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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 misinterprete

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
      I assume by the context of my quote that we are still talking about the dangling modifier I used or similar "errors". >This is the sense in which a lot of people parse language. I completely disagree. You are describing a sense in which they consciously analyze language. Mental grammars are much more plastic and forgiving than you seem to suggest. I do not know a single person who, when first reading such a sentence, would not be able to derive the intended meaning from it on the grounds that the modifier has no explicit referent, and I think suggesting otherwise is far-fetched. Sometimes perhaps a genuinely ambiguous phrase may cause the reader to review and come up with an alternate meaning or two, but it is not as if their brain says "SYNTAX ERROR" and can't continue, bringing communication to a grinding halt. >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. I think you are suffering from an illusion that there exists an objectively and universally correct, monolithic, Standard English. I also think that you are on the verge of a slippery slope argument by even suggesting that a speaker-referential dangling modifier caused readers to "jump through hoops" and hindered communication. "I know what you meant" is probably the hardest thing for any prescriptivist to admit because it immediately destroys their very arbitrary arguments about "logic" and "efficiency" of language. My point stands that there is a huge difference between a perceived poor style choice and a genuinely ungrammatical utterance. But human beings do not naturally speak ungrammatically. There are simply dialect-dependent variations in grammar, and the more prestigious dialect will almost always be touted as "the right one" by prescriptivists, who will then say that all other dialects are "ruining the language" and "making communication more difficult". By that line of thinking it's reprehensible that different languages even exist at all. Sorry, but you are never going to get a universally agreed-upon and practiced standard. Yes, we need some rules to have a grammar and a language, but there is a huge range of how important those rules are for communication. Saying that any old "incorrect" use of language hinders communication is, to me, a bit like suggesting that people who jaywalk in a city are liable to gridlock its transportation system.

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
    I assume by the context of my quote that we are still talking about the dangling modifier I used or similar "errors". >This is the sense in which a lot of people parse language. I completely disagree. You are describing a sense in which they consciously analyze language. Mental grammars are much more plastic and forgiving than you seem to suggest. I do not know a single person who, when first reading such a sentence, would not be able to derive the intended meaning from it on the grounds that the modifier has no explicit referent, and I think suggesting otherwise is far-fetched. Sometimes perhaps a genuinely ambiguous phrase may cause the reader to review and come up with an alternate meaning or two, but it is not as if their brain says "SYNTAX ERROR" and can't continue, bringing communication to a grinding halt. >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. I think you are suffering from an illusion that there exists an objectively and universally correct, monolithic, Standard English. I also think that you are on the verge of a slippery slope argument by even suggesting that a speaker-referential dangling modifier caused readers to "jump through hoops" and hindered communication. "I know what you meant" is probably the hardest thing for any prescriptivist to admit because it immediately destroys their very arbitrary arguments about "logic" and "efficiency" of language. My point stands that there is a huge difference between a perceived poor style choice and a genuinely ungrammatical utterance. But human beings do not naturally speak ungrammatically. There are simply dialect-dependent variations in grammar, and the more prestigious dialect will almost always be touted as "the right one" by prescriptivists, who will then say that all other dialects are "ruining the language" and "making communication more difficult". By that line of thinking it's reprehensible that different languages even exist at all. Sorry, but you are never going to get a universally agreed-upon and practiced standard. Yes, we need some rules to have a grammar and a language, but there is a huge range of how important those rules are for communication. Saying that any old "incorrect" use of language hinders communication is, to me, a bit like suggesting that people who jaywalk in a city are liable to gridlock its transportation system.