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This sentence is from South Park. There was a lice problem in the school and the children demand that their teacher Mrs. Garrison tell them who exactly had the lice. She says that it's not important because

Whoever had the lice, they're dead now.

Now, obviously she means that the lice are dead, not the person who had them. But doesn't her sentence mean (strictly speaking) that the person is dead? In similar constructions in Standard English, can they refer to the object of the main clause? I see no syntactical difference between the first sentence and the seemingly wrong

Whatever damaged the keys, they're in my pocket now. (= the keys are in my pocket)

I guess my question is

  • How should I parse the first sentence?
  • Is the second sentence wrong?
  • If so, What would be the difference between the first and the second sentence that makes the first sentence OK, but not the second?

Hope the question is on topic.

I am having some difficulty properly tagging the question. Please help :)

Tim Lymington
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Armen Ծիրունյան
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    I must remember that line the next time somebody says there's nothing wrong with singular they... – Tim Lymington Mar 29 '13 at 10:32
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    Presumably Kenny had the lice. – St John of the Cross Mar 29 '13 at 11:44
  • "Whoever had the lice. They're dead now." i.e., "Who had the lice (is immaterial now). They're dead now." The independent clauses should not be combined because that will shift the reference from lice to who. – Kris Mar 29 '13 at 12:55
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    @Kris Are you saying that "Whoever had the lice" is a complete sentence and needs nothing else? – St John of the Cross Mar 29 '13 at 13:10
  • Is pronoun ambiguity covered by grammar rules? I always thought of it as more of a craft-of-writing concern. – Erik Reppen Mar 29 '13 at 13:52
  • @StJohnoftheCross I did? Two persons read half my comment each or what? Lol! (That last one, incidentally, is a complete sentence.) – Kris Mar 30 '13 at 07:40
  • The second sentence: "Whatever damaged the keys..." should instead read:"However damaged the keys, they're in my pocket." (However + adjective = it doesn't matter how). – Mari-Lou A May 23 '13 at 22:52

3 Answers3

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I think you've answered your own question. This is a pun of sorts, one might even catagorize it as a paraprosdokian.

But doesn't her sentence mean (strictly speaking) that the person is dead?

You're exactly right! In fact, I think that's what we're all supposed to think when we first hear the sentence, before we realize it's the lice that are dead.

The way the sentence is constructed invokes images of a dramatic line in a movie, something along the lines of, “Whoever it was who just tried to save the world, he's dead now.”

This is classic adult animation humor, where the scriptwriters rely on clever wordplay to invoke a laugh from an adult audience.

FumbleFingers
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J.R.
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    I think you're reading way too much into that line. I doubt few in the audience will give the grammatical issues of that statement a first thought, much less a second. – Robusto Mar 29 '13 at 12:51
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    It's a talent to find humor where none was (probably) intended in the first place. :) – Kris Mar 29 '13 at 12:56
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    So you're saying Trey Parker and Matt Stone didn't intend the line to be humorous irrespective of the grammar? – Robusto Mar 29 '13 at 13:11
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    It's a dumb way to express the idea because of the ambiguity. Haven't seen that one but if they did one of their dramatic focus routines with that line, then yes, I'd say they were finding humor in language mechanics if not grammar. – Erik Reppen Mar 29 '13 at 13:27
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    @Erik: Ambiguity is "dumb"? Why, without ambiguity, we wouldn't have "Who's on first...", "The shovel is my pick", Groucho shooting an elephant in his pajamas, or that Spanish girl "Nolo Contendere". – J.R. Mar 29 '13 at 17:32
  • I didn't say dumb wasn't funny. – Erik Reppen Mar 29 '13 at 18:12
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    I suppose there's no way to tell for sure if the ambiguity was intentional or accidental, or whether the ambiguity was meant to invoke a laugh, without asking the writers. This much I do know: (a) the writers of some of these shows can be very clever, and often employ subtle humor in their scripts, (b) they often use wordplay and cultural references, (c) they don't use laugh tracks, so viewers must be clever enough to deduce the humor through intelligence and perception (rather than an audio cue), (d) many comedic geniuses rely on the ambiguity of English to create a laugh. Make your own call. – J.R. Mar 29 '13 at 18:22
  • *Whatever you say to justify this answer, it's still wrong. There's no "rule of grammar" requiring that my it* there must refer back to *whatever. Structurally, that sentence is ambiguous, not "wrong". Semantically the only credible reading is that it* refers to the answer, not "whatever [you say]". But in essence, I agree with @Robusto. – FumbleFingers May 29 '13 at 13:49
  • @Fumble: I never said it was a requirement, and I never said anything was wrong. I merely said – like you – that it is ambiguous, with the added thought that it wouldn't surprise me if the ambiguity was deliberate and intended to be humorous. – J.R. May 29 '13 at 19:10
  • @ J.R.: You're right. In my haste to get the feeble refutation in, I conflated your position with OP's unjustified assertion that "strictly speaking" (by which I suppose s/he means according to some grammatical rule*) there's only one "correct" interpretation. I still agree with Robusto that it's probably too inconsequential to have been deliberate for the sake of humour, but I'll make a meaningless edit to your answer so I can retract my unwarranted downvote. – FumbleFingers May 29 '13 at 20:21
  • btw - here's Princess Diana speaking of the Press: Whatever I do, whatever I say, it will always look for controversy and contradiction. It would surely never cross anyone's mind to think she was indulging in wordplay (i.e. - that it could refer whatever actions/words she came out with). – FumbleFingers May 29 '13 at 20:38
  • @Fumble: The creators of South Park, though, do indulge in such wordplay – much of it rather brilliant – which is why shows like that have an almost cultlike following. Had the O.P. found the sentence in one of Diana's speeches, I would have thought the potential pun preposterous. On the very irreverent South Park, though, I tend to wonder if it was coincidental, and don't mind erring on the side of the writers' wit. – J.R. May 29 '13 at 21:44
  • Would you also credit the possibility that they're alluding to a third interpretation? When we hear "Whoever did this is dead!" we tend to assume it means "I'm gonna find and kill whoever did this!", not "The perpetrator is already* dead"*. Perhaps Mrs. Garrison is a closet "avenging angel". – FumbleFingers May 29 '13 at 21:59
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You've hit upon a key problem in natural language processing. Spoken language is full of ambiguity without context. In the case of the "whatever," however, I'm not seeing how "they're" could refer to "whatever."

Erik Reppen
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  • Um, no: it is not “technically grammatically incorrect” to use they when referring to a singular entity. This is a myth. For the real story, see sense #2 in the esteemed Oxford English Dictionary entry for *they, in which they write: “Often used in reference to a singular noun made universal by every, any, no,* etc., or applicable to one of either sex (= ‘he or she’). See Jespersen Progress in Lang. §24.”** See also this award-winning answer regarding the matter. – tchrist Mar 29 '13 at 13:07
  • Fair enough and edited. *shakes fist at English teacher from 20 years ago. I still don't think "they're" could be used to refer to "whatever" however. – Erik Reppen Mar 29 '13 at 13:13
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Dangling pronoun.

  • Rather than parse it, you should burn it, and recast. Unless the joke is the ambiguity, or an example of ambiguity. "Whoever had the lice, the pests are dead now." or "Whoever had the lice, that person is dead now," depending on which meaning to resurrect.

  • The second sentence is not wrong because of a dangling pronoun, as @ErikReppen points out. This is because the plural pronoun they could only apply to the plural object keys and not to the singular object whatever. It doesn't even trip on the use of they as a genderless pronoun for people, as @TimLymington noticed. However it is jarring because the subject is the extra-vague whatever, and this steers the reader into thinking that what follows the comma will elaborate on the subject, versus the more specific object keys. Less jarring: "I don't know how the keys were damaged, but I have them in my pocket now."

  • First sentence, dangling pronoun, technically ambiguous as to who died, possibly intentional given the dark dark minds who created it. Second sentence, misleading by emphasis as to where the meaning is going.

Bob Stein
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