Jameson whiskey commercial construction with implicit verb

Question

While watching the Daily Show, a commercial came on. Here is the construction:

"...When the Hawk of Achill took a barrel of John Jameson's whiskey, well that was another matter. But Jameson was generous, the Hawk, greedy, very greedy..."

The issue is "Jameson was generous, the hawk greedy." There is no verb in the second construction, and we are asked to fill in the verb from context. This is a no-no in a generative description of English grammar.

Are these sentences acceptable English?

1. "The doctor put his gown on the table; the nurse, on the cabinet."
2. "The soldier eats his bread with cheese; the general, with caviar."
3. "The soldier eats his bread with cheese; the general, his pita with olives"
4. "The bum sleeps in the streets; the oil magnate comfortably, without snoring, in a bed with sheets."
5. "The maid spreads the sheet on the bed; my kitchen knife butter on the bread."
6. "He pitted the two contestents in battle; she, a date"
7. "He drove a car; she, a point home."
8. "The surgeon walks to surgery, quickly, and without thinking about all the patients that he lost over the years; John, on the beach."

Is there a discussion of the rules for mystery implicit verbs? Has anyone encountered an implicit verb construction in a newspaper context?

Answer 1

As others have said, there's nothing wrong with the construct of sentence in the ad. It reads gruffly, which works well in the context of the ad. Your sentences, meanwhile, are more of a mixed bag:

The soldier eats his bread with cheese, the general, with caviar.

I have no problem with this one, although, as John and JLG said, a semi-colon should be used after the word cheese.

He drove a car, she, a point home.

This one reads like a clever pun. I'm reminded of Groucho Marx: "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

"The surgeon walks to surgery, quickly, and without thinking about all the patients that he lost over the years, John on the beach."

Um, no. It's not wrong per se, but it reads as if you were trying to deliberately stretch the rules. It reads awkward, because the two parts clash as unrelated. Just because you can write this way, doesn't mean you should.

"The doctor put his gown on the table, the nurse, on the cabinet."

Wait... the doctor put the nurse on the cabinet? Then what happened? (This reminds me of some of those humorous newspaper headlines, like "4-H Girls Win Prizes for Fat Calves").

Answer 2

I don't know where you get the idea this is a no-no.

It's a textbook example of Conjunction Reduction, a staple of the generative stable of rules since around 1963.

And it's badly punctuated in the transcript; there should be a semicolon after generous, to indicate full stop intonation. That may have confused you. It was spoken, not written, to start with.

Answer 3

Verb ellipsis is something I don't know how to formally handle.

The whole point of an ellipsis is that it requires you to guess what the author omitted. I think the guesswork is going to make it hard to concoct formal rules. Sure, in some cases the guess is obvious, but in others there could be many valid possibilities.

Having a sentence where the meaning is unclear is not grammatically incorrect. It could be done deliberately for humorous or stylistic effect. Of course, it could also just be flat out poor writing.

Consider what was (presumably) omitted in some of the examples, shown in bold below:

"Jameson was generous; the Hawk was greedy, very greedy." (omitted verb)

"The soldier eats his bread with cheese; the general eats his bread with caviar." (omitted verb + object)

"He pitted the two contestants in battle; she pitted the two contestants in a date." (omitted verb + object + preposition) *

• Actually this might not be the right interpretation but it is AN interpretation that still illustrates the point.

As you can see... the more you omit about the sentence, the more someone has to trip over themselves trying to fill in the blanks, and the more ambiguity you introduce.

"The maid spreads the sheet on the bed; my kitchen knife spreads butter on the bread."

The fact that the verb is used in completely different contexts makes it sound completely unnatural. Again, it's not grammatically incorrect, just weird (unless it's being used as a pun or something).

"The surgeon walks to surgery, quickly, and without thinking about all the patients that he lost over the years; John walks on the beach."

This one isn't particularly confusing, since only the verb was omitted, but the inclusion of all the other words makes it sound awkward. The two phrases of the sentence lost their parallelism.

Answer 4

Do you notice how every one of your examples differs from the ad copy? The ad copy contains a linking verb [was], but the verbs in your examples are not linking verbs. Because most of the verbs in your examples (pitted, eat, drove, etc.) take an object, some of your examples end up being nonsensical. In fact, most would be considered runon sentences even if they made sense.

I know this was a transcription of a televised ad, but as John said the comma between "generous" and "the Hawk" should be a semicolon.