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I cannot explain it, but at seeing how fond the cat was of me made me disgusted and annoyed.

I saw the above sentence in naver.com.

a) Is the above a correct sentence?
b) If so, what is the subject for the verb made?
c) What is the ground for omitting the subject?

"at seeing how fond the cat was of me" cannot be a subject and there is nothing between me and made. So, it seems there is no subject for the verb made.

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  • 1
    Why do you think it might not be correct? What research have you done? Jul 11, 2017 at 0:20
  • "seeing how fond the cat was of me" should be the subject (gerund phrase), but it is not very well-constructed. Jul 11, 2017 at 0:21
  • 6
    Drop the 'at' to be grammatical
    – Mitch
    Jul 11, 2017 at 0:34
  • "at seeing how fond the cat was of me" cannot be a subject and there is nothing between me and made. So, it seems there is no subject for the verb made.
    – Soo Lee
    Jul 11, 2017 at 0:42
  • Use 'on' in place of 'at' Jul 11, 2017 at 7:40

2 Answers 2

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As others have suggested, just drop the "at" and it is correct.

'I cannot explain it, but seeing how fond the cat was of me made me disgusted and annoyed.'

The first part is a complete sentence. "seeing how fond the cat was of me" is the subject.

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As you note, "at seeing how fond the cat was of me" is a prepositional phrase rather than a noun phrase. Prepositional phrases generally serve to specify the time, location, or manner of an action (complete with subject and verb). So there are two ways to fix this sentence. The first, as noted in Akaisteph7's answer,, is to turn the prepositional phrase into a noun phrase by removing the preposition; "seeing" then acts as a gerund:

Seeing how fond the cat was of me made me disgusted and annoyed.

The other way would be to provide a subject to the main verb of the sentence, so that the prepositional phrase can act on it normally:

At seeing how fond the cat was of me, I became disgusted and annoyed.

This usage sounds a little strange to my ear (I would probably use "on" or "upon" instead of "at" here); but the OED notes that "at" may be used to indicate coincidence in time as well as in space, and gives the example "Our men gave them a shout at parting."

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