentences, the symmetry certainly sounds pleasing, especially in the Anne Frank quote. Though even there, no confusion results from omitting it the second time.
Thanks, Bruce. Now I feel like getting “The Language Instinct” even though I’ve already read a couple of Pinker’s books. The thing that bothered me about the omission of the second “being” was that the “from-to” symmetry was weakened without it, and the “to” could then be construed as a dative, i.e., that whatever followed the “to” was an indirect object (e.g., I gave x TO him). The “nurse to murderer” quote seemed to be the best example of this. And, on another topic, I just recently found out that I can get a Kindle app for my laptop, so I may just order certain books that way, including the one on SR/GR you mentioned on FB. Thanks! – C