0

The book was boring, and as stupid as the last one, punctuated by silly mistakes.

Is it unambiguous? Is it grammatical?

I'm asking if it's grammatical because I want to know whether you can offset a participle phrase at the end of a sentence like that, as it does not immediately follow the main clause. Is it ambiguous as to whether both books have silly mistakes?

I can't post the actual sentence I'm thinking about, sorry.

  • PP at the end of the clause? – BillJ Aug 17 '21 at 10:45
  • Structurally / syntactically, it's unquestionably "ambiguous". You've only got to compare the two different parsings if we replace ...punctuated by silly mistakes (which is *semantically* ambiguous) with 1) ...written before he signed a major publishing deal and 2) ...written purely to cash in on that earlier success. It should be obvious that the final clause in 1) refers to the previous book, but in 2) it refers to the current book. In short, the construction can only be interpreted using common sense, which in some cases might not be sufficient to disambiguate. – FumbleFingers Aug 17 '21 at 10:57
  • 1
    right thanks @FumbleFingers that makes sense. –  Aug 17 '21 at 10:59
  • So what PP are you referring to? – BillJ Aug 17 '21 at 11:03
  • I thought "punctuated..." would be a prepositional phrase. is it not @BillJ ? –  Aug 17 '21 at 11:04
  • No: it's a past-participial clause headed by the verb "punctuated". – BillJ Aug 17 '21 at 11:06
  • yeah I meant participle, damn sorry @BillJ –  Aug 17 '21 at 11:06
  • In a language context, PP usually stands for Past Participle, not Prepositional Phrase (though presumably sometimes they're actually the same thing). But the example context would still be much the same with, something like *... not worth reading* or *...with no merit*. They're just relative clauses with an ambiguous (prior) referent. – FumbleFingers Aug 17 '21 at 11:07
  • I think the issue being raised here might be the same as To avoid ambiguity, what is your opinion about how to use reduced relative clauses? Also probably Ambiguous relative clause, but the connection's not so obvious there. – FumbleFingers Aug 17 '21 at 11:25
  • No it doesn't. PP is the standard abbreviation for preposition phrase, and past participles and preposition phrases can never be the same thing. Further, "punctuated by silly mistakes" is not some kind of relative clause, but a past-participial clause, functioning as a supplementary adjunct. – BillJ Aug 17 '21 at 13:49
  • this is all really confusing @BillJ personally feel we need something between ELL and this stack –  Aug 19 '21 at 07:30
  • did we establish, independent of why, if the example sentence is ungrammatical @FumbleFingers –  Aug 21 '21 at 09:16
  • As implied by my first comment, syntactically, the construction is perfectly valid regardless of whether the speaker/writer intends that final clause (a "past-participial clause" - thanks, @BillJ :) to apply to the main clause (The book was boring, in your example), or to the immediately-preceding clause (as is usually the case). In practice, with your example it's most likely that both books were punctuated by silly mistakes (that's probably why they're both unambiguously being labelled "stupid"). But syntactically, only one (not "explicitly" identified) actually contains mistakes. – FumbleFingers Aug 21 '21 at 10:39
  • ok cool, thanks @FumbleFingers I think I get what you mean by "actually" but it's confusingly stated, as I think of "actual" as a kind of possible world (lol) so yeah. and likewise, easier to state than imply. –  Aug 23 '21 at 02:48
  • Agreed, my use of the word "actually" there is a bit strained. That's because I wasn't "actually" (?!) referring to the "actual, real-world" situation. I was talking about the information explicitly conveyed by the *text / syntax* itself (which the reader may extend through his own knowledge of "how things work in the real world", for certain things that aren't explicitly stated). – FumbleFingers Aug 23 '21 at 13:11

0 Answers0