Is this sentence semantically correct?

Question

He enjoys skiing, playing the guitar, hiking, and wildlife.

Is this semantically correct? If not, is there something wrong with “enjoys … wildlife”?

Answer 1

Nothing semantically wrong, but to keep parallelism you might add a verb in gerund form.

... and watching wildlife.

... and stalking wildlife.

You might also move "playing the guitar" next to the wildlife, again to keep the forms similar.

He enjoys skiing, hiking, playing the guitar, and photographing wildlife.

Answer 2

The term in rhetoric for your original construction is syllepsis.² Syllepsis is a parallelism in which the terms do not strictly agree in some way. The rhetorical use for it is to provide emphasis. My favorite humorous example is from the song “Have Some Madeira M’Dear”:

And he said, as he hastened to put out the cat,
The wine, his cigar and the lamps:
“Have some Madeira, m’dear!”

(Emphasis added.)

Changing the sentence to use parallel grammar (that is, to use the same grammatical structure in each element)¹

He enjoys skiing, playing the guitar, hiking, and watching wildlife.

is not a correction of an error. It is a stylistic choice. You might use syllepsis in one sentence to make a point, parallel grammar in another to make it easy to follow.