Odd sentence?

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Fri Sep 02, 2005 6:31 am

Is there anything odd about the following sentence?

"All of a sudden, there was a bottle breaking on the table."

It came from a transformation exercise. The student had to change the sentence below to one using existential-there.

"All of a sudden, a bottle broke on the table."

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Fri Sep 02, 2005 6:58 am

Yes, there is. But the original sentence is a bit odd too.

I hasten to add, however, that (as I'm certain you clearly know) both sentences are possible, which is to say that neither is wrong. Odd because bottles do not usually break by themselves, and out of context these sentences seem to imply that. But one could assume that there is a context lurking about somewhere that will explain the oddness. Perhaps someone in the room just fired a gun.

Larry Latham

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Fri Sep 02, 2005 11:50 am

LarryLatham wrote:Yes, there is. But the original sentence is a bit odd too.

I hasten to add, however, that (as I'm certain you clearly know) both sentences are possible, which is to say that neither is wrong. Odd because bottles do not usually break by themselves, and out of context these sentences seem to imply that. But one could assume that there is a context lurking about somewhere that will explain the oddness. Perhaps someone in the room just fired a gun.

Larry Latham

Yes, the syntax is fine, it's just the semantics that throw me.

These are OK, for example:

All of a sudden, there was a boy sitting in front of me.

All of a sudden, there were gigantic waves rising up above us.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Fri Sep 02, 2005 3:12 pm

Could it be an echo of "being broken" or of that slow motion feeling that you get when in a fight in bar (so I'm told

) or both?

Tara B · Post by **Tara B** » Sat Sep 03, 2005 7:35 pm

Both sentences sound a little odd, for reasons of content and not grammar. (Why would a bottle just suddenly break?) Accepting the supernatural implications, however, the two sentences don't seem equivalent to me; one of them is more supernatural than the other.

"All of a sudden, a bottle broke on the table."

In this sentence it sounds like there were several bottles already on the table, and suddenly one of them broke for no reason.

"All of a sudden, there was a bottle breaking on the table."

In this sentence it sounds like two things happened: a bottle magically appeared that wasn't there before, and it broke for no reason.

Not something I'd want to put in a grammar exercise.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Sat Sep 03, 2005 7:47 pm

All of a sudden, there was a broken bottle on the table.
All of a sudden, there was the noise of a bottle breaking on the table.
All of a sudden, there was a bottle being broken on the table.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Sun Sep 04, 2005 6:40 pm

This is just one more example of on occasion where you have to resort to semantics rather than grammar to explain why a sentence doesn't work. When asked "Is this sentence correct", I would ask the student what situation they envisage when saying the sentence.

It makes me wonder where syntax ends and semantics begins.

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Sun Sep 04, 2005 6:57 pm

lolwhites wrote:This is just one more example of on occasion where you have to resort to semantics rather than grammar to explain why a sentence doesn't work. When asked "Is this sentence correct", I would ask the student what situation they envisage when saying the sentence.

It makes me wonder where syntax ends and semantics begins.

Perhaps there isn't a dividing line between the two to make them separate. Maybe it's kind of like space-time. Should we think of it as semantico-syntax?

Larry Latham

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Sun Sep 04, 2005 9:06 pm

Semantico-syntax? Interesting concept!

I'm reminded of a grammar exercise book I once read which said, at the end, something like "teachers should make students aware that structure sometimes carries meaning" (my emphasis). Shouldn't that have been always?

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 1:45 am

I do think you are quite right, lolwhites. Exactly when would structure not carry meaning? Can there be any question that the precise way in which we put words together, or attach affixes to certain words in certain places has quite a lot to do with the meanings of the expressions thus created?

Looking again at the original sentence at the start of this thread, isn't the reason we all think it is odd because of the structures presented? We can make sentences with the same words while changing the structures to create meanings that do not seem to be so odd, but would those meanings be the same as the original? What seems to be bothering us is that we're having a hard time imagining a context where the apparent meaning of the original sentence (or the student derivative) would make overall sense.

Larry Latham

Tara B · Post by **Tara B** » Tue Sep 06, 2005 11:49 pm

I had a teacher in teaching school refer to a researcher who said that there were three parts to teaching grammar: form, meaning, and usage.

I can't remember who the researcher was. If I remember right, it was a woman. Does this sound familiar to anybody?

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Sep 07, 2005 12:04 am

Tara B wrote:I had a teacher in teaching school refer to a researcher who said that there were three parts to teaching grammar: form, meaning, and usage.

I can't remember who the researcher was. If I remember right, it was a woman. Does this sound familiar to anybody?

Yes it does. In my vocab it would be syntax, semantics and pragmatics.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Wed Sep 07, 2005 6:19 pm

Jackendoff?

thethinker · Post by **thethinker** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 6:04 pm

I'd say firstly that the exercise isn't a good one.

I think you can understand them better if you imagine there's an opera singer singing a particularly powerful and high note, so strong that it can cause glass to shatter. The bottle was there all along.

"All of a sudden, there was a bottle breaking on the table." suggests that the bottle didn't break in an instant, but perhaps over a second on two. It might, in a literary way just emphasise the action and the moment.

"All of a sudden, a bottle broke on the table" has a more conventional style to it. It's ambiguous though because it could mean that the bottle broke because it was hit against the table, or that it was there all along and broke because of the singing (or on it's own, or through poltergeist activity).

I hope the exercise was from a text book rather than a past paper!

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 5:44 am

This message is from Stefan Engelberg, Univ of Wuppertal, author of The Semantics of the Progressive.

Dear M56,

According to a native speaker of English I asked, the sentence is not good (she wanted an agent) – nor would be the same sentence in the simple past.

She liked the simple "all of the sudden a bottle broke" somehow better (at least in some contexts). But this she told me would be weird in the progressive. The progressive might be OK in contexts like "we have to do something – the bottle is breaking". Here we construct a preparation phase and the progressive is related to that phase. That means break would behave similarly to win, reach and other punctual verbs which presuppose a pre-stage and are OK in the progressive.

Best wishes
Stefan