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Novernae
Joined: 02 Mar 2005
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 Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2006 7:37 pm Post subject: Re: Novernae, I might be wrong but... |
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| shapeshifter wrote: |
what you've written here seems a little silly. You wrote:
| novernae wrote: |
Kind of like "you look good" vs "you look well." In the first person 'you' are pleasant to look at. In the second, 'you' are very talented at 'looking.' That is of course without taking into account the possibility that 'well' actually represents a reduced 'doing well' resulting in a severely reduced 'you look like you are doing well.'
I'm feeling good. I'm feeling well. (I'm have a positive physical feeling vs I am very talented at feeling.)
I'm good. I'm well. (I'm have a positive physical feeling or am well behaved vs I am talented at being) |
Now, all of that is fair enough if we're talking 'well' the adverb. But what about 'well' the adjective? Let's try, for example, "only a few weeks after the injury, he seems to be entirely well again."?
Or far more simply, "I'm not feeling very well."
Do you really think that people who say "I'm not feeling very well" suck?
Seems a little over the top to me.
Cheers
| novernae wrote: |
Kind of like "you look good" vs "you look well." In the first person 'you' are pleasant to look at. In the second, 'you' are very talented at 'looking.' That is of course without taking into account the possibility that 'well' actually represents a reduced 'doing well' resulting in a severely reduced 'you look like you are doing well.'
I'm feeling good. I'm feeling well. (I'm have a positive physical feeling vs I am very talented at feeling.)
I'm good. I'm well. (I'm have a positive physical feeling or am well behaved vs I am talented at being)
But this is a whole other debate that we really don't want to get into do we... But people who say 'I'm well' suck!  |
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Of course I don't really think they suck. That was the part of the post. But so many of the people who do this are actually over-correcting (a sociolinguistic phenomenon where people will incorrectly self correct their language, often to up themselves socially or make themselves out to be better than those lowly people who might say I'm good.) These are the same people who might say 'you and I' in all cases because they are taught from an early age that 'you and me' is wrong and they can't distinguish the cases where the latter would be correct. It just sounds pompous to me because they are often doing it for the wrong reasons, and that's what bugs me. |
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mateomiguel
Joined: 16 May 2005
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| Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2006 8:33 pm Post subject: |
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| I was right two pages ago. Why are you all still talking? |
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Oreovictim
Joined: 23 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 7:14 am Post subject: |
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Ha!
You've got to love The Onion. One of my favorite articles: "Christian Heavy Metal Band Denies Kicking Ass." |
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dogshed
Joined: 28 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 7:11 am Post subject: |
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| pastis wrote: |
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| After getting stuck in traffic this evening, canceling dinner plans would have been completely understandable |
| khyber wrote: |
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| There's no subject in this sentence. Who canceled dinner plans? |
Aren't "dinner plans" the subject? |
No because then "canceling" would have to be a participle acting as an adjective, which would not make any sense in that context. Presumably the subject is supposed to be whoever (i.e. a person, not mentioned in the sentence) got stuck in traffic, but the grammatical ambiguity arises from the fact that "dinner plans" could indeed conceivably be the subject (it wouldn't be grammatically incorrect, just totally absurd). "Dinner plans" (of the "canceling" variety) don't usually get stuck in traffic...
| Quote: |
| I am probably the worst grammarite in Korea though |
I hope your post wasn't sarcastic, or my earnest explanation makes me look like a schmuck Oh, and that's "grammarian" (while we're on it). |
He was named cancelling dinner plans, spelled without capitals, by his parents as a protest against the government but that's another story. Now Mr. plans is lamenting changing his route to work due to a traffic jam.
Mr. plans has a severe speech impediment. The traffic jam was caused by an overturned tanker truck carrying a new miracle drug on its way to a factory that would have put it in inhalers. Instead the drug leaked out and several people were suddenly cured of speech impediments.
After getting stuck in traffic this evening, canceling dinner plans would have been completely understandable |
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pastis
Joined: 20 Jun 2006
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| Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 8:28 am Post subject: |
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| dogshed wrote: |
| pastis wrote: |
| Quote: |
| After getting stuck in traffic this evening, canceling dinner plans would have been completely understandable |
| khyber wrote: |
| Quote: |
| There's no subject in this sentence. Who canceled dinner plans? |
Aren't "dinner plans" the subject? |
No because then "canceling" would have to be a participle acting as an adjective, which would not make any sense in that context. Presumably the subject is supposed to be whoever (i.e. a person, not mentioned in the sentence) got stuck in traffic, but the grammatical ambiguity arises from the fact that "dinner plans" could indeed conceivably be the subject (it wouldn't be grammatically incorrect, just totally absurd). "Dinner plans" (of the "canceling" variety) don't usually get stuck in traffic...
| Quote: |
| I am probably the worst grammarite in Korea though |
I hope your post wasn't sarcastic, or my earnest explanation makes me look like a schmuck Oh, and that's "grammarian" (while we're on it). |
He was named cancelling dinner plans, spelled without capitals, by his parents as a protest against the government but that's another story. Now Mr. plans is lamenting changing his route to work due to a traffic jam.
Mr. plans has a severe speech impediment. The traffic jam was caused by an overturned tanker truck carrying a new miracle drug on its way to a factory that would have put it in inhalers. Instead the drug leaked out and several people were suddenly cured of speech impediments.
After getting stuck in traffic this evening, canceling dinner plans would have been completely understandable |
Thanks for spelling out the reason why dangling modifiers create ambiguity (sensing you're being facetious, but anyway)... not sure why you chose to make dinner plans a proper noun (sans capitalization), but whatever works for you.
Now try this one: "having been thrown in the air, the little dog caught the stick". |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 3:51 am Post subject: |
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In informal conversations, it is normal to sound the way that person sounded. This is very true these days. People don't generally care about sounding grammatically correct as they did in the past. People tend to make more and more mistakes including English teachers with English degrees. Anyway, a professor would make grammatical mistakes when talking with friends over a good brew. There wouldn't be much coin grammatically to his sentences during such an informal conversation. That person speaking was attempting to speak in a decent manner. This discussion is interesting. I don't claim to be a grammarian or a grammar maven, but I am always interested in following these discussions....
Cheers... Auf Wiedersehn |
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corroonb
Joined: 04 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 1:46 pm Post subject: |
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I hate grammer Nazis. In informal conversation there is little reason to be disgusted by poor or incorrect grammar. If you felt that strongly about it, then correct the person.
As far as I can see the original problem wasn't a dangling modifier, it was the absence of a subject for the participles (-ing words). In that case the author of that article does not even know what a dangling modifier is.
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| Being nervous sometimes, I can come off a bit awkward |
This is certainly not a dangling modifier because 'being' is clearly modifying 'I'.
| Quote: |
| After getting stuck in traffic this evening, canceling dinner plans would have been completely understandable |
I doubt anyone interpreting the above would asume that these things are being applied to different subjects. The confusion is not about modifiers, its about what subject both of these is modifying. Is it the woman here or the man?
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| While driving on Greenwood Avenue yesterday afternoon, a tree began to fall toward Wendy H's car. |
This is a dangling modifier because it sounds like the modifier is modifying the tree and not the driver.
I might be wrong though because I learned about grammar through Latin not English (nominative, vocative, accusative etc.) |
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