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So I read the following sentence from The Interpretation of Dreams and I cannot understand the grammatical structure of the following sentence:

But of course I have been unable to resist the temptation to take the sting out of many an indiscretion by omitting or substituting certain material.

To me, everything after "many" seems redundant as "many" serves as the object of the verb phrase "take the sting out of". I suspect there is a parallel to be drawn with verbs like "give" where one would consecutively supply two nouns to describe two different objects involved in an action.

fralau
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Tian Jin
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    There hasn't been any reference to "indiscretions" before the word 'many'. And no explanation of what the temptation is (to omit references to indiscretions) until after 'many'. I'm not sure where you see as redundant when the phrases add absolutely vital information about what the sentence says. – Tom22 Jul 07 '17 at 01:43
  • Hi @Tom22, thank you for your reply. I am not saying that they are semantically redundant; rather, I am having trouble mapping words to their roles in the overall grammatical structure in the sentence. Is this an example of apposition? Or can you provide me with an example of similar usage of verbs involving placing two nouns side by side after a verb so that I can have an intuition of the underlying grammar? – Tian Jin Jul 07 '17 at 01:58
  • Are you parsing “many an indiscretion” as the noun phrase? – Jim Jul 07 '17 at 02:06
  • I think that everything after "temptation" is a 'restrictive relative clause" telling us necessary information about the temptation. That clause in turn has it's own "relative adverbial clause" giving necessary information about how "to take the sting out" . Temptation to do X by Y. X = 'take the sting out of many an indiscretion' Y = "by omitting certain material" – Tom22 Jul 07 '17 at 02:08
  • BTW, I'd be happy if anyone else wanted to elaborate on(or correct) what I tried to say as a full answer double checking and taking the time to reference the grammatical terms. – Tom22 Jul 07 '17 at 02:15
  • I think I may have misinterpreted the phrase "many an indiscretion" as two noun phrases. Your comments suggest that "many an indiscretion" together form a single noun phrase. After some googling around, I've found this link which resolves my question. Thanks! – Tian Jin Jul 07 '17 at 02:15

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Your difficulty seems to be with the idiom "many a + singular noun", which is roughly identical to "many + plural noun"; see Usage of "many" vs "many a"?.

Perhaps the sentence would immediately make sense, if we converted that idiom into the ordinary equivalent and added a comma for good measure:

But of course I have been unable to resist the temptation to take the sting out of many indiscretions, by omitting or substituting certain material.

In my humble opinion, the translator could have done a better job here. (If you give us the chapter and the location in the chapter, perhaps we could have a look at the German original).

fralau
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