My apologies for overlooking this posting of yours.
In the sentence in question, it’s for clarity’s sake that we need the preposition “with” to introduce every item consolidated with the subject “it.” In strictly formal terms, of course, that sentence should specify the consolidation process for each item as follows: “It was
consolidated with SBN 617 by Sen. Jinggoy Estrada,
consolidated with SBN 935 by Sen. Lito Lapid,
consolidated with SBN 2820 by Sen. Manny Villar, and
consolidated with SBN 1843 and SBN 2999 by Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, all of which intend to empower all citizens of the country not otherwise disqualified by law to exercise the right of suffrage.”
To streamline and make that sentence more concise, however, we can use elliptical construction by using the verb “consolidated” only at the first instance and dropping all of its repeated uses thereafter, as follows: “It was
consolidated with SBN 617 by Sen. Jinggoy Estrada,
with SBN 935 by Sen. Lito Lapid,
with SBN 2820 by Sen. Manny Villar, and
with SBN 1843 and SBN 2999 by Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, all of which intend to empower all citizens of the country not otherwise disqualified by law to exercise the right of suffrage.” Note that in this form, the sentence still makes perfect sense because it’s clear that the verb “consolidated with” applies to all items in the serial enumeration.
But see what happens to that sentence when we knock even the preposition “with” along with the verb “consolidated”: “It was
consolidated with SBN 617 by Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, SBN 935 by Sen. Lito Lapid, SBN 2820 by Sen. Manny Villar, and SBN 1843 and SBN 2999 by Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, all of which intend to empower all citizens of the country not otherwise disqualified by law to exercise the right of suffrage.” The syntax of the sentence is disrupted. The sentence has become nonsensical because there is now a serious semantic disconnect between the act of consolidation and the enumerated items. Figuring out precisely what and which have been consolidated has become extremely difficult. To prevent the sentence from degenerating into syntactic bedlam, we need the preposition “with” as a grammatical and semantic binder for each item in the serial enumeration.
What this state of affairs is telling us is that there are limits to what words can be safely dropped when constructing enumerative sentences elliptically. We should be sensitive to these limits to make sure that our efforts at streamlining sentences won’t render them confusing or, at worst, meaningless.
FURTHER READINGS ON ELLIPTICAL SENTENCES:Deconstructing and understanding those puzzling elliptical sentencesElliptical sentences often read and sound better than regular sentencesThe proper way to construct elliptical sentences
