Timeline for Participle phrases that don't follow the main clause
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Aug 23, 2021 at 13:11 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | Agreed, my use of the word "actually" there is a bit strained. That's because I wasn't "actually" (?!) referring to the "actual, real-world" situation. I was talking about the information explicitly conveyed by the text / syntax itself (which the reader may extend through his own knowledge of "how things work in the real world", for certain things that aren't explicitly stated). | |
| Aug 23, 2021 at 2:48 | comment | added | user438381 | ok cool, thanks @FumbleFingers I think I get what you mean by "actually" but it's confusingly stated, as I think of "actual" as a kind of possible world (lol) so yeah. and likewise, easier to state than imply. | |
| Aug 21, 2021 at 10:39 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | As implied by my first comment, syntactically, the construction is perfectly valid regardless of whether the speaker/writer intends that final clause (a "past-participial clause" - thanks, @BillJ :) to apply to the main clause (The book was boring, in your example), or to the immediately-preceding clause (as is usually the case). In practice, with your example it's most likely that both books were punctuated by silly mistakes (that's probably why they're both unambiguously being labelled "stupid"). But syntactically, only one (not "explicitly" identified) actually contains mistakes. | |
| Aug 21, 2021 at 9:16 | comment | added | user438381 | did we establish, independent of why, if the example sentence is ungrammatical @FumbleFingers | |
| Aug 19, 2021 at 7:30 | comment | added | user438381 | this is all really confusing @BillJ personally feel we need something between ELL and this stack | |
| Aug 17, 2021 at 13:49 | comment | added | BillJ | No it doesn't. PP is the standard abbreviation for preposition phrase, and past participles and preposition phrases can never be the same thing. Further, "punctuated by silly mistakes" is not some kind of relative clause, but a past-participial clause, functioning as a supplementary adjunct. | |
| Aug 17, 2021 at 11:25 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | I think the issue being raised here might be the same as To avoid ambiguity, what is your opinion about how to use reduced relative clauses? Also probably Ambiguous relative clause, but the connection's not so obvious there. | |
| Aug 17, 2021 at 11:07 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | In a language context, PP usually stands for Past Participle, not Prepositional Phrase (though presumably sometimes they're actually the same thing). But the example context would still be much the same with, something like ... not worth reading or ...with no merit. They're just relative clauses with an ambiguous (prior) referent. | |
| Aug 17, 2021 at 11:06 | history | edited | user438381 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
deleted 3 characters in body; edited title
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| Aug 17, 2021 at 11:06 | comment | added | user438381 | yeah I meant participle, damn sorry @BillJ | |
| Aug 17, 2021 at 11:06 | comment | added | BillJ | No: it's a past-participial clause headed by the verb "punctuated". | |
| Aug 17, 2021 at 11:04 | comment | added | user438381 | I thought "punctuated..." would be a prepositional phrase. is it not @BillJ ? | |
| Aug 17, 2021 at 11:03 | comment | added | BillJ | So what PP are you referring to? | |
| Aug 17, 2021 at 10:59 | comment | added | user438381 | right thanks @FumbleFingers that makes sense. | |
| Aug 17, 2021 at 10:57 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | Structurally / syntactically, it's unquestionably "ambiguous". You've only got to compare the two different parsings if we replace ...punctuated by silly mistakes (which is semantically ambiguous) with 1) ...written before he signed a major publishing deal and 2) ...written purely to cash in on that earlier success. It should be obvious that the final clause in 1) refers to the previous book, but in 2) it refers to the current book. In short, the construction can only be interpreted using common sense, which in some cases might not be sufficient to disambiguate. | |
| Aug 17, 2021 at 10:48 | history | edited | user438381 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 2 characters in body
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| Aug 17, 2021 at 10:45 | comment | added | BillJ | PP at the end of the clause? | |
| Aug 17, 2021 at 10:36 | history | asked | user438381 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |