4 ms·

>As a linguist, it is absolutely not an issue of grammar. I keep seeing this construction a lot lately, but it always seems weird to me. Is it correct?

dbbolton 12y ago
There is an implied "it is my opinion that..." because I am stating my opinion. I think most people are able to pick up on that naturally, and I don't feel it necessary to spell it out. I am sure many here would argue that it doesn't adhere to their notion of correctness, however.
- schoen 12y ago
  The issue here is the famous dangling modifier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_modifier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_modifier Even your implied "it is my opinion that" would still leave a dangling modifier (now the erroneous parse indicates that your opinion is a linguist, rather than the original erroneous parse suggesting that the usage is a linguist). Dangling modifiers are an interesting issue because one often has to go all the way up to the pragmatics level in order to resolve the indended meaning (in this case, who or what could be a linguist?). Of course, speakers are usually quite good at that, so the ambiguity is usually only noticed in writing (and then people disagree about how significant the ambiguity is).
  - dbbolton 12y ago
    The key defining feature (from a linguistics perspective) of a dangling modifier is ambiguity. I really don't see how my statement could have been misinterpreted, but I would be interested to hear alternate interpretations. Even with some ambiguity, a dangling modifier is not necessarily ungrammatical. Prescriptivists tend to have a much broader notion, however (e.g. the ongoing 'hopefully' controversy; apparently they consider it illogical when a speaker adverbially describes their feelings without doing so in an expressly grammatical context). If you really want to be correct, it's best to just do what other prescriptivists seem to believe is right and not think about it too much. Personally, I think making the sentence "grammatical" by expanding it (I am a linguist and my opinion is that...) seems rather unnatural. Along the same lines, the redditism "(Profession) here. (Opinion)." could also be excoriated by prescriptivists for being ungrammatical on the grounds that it is a sentence fragment, yet it gets the point across and I have yet to see anyone complain about it.
    - schoen 12y ago
      The subject "I" is never explicitly introduced anywhere in the sentence "As a linguist, it is absolutely not an issue of grammar", so the only explicitly available subject for the modifier to refer to is "it". (Compare "As a pragmatic issue, it is absolutely not a syntactic issue", "As a lexical issue, it is absolutely not a matter of syntax", etc.) So the problem is where the subject "I" comes from when it's left unmentioned, and a solution could be that it's pragmatically implied in any clause like "as a [type of person]" -- but surely not syntatically.
      - schoen 12y ago
        Unless we think of this as a species of disjunct (which might have been where you were going by describing the use of "hopefully")...
      - dbbolton 12y ago
        I am not really sure what you are arguing for here, but I think you may be hyperanalyzing and missing the point. In a very narrow and technical sense, yes, you could argue that the sentence is structurally unsound. > so the only explicitly available subject for the modifier to refer to is "it". Just because it is "possible" does not mean it is actually parsed that way. >So the problem is where the subject "I" comes from when it's left unmentioned, I do not see this as a problem. I think self-referential phrases (i.e., referring to the speaker), are usually clear, which I believe is the case here. There are much more ambiguous examples that may be nearly meaningless to the listener, but they usually involve two separate third parties that cannot be differentiated by the phrase in isolation. In normal human conversation, it is generally easy for the listener to determine when the speaker or listener is being referred to, regardless of whether there is an explicit syntactic reference. In short- yes, the sentence could be more explicit (maybe it does violate certain notions of Standard English/prescriptive grammar/style choice), but no, it is not unintelligible (it does not escape most listeners' mental grammar).
        thisjepisje 12y ago
        >In a very narrow and technical sense This is the sense in which a lot of people parse language. The whole point of correctly using language is that readers don't have to jump through hoops to understand what mistake you made and why you made it (i.e. what you actually meant), which ultimately makes communication easier.

dbbolton 12y ago

There is an implied "it is my opinion that..." because I am stating my opinion. I think most people are able to pick up on that naturally, and I don't feel it necessary to spell it out. I am sure many here would argue that it doesn't adhere to their notion of correctness, however.

schoen 12y ago
The issue here is the famous dangling modifier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_modifier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_modifier Even your implied "it is my opinion that" would still leave a dangling modifier (now the erroneous parse indicates that your opinion is a linguist, rather than the original erroneous parse suggesting that the usage is a linguist). Dangling modifiers are an interesting issue because one often has to go all the way up to the pragmatics level in order to resolve the indended meaning (in this case, who or what could be a linguist?). Of course, speakers are usually quite good at that, so the ambiguity is usually only noticed in writing (and then people disagree about how significant the ambiguity is).
- dbbolton 12y ago
  The key defining feature (from a linguistics perspective) of a dangling modifier is ambiguity. I really don't see how my statement could have been misinterpreted, but I would be interested to hear alternate interpretations. Even with some ambiguity, a dangling modifier is not necessarily ungrammatical. Prescriptivists tend to have a much broader notion, however (e.g. the ongoing 'hopefully' controversy; apparently they consider it illogical when a speaker adverbially describes their feelings without doing so in an expressly grammatical context). If you really want to be correct, it's best to just do what other prescriptivists seem to believe is right and not think about it too much. Personally, I think making the sentence "grammatical" by expanding it (I am a linguist and my opinion is that...) seems rather unnatural. Along the same lines, the redditism "(Profession) here. (Opinion)." could also be excoriated by prescriptivists for being ungrammatical on the grounds that it is a sentence fragment, yet it gets the point across and I have yet to see anyone complain about it.
  - schoen 12y ago
    The subject "I" is never explicitly introduced anywhere in the sentence "As a linguist, it is absolutely not an issue of grammar", so the only explicitly available subject for the modifier to refer to is "it". (Compare "As a pragmatic issue, it is absolutely not a syntactic issue", "As a lexical issue, it is absolutely not a matter of syntax", etc.) So the problem is where the subject "I" comes from when it's left unmentioned, and a solution could be that it's pragmatically implied in any clause like "as a [type of person]" -- but surely not syntatically.
    - schoen 12y ago
      Unless we think of this as a species of disjunct (which might have been where you were going by describing the use of "hopefully")...
    - dbbolton 12y ago
      I am not really sure what you are arguing for here, but I think you may be hyperanalyzing and missing the point. In a very narrow and technical sense, yes, you could argue that the sentence is structurally unsound. > so the only explicitly available subject for the modifier to refer to is "it". Just because it is "possible" does not mean it is actually parsed that way. >So the problem is where the subject "I" comes from when it's left unmentioned, I do not see this as a problem. I think self-referential phrases (i.e., referring to the speaker), are usually clear, which I believe is the case here. There are much more ambiguous examples that may be nearly meaningless to the listener, but they usually involve two separate third parties that cannot be differentiated by the phrase in isolation. In normal human conversation, it is generally easy for the listener to determine when the speaker or listener is being referred to, regardless of whether there is an explicit syntactic reference. In short- yes, the sentence could be more explicit (maybe it does violate certain notions of Standard English/prescriptive grammar/style choice), but no, it is not unintelligible (it does not escape most listeners' mental grammar).
      - thisjepisje 12y ago
        >In a very narrow and technical sense This is the sense in which a lot of people parse language. The whole point of correctly using language is that readers don't have to jump through hoops to understand what mistake you made and why you made it (i.e. what you actually meant), which ultimately makes communication easier.