Is substancial a version of the word substance?

Won’t work. You might say “of substances,” although that’s a bit awkward. You could also say, “physical abuse, emotional abuse or substance abuse.”

No – you couldn’t use “substantial” in that context. Although it is derived from the term substance meaning having physicality, it is not related to substance abuse. I would go with “substance”; it is parallel construction in that all three terms can be followed by “abuse” and are modifiers of it.

@janbb: Alright, so I’ll change it to “as well as different types of abuse (whether physical, emotional, or substance abuse)”.

You can still leave out the second “abuse” and it will work better stylistically in my opinion.. You could say (whether it be physical, emotional or substance.”) Or maybe a rephrasing just to “as well as physical, emotional or substance abuse.”

@janbb: Gotcha, that sounds way better than what I came up with. xD

Good!

@troubleinharlem

“as well as different types of abuse (whether physical, emotional, or substance abuse)”

As janbb said, you don’t need the second “abuse”.
That’s because the first “abuse” refers to the types of abuse that follow in parentheses, so it’s already understood that they’re types of abuse.

Personally, I would change it to ‘self-inflicted’. Physical abuse is something someone does to you. Emotional Abuse is something someone does to you. Substance abuse is something you do to yourself. Putting “substance” in the same list as those two makes it sound like someone was forcibly injecting drugs into her.

@janbb Nicely turned. I knew you’d come through. It just sucks I looked at the phrases without any emotion at first because these things are way too common. :(

It won’t work, as others have said. In addition, “physical and emotional abuse” are external, and unless the girl is drugged against her will (which is certainly possible), then “substance abuse” is an internal thing, so it doesn’t fit in the litany of “physical, emotional and substance abuse”, because it’s not “a substance” that is abusing her; she’s doing it to herself.

As much as I often agree with @janbb in other English usages, I wouldn’t list them as she has, because they are not exactly “equal”.

As I see that @MrItty has already suggested….

@CyanoticWasp yeah, but you said it better than I did.

I don’t see that tha matters since they are all forms of abuse that lead to delinquency but I can understand the quibble.

They’re not parallel. They’re not in the name relation to the subject, as others have noted above. The subject suffers the physical and emotional abuse of others, but when it comes to substances, the subject is the abuser. Logically and grammatically, they have to work in the same way in order to be presented in a series like this.

So I think you have to reconstruct the sentence in order to reflect the correct relationships. How about something like ”. . . as well as physical and emotional abuse and chemical dependency . . .”?

in the name relation ^^^ should say in the same relation

good~

For some reason I’ve been thinking about this more and more since the Q arose. And the best answer I’d give now is: The language may evolve there someday, the way it always does evolve, but it’s not there yet.

Consider that “physic”, the Greek word for “body” probably met some resistance as it grew an adjective root to “physical”. Can you imagine the way English speakers would jump on “bodyal” as a similar adjective form of “body”? And the term “substance abuse” itself is of fairly recent vintage (as is the practice of ascribing age to things as “vintage” when they have nothing to do with vine cultivation and wineries). So “someday” the language may evolve to accept and comprehend “substantial abuse” in the same way we comprehend and don’t remark any more at “physical abuse” and “emotional abuse” (another recent term). It could happen relatively soon, too, but we ain’t got there yet.