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Quoting from a BBC article:

What also marks the current protests out from previous ones is the emerging use by demonstrators of Molotov cocktails.

I would have put the prepositional phrases "by demonstrators" and "of Molotov cocktails" in the opposite order; what do guidelines say?

Bananach
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    Depends on personal choice, and which phrase you wish to emphasise. – Kate Bunting Dec 26 '22 at 11:42
  • @Kate does the choice in the article emphasise "by demonstrators"? – Bananach Dec 26 '22 at 12:32
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    No, I would say that it emphasises of Molotov cocktails by putting it at the end. – Kate Bunting Dec 26 '22 at 12:48
  • @Kate isn't emphasis usually placed on the beginning (or at the earlier phrases in) a sentence (when word order is used to place emphasis)? Possibly bad references: https://www.really-learn-english.com/using-word-order-for-emphasis.html and https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/order-of-prepositional-phrases.3204351/ – Bananach Dec 26 '22 at 13:28
  • Apparently the British use marks out in the sense of set apart? This is unknown in the US. marks out usually means strikes through, as in marking out a wrong answer and writing in the correct one. – Phil Sweet Dec 26 '22 at 15:09
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    No, I use the guide that the beginning of paragraphs carry more weight, but the ends of the sentence do, too. – Yosef Baskin Dec 26 '22 at 15:09
  • @David '"Out" should be out'? As in "left out" i.e omitted? – Mari-Lou A Dec 27 '22 at 11:17
  • @David all dictionaries I just looked at disagree with you, e.g., https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/mark-out – Bananach Dec 27 '22 at 11:21
  • @Mari-LouA Yes that’s what I meant. But I’ve been challenged, so need to dig out the OED for usage examples. – David Dec 27 '22 at 14:40
  • I've upvoted but I'm surprised the question has attracted so few upvotes. Perhaps sharing your thoughts in the comments should also go in the question that way users don't classify you as a person with a superficial level of expertise. – Mari-Lou A Dec 27 '22 at 21:10
  • @Bananach — OK, I was wrong. The OED has "mark out" as meaning "distinguish or characterize" dating from the 15th C, but none of the entries for "mark" alone have this meaning. (But my general opinion of BBC English stands. Those outside Britain should realize that although the BBC attempts to present the news in a balanced and politically unbiased way, the expansion of the service to the web, the lower standards of general education, and the need to produce continual copy mean that individual articles fall short of the standards prevailing when the news was read a few times a day. – David Dec 28 '22 at 12:15
  • But I don't see the need to separate "mark" and "out", and feel it reduces clarity. As "mark" and "mark out" have different meanings, one has to readjust mentally five words down the line. And I agree that the sentence would be better with Molotov cocktails and demonstrators swapped, as the new feature is the MCs. – David Dec 28 '22 at 12:19

6 Answers6

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Certainly 'of' seems more closely connected to the noun 'use' than other prepositions do, 'the use of ...' being virtually a fixed phrase:

  • She lost the use of her left arm for a few days in the accident.
  • *She lost the use for a few days of her left arm in the accident.
  • In the accident, she lost the use of her left arm for a few days.
  • */??In the accident, she lost the use for a few days of her left arm.

.............

  • the use of chemical weapons by terrorists: 8700 hits (raw) in a Google search
  • the use by terrorists of chemical weapons: 1200 hits (raw) in a Google search

That said, quite often the positions of an of-phrase and a by-phrase of similar length may be swapped:

  • the use of public funds by the government: 147 000 hits (raw) in a Google search
  • the use by the government of public funds: 171 000 hits (raw) in a Google search

This possibility may be exploited to emphasise one of the elements (eg '[by] the government' in the second variant above), though if one of the prepositional phrases is lengthy, it wouldn't sit well before a short one. A sentence with two lengthy PPs would be better rephrased.

In the two variants OP gives, I'd say it's 'Molotov cocktails' that is emphasised in the original.

Edwin Ashworth
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  • Did you really mean to say that "the use by the government of public funds" emphasizes "by the government" yet "use by demonstrators of Molotov cocktails" emphasizes "Molotov Cocktails"? – Bananach Dec 26 '22 at 13:20
  • Yes, that's what I feel. In the public funds / government examples, 'the use of public funds by the government' is I'd say unmarked per se, while the switched variant adds emphasis. I'd say 'the government' more readily attracts emphasis in the West, at least. Of course, in speech, either PP may be given the emphasis by stressed intonation. // In OP's example/s, 'Molotov cocktails' will attract added emphasis in most contexts (here I mean surrounding sentences). – Edwin Ashworth Dec 26 '22 at 14:55
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If you reverse the order, there is a subtle ambiguity. It sounds as though Molotov cocktails are being used, but now they are also being used by demonstrators. Context might prevent that reading, though. The way it is written, the scope is clearly limited just to what the protesters are doing*. So I think the difference is a matter of scope moreso than emphasis.

We have already dealt with [5]. You can display the ambiguity by using brackets, or if you want to be flash you could use phrase-markers, as in Hodges. But let me use it as a vehicle to explain about scope and order. Scope differences correspond to the order of choices made in the encoding process, the order of construction of the message. https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~mnat/~ball0888/oxfordopen/ambiguity1.doc

*or not - folks who demonstrate Molotov cocktails have decided to use the current protests, but didn't do so in the past?

Phil Sweet
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  • Do you agree with the answer of Edwin then, who says that which part is emphasized in this case does not depend on syntax only but also on the content of the PPs? – Bananach Dec 26 '22 at 20:25
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Chomsky famously pointed out that

  • the shooting of the hunters

is an ambiguous phrase. It can mean either that some (unspecified, but definite in context) hunters did some shooting, or that those hunters were shot (by someone unspecified and unmentioned). That's a big difference in meaning, especially to the hunters.

The reason it can be ambiguous is that shooting is not a verb in this phrase; since it's modified by the, it's a noun, but a noun that's formed from the verb to shoot. These are called Nominalizations in syntax; this is the opposite of Verbing Nouns, as Calvin calls it.

The two senses of the shooting of the hunters come from two different senses of shoot. It can be intransitive or transitive:

  • Those hunters didn't shoot very often. (intransitive: no direct object)
  • Those hunters didn't shoot any ducks. (transitive: direct object ducks)

When an intransitive sentence is nominalized, the noun phrase that is its subject can appear with it, in an of phrase. Passives (like The hunters were shot) are automatically intransitive, because the direct object has taken the place of the subject. So passives are subject to this rule:

  • The hunters were shot. ==> The shooting of the hunters.

The by phrase agent of the passive (say, by the KGB) can appear also, and normally would follow the of subject (to be precise, absolutive) phrase.

  • the [shooting [of the hunters]] [by the KGB]

But ... the of phrase, a modifier and argument of the nominalized verb, is subject to the optional rule Extraposition from NP, which simply exchanges the order of the two PPs. That's all, folks.

John Lawler
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    I don't understand the relevance of your first four paragraphs. I don't think "use" can be used intransitively (other than as slang for drug use) and I didn't think there was any ambiguity about whether "Molotov Cocktails" could be the subject (taking the place of your hunters) of the sentence. – Bananach Dec 26 '22 at 20:32
  • Remains the bit about "Extraposition from NP" which is a useful reference for what's going on but which, given you say it's an optional rule, leaves me not much wiser as to why and with what effect this rule is applied here. For example, what makes the "of" PP in my question "heavy"? – Bananach Dec 26 '22 at 20:36
  • Setting aside that "The shooting by the KGB of the hunters" is more difficult to parse, the order makes me want to add brackets or commas around the agent (by the KGB) of shooting would that be clearer or simply fussy? – Mari-Lou A Dec 27 '22 at 11:28
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If you read the sentence that follows your sample from the article, the order makes sense:

What also marks the current protests out from previous ones is the emerging use by demonstrators of petrol bombs.

These have been used against bases of the Basij militia and Hawza, or religious schools for Shia Muslim clerics.

These refers to the petrol bombs. If demonstrators appeared last, the reader would have to stop for a brief context moment to map the antecedent past demonstrators and back to petrol bombs.

Also, by putting the demonstrators first, the reader doesn't have the opportunity to think that it might be the authorities, rather than the demonstrators, using the bombs.

Tinfoil Hat
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The order of the prepositional phrases in "...the emerging use by demonstrators of Molotov cocktails" conforms to the principle of end-focus, which states:

"...the most important information in a clause or sentence is placed at the end."

https://www.thoughtco.com/end-focus-sentence-structure-1690593

The chosen order of the prepositional phrases also loosely follows another principle from Information Structuring, namely the Given-New principle.

https://www.thoughtco.com/given-before-new-principle-linguistics-1690815

In this case, the "given" information is that there are protests happening in Iran, which by their nature have demonstrators. The new information here is that the demonstrators are throwing Molotov cocktails.

And as @Tinfoil Hat points out in another answer, the placement of Molotov cocktails at the end of the sentence allows the following sentence to seamlessly also comply with the Given-New principle:

These (i.e. the Molotov cocktails) have been used against bases of the Basij militia...

Shoe
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  • This idea of "end focus" goes against all the writing experience I have, so clearly it deals with only a certain type of special case. The general principle of lecturing, for example, is not to make it a detective story, as your audience has gone to sleep by the time you come to the denouement. Likewise, one is recommended to study tabloid writers whose skill is to capture the attention of the reader (even though their content is generally worthless).… – David Dec 28 '22 at 12:28
  • …So I would say that here we have a direct statement involving the structure " What marks out X is Y" With X=use and Y=Molotov cocktails. End focus in terms of the link you give. Molotov Cocktails is followed by an inconsequential adjectival phrase that could be omitted. Putting it at the end would not give it focus in my opinion. – David Dec 28 '22 at 12:32
  • But the thing wrong with the writing, in my opinion, is "use". The Sun would write "……the demonstrators used (more likely "threw") Molotov Cocktails", which conforms to both our prejudices (mine being to avoid using verbs as abstract nouns, although no doubt you will be able to find examples of this in my own writing). – David Dec 28 '22 at 12:37
  • @David. I agree with your first comment above in respect of longer texts. But the end-focus principle is focused on word order at the sentence level. Your own answer rewrites the original text in a way that does not prompt questions such as the OP's about phrase order. And I agree with your implicit opinion that journalists, as opposed to poets for example, should avoid prompting questions about style. Can you identify for me the inconsequential adjectival phrase? – Shoe Dec 30 '22 at 07:19
  • “by demonstrators” — you could leave this out and we would assume it. I admit I should take more time to consider the principle you mention. My gut feeling is that it can only apply in certain types of sentences. – David Dec 30 '22 at 09:54
  • @David. I think "by demonstrators" would more typically be categorized as a prepositional phrase. End-focus works well with the Given(Known)-New principle to facilitate the cohesiveness of texts. Here is a good short article on the topic: https://englishcomposition.org/essential-writing/using-end-focus-writing – Shoe Dec 31 '22 at 08:56
  • — There's such a thing as imposter syndrome, but in my case, I'm just an imposter. I write, I can write, and I generally know what I'm doing and what I'm not doing. But my grammar is from grammar school years ago, corrupted strongly by Latin, so when real grammarians manage to fight their way into this site I should just go into hiding. – David Dec 31 '22 at 13:06
  • @David. This site is "for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts." I would say that anyone who contributes to the site is a language enthusiast and is welcome here, whatever their explicit grammatical knowledge. – Shoe Dec 31 '22 at 15:35
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I would not put myself into the straightjacket of a sentence, the basic flaw of which is to use “use” as an abstract noun rather than a verb. So I would change the extract to:

What also marks out the current protests from previous ones is that demonstrators are starting to use Molotov cocktails.

And in one bound you are free. You have a direct sentence without either preposition and no need to agonize over order. (“Mark out” kept together for immediate clarity.)

David
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  • This sounds better to me too, and I do believe that the awkward original structure is a bad attempt to connect to the subsequent sentence as pointed out by the other answer. – Bananach Dec 28 '22 at 20:57