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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

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
I think we mostly agree because we agree that listeners will almost always understand the sentence as intended and we agree that there's a sense in which the sentence is unsound. Maybe an analogy is sentences like "going to the store later, want to come?" (although the particular problem is slightly different). One interpretation is that English is becoming a pro-drop language in some contexts, but even many speakers who utter that sentence would agree that it's slightly syntactically unsound for omitting the pronouns (even though it didn't tend to harm understanding). (I'm not positive that this case is analogous to the dangling modifier case.)

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

I think we mostly agree because we agree that listeners will almost always understand the sentence as intended and we agree that there's a sense in which the sentence is unsound. Maybe an analogy is sentences like "going to the store later, want to come?" (although the particular problem is slightly different). One interpretation is that English is becoming a pro-drop language in some contexts, but even many speakers who utter that sentence would agree that it's slightly syntactically unsound for omitting the pronouns (even though it didn't tend to harm understanding). (I'm not positive that this case is analogous to the dangling modifier case.)