Ambiguity

Double







If two different nouns including proper nouns or pronouns or a mixture of them are placed before an infinitive (i.e. to plus a verb to signify a certain action) in a sentence, there is always the likelihood of uncertainty concerning who the actual doer of the action is. This can be seen from the following sentence taken from a national English daily in its overview section.

Australian Geoff Ogilvy held off the challenge of world number one Tiger Woods to lead by a shot after the second round of the WGC-CA Championships on Friday. Uncertainty has arisen as to who actually led by a shot: Australian Geoff Ogilvy or Tiger Woods?

Such ambiguity can be eradicated to arrive at the actual meaning in the news by amending the sentence as follows:-

Australian Geoff Ogilvy held off the challenge of world number one Tiger Woods and led by a shot after the second round of the WGC-CA Championships on Friday.

Concord failures/noun-pronoun disagreements?‏

A forest path?








Below are my comments sent on February 22 via e-mail to The Editor of The Star's Mind Our English after reading two articles published therein:-

The sentences below are taken from the two articles by GRANT BARRETT in Mind Our English – the first three from The Tell-All of the Century of February 20 and the fourth from The Language of Young People of February 6.

1. To grass someone or to grass someone up means to report them and their
activities to the police.

2. To shop someone to the police means to offer up evidence of their
wrongdoing.

3. Such a person is fronting – pretending to the criminals to be something
they’re not – so that they can lure the criminals into a false sense of
safety.

4. “To bone someone” meaning to have sex with them, which dates to at least as
early as the 1970s, is also on the minds of young people in 2006.

Would you kindly advise whether all the aforesaid four sentences contain concord failures/noun-pronoun disagreements?

The Editor's reply via e-mail dated March 12:-

Fadzilah Amin answers your question(s):

There was a time when English used the masculine pronouns he, him or his to apply to either a man or a woman or to refer to a person whose gender is not known. The reasoning behind this was that “man embraces woman”, and he can mean either he or she. This was later considered sexist, and “he or she”, “him or her” and “his or her” were used by some people. However, it is rather clumsy to use “he or she”, etc. all the time. So the plural they, them and their are often used to mean “he or she”, “him or her” and “his or her.” This singular use of they, them and their is not really new in English. The Oxford English Dictionary, in its second definition of “they” (= ‘he or she’), has among its quotations, one from Lord Chesterfield’s letters (1759): “If a person is born of a …gloomy temper…they cannot help it.” and another from Ruskin (1866): “Now, nobody does anything well that they cannot help doing.”
The singular use of “they” is common after indefinite pronouns like “someone”, “anyone” or “nobody” and after the noun “person”, which does not indicate gender. This is what the four sentences you quoted use, and there is no indefinite pronoun-pronoun or noun-pronoun disagreement involved.

My further comments to The Editor via e-mail dated March 21:-

Thank you for your reply.

Allow me to make further comments hereunder.

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, the singular they is one of the disputed usages. …..

A common inaccuracy is the use of the plural pronoun when the antecedent is a distributive expression such as each, each one, everybody, every one, many a man, which, though implying more than one person, requires the pronoun to be in the singular. Similar to this, but with even less justification, is the use of the plural pronoun with the antecedent anybody, any one, somebody, some one, the intention being either to avoid the awkward he or she, or to avoid committing oneself to either. Some bashful speakers even say, A friend of mine told me that they ..."

In another site http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/6/16/143616/593

"He" has died and gone to the flames of patriarchal hell. The pronoun "he," I mean. But if we accept that "he" is no longer valid as a singular, genderless pronoun, what alternatives exist?

I propose the oft-chastised singular usage of "they" as the easiest and most effective replacement for the genderless "he." .....

So how can the singular "they" become a respectable alternative? By using it, and announcing its use. People currently use the singular "they" all the time, but either with a sense of shame or unknowingly. However, the singular "they" can become an acceptable term if people begin to use it proudly and with authority.

Language is formed by those who use it. We can no longer afford to live without a genderless pronoun! The mighty "he" has fallen, long live the singular "they!"

Note the use of the sentence in Mind Our English of March 21, “That someone deserves more acclamation for his – or her – invention!”
Meanwhile, perhaps the following can help:-

HOW TO WRITE AND SPEAK BETTER compiled/edited by more than ten experts and published by The Reader's Digest says repeating a word or phrase can have positive advantages, alongside the negative virtue of averting confusion.

A Handbook for Technical Writers and Editors
Mary K. McCaskill Langley Research Center Hampton, Virginia http://www.sti.nasa.gov/publish/sp7084.pdf
states in Grammar and effective Writing as follows:-

All pronouns must have an antecedent (the noun they replace) with which they agree in number, gender, and person. In addition, some pronouns change form to indicate nominative, objective, and possessive case (for example, he, him, his)……

Grammatical errors involving pronoun antecedents can be avoided very simply: check every pronoun for a clear appropriate antecedent and then ensure agreement between antecedent and pronoun.

Ungrammatical sentences

The more the merrier?








The following sentences are taken from recent print media advertisements:-

1. Take home a complimentary bonsai when you sign up for any 3 of the products below with a minimum of RM200,000.00 and more.
2. At the university, we prepare you to swim with the sharks without being eaten alive.
3. The home loan that lets you rearrange your priorities anytime.

Do you notice that those words highlighted in bold in the sentences are causing troubles?

What are the troubles? They are 1. tautology (needless repetition of an idea, esp. in words) 2. implicitly they don’t prepare you to swim with the sharks without being scared to death and eaten and 3. that makes the sentence incomplete.

Leave out those words and read the sentences again to see if the sentences will become better in sense and in grammar.

Symmetrical sentences

Lost and not knowing which way is correct?











Far from being headed for extinction, the hyphen cannot be replaced, without loss of nuance or change of meaning, as in the following situations – this being a part taken from (Mind Our English of February 22) Whither the hyphen?
It would be more symmetrical if it is rewritten as: Far from heading for extinction, the hyphen cannot be replaced, without loss of nuance or change of meaning, as in the following situations..

Likewise, the sentence reading, ‘Not because I was oblivious to the history of the English language but because I had taken the ongoing theft of words (or shall we be kind and say “borrowed” words) for granted!’ (in the article As honest as a thief on the same page) should be ‘Not because I was oblivious to the history of the English language but because I had taken the ongoing theft of words (or shall we be kind and say “borrowing of words”) for granted!’

May I now refer to one of the questions posed in this second article: Which of the following words in the table above came from Mandarin, Cantonese, Tamil, Hindi or Malay? Is “following” therein really necessary?

I must say that both are well written articles which are very enlightening – in fact, so are all those by the author of the former frequently appearing in your column.

The above are comments made by me on two articles Whither the hyphen? and As honest as a thief appearing on The Star’s Mind Our English section of February 22, 2008.

Such comments were forwarded on February 23, 2008 to the Editor of Mind Our English, from whom I have yet to receive a response. However, since the writer of Whither the hyphen? has now become a regular columnist of Mind Our English as mentioned in the article The '-ing' word dated March 7, I do not expect any response to be forthcoming.

Comments from any readers/visitors are most welcome.

Historical present tense

Think carefully and use the most appropriate word/tense for the intended effect.

I have noted the following sentence in a print media advertisement:-

Mitsubishi Electric was the first manufacturer to offer this one-stop and remote access system, which allows precise control of energy consumption and thus helps building owners and tenants to control costs.

The use of past tense (was) in the first line has the tendency of attracting the question of whether Mitsubishi Electric is still the first manufacturer now.

If the historical present tense (is) were used, it would have eliminated the problem.

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - ..... the historical present refers to the employment of the present tense when narrating past events. It is used in narrative to make the events narrated vivid …..