Dr Mahathir or Pak Lah?

Trying to figure out?









The Star's MIND OUR ENGLISH contains an article (reproduced below) in its April 2 issue.

The article shows a very common error committed by writers.

Wednesday April 2, 2008
Ambiguous pronoun reference
By OH TEIK THEAM
LOOK at these little “stories” and see if you can find a mistake in each:

The credit card

Steve called David one evening while he was on vacation.

After they had talked awhile, Steve said, “My wife’s credit card was stolen.”

“Did you report the theft?” David asked.

“No,” said Steve. “Unlike my wife, the thief is not good at spending.”

The antecedent of a pronoun must be unambiguous. In the first sentence of the story, the pronoun “he” has two possible antecedents – “Steve” and “David”.

Rewrite: When Steve was on vacation, he called David one evening.

Muddy shoes

“Remove your muddy shoes before you enter the house,” the mother said to her son. “Yesterday the maid removed the carpet from the living room and cleaned it.”

The little boy, who had been playing football with his friends, replied, “Mum, I’m not wearing any shoes!”

The pronoun “it” in the story has two possible antecedents – “carpet” and “living room”. To prevent ambiguity, the sentence can be recast in one of two ways (depending on which meaning is intended):

Yesterday the maid cleaned the carpet after removing it from the living room.

Yesterday the maid cleaned the living room after removing the carpet from it.

Now, look at the following paragraph taken from a letter in VIEWS of The Star of April 3.

Although Pak Lah is perceived as a weak leader and has much to be blamed for the fiasco at the last election, he must be given another chance to redeem himself even though Dr Mahathir has constantly called for his resignation. He is not playing the game fairly.

The He in the last sentence is referring to Dr Mahathir or Pak Lah? Only the writer knows for sure.

To improve the situation, "former" or "latter" can be used or the name of the person playing the game be mentioned.