posted
I missed that myself, which surprises me since one of my pet peeves in writing/critiquing is to name the pronoun. More often than not, it makes for far clearer reading. Sentences don't always say what the writer means because of pronoun confusion -- either the pronoun is too far removed from its antecedent, or there are more than one possible antecedents, as when several 'he's' are present.
I like the fact that this guy actually won against the establishment. Score one for the Grammarians!
quote:The word "her," he posited, was improperly referring to "Toni Morrison's," so the answer should have been "A," signifying a mistake in "her to create." Many grammar manuals insist that a pronoun such as "her" should refer only to a noun, not, as in the case of the possessive "Toni Morrison's," an adjective.
Baloney. Just because the noun is contained within an adjective, that doesn't mean that the noun is no longer a noun. It's a case of imposing petty rules an a language that developed without those rules. Try the sentance with "The genius of Toni Morrison" as the possessive form. Is it still incorrect according to this guy's theory, or does he have some complete BS as to why it's okay with one possessive form but not the other?
My guess is that there is just such a piece of BS available as an out for him. But that doesn't make it anything other than total manure.
posted
Survivor beat me to it. That sentence is perfectly fine, and it is perfectly clear that the pronoun references Toni Morrison, not Toni Morrison's. In the complex and apparently burocratic English language, words can serve as more than one part of speech, even in the same sentence.
Come to think of it, what rule of English suggests that Toni Morrison's is what "her" is refering to? Often, pronouns reference nouns from previous sentences. This is why pronoun confusion can happen so easily...there are few explicit rules for linking nouns to pronouns, it is almost all implicit. Pronoun confusion usually comes when a pronoun could reference more than one thing or when the thing to which it refers was not mentioned recently enough to make the connection.
posted
A valid effort, but not what the guy meant. He's clearly arguing that because the proper noun "Toni Morrison" is being used to form a possessive phrase (by the addition of "'s"), it cannot take a pronoun reference, since the possessive functions as an adjective.
It's not my fault that what the guy says makes no sense and is thus impossible to understand. He's the one that made a national case out of it.
posted
hoptoad, your suggestion presumes that pronouns always refer to the subject of a sentence. They don't. There is no part of a sentence that they always refer to. They can be almost any part of the sentence, including the subject. Often if they are the subject they refer to a previous sentence.
Posts: 3567 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
From the way the test is described, there was only this sentence to consider. No context, so no noun in another sentence. I was tempted to say that Tony Morrison was the understood antecedent (although I wasn't sure if that was kosher), but the more I looked at the sentence, keeping a strictly technical eye, I had to agree with the correction. It's a hair-splitter -- sort of like a horserace photo finish. I still like the outcome.
Oooo...new sport: Extreme Grammar. Can Contact Diagramming be next?
[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited October 25, 2005).]
posted
I would agree with the correction if the proper noun had been turned into an adjective by some means that changed the name itself rather than merely adding a possesive marker, i.e. "Morrisonesque genius" or something like that. There is a thin line there, it just happens to be on the other side of the possessive used here. That possessive says that the genius is not just described by Tony Morrison, it belongs to her. Thus the noun "Tony Morrison" is clearly present in the sentance as the possessor of "genius".
The fact of the matter is that most grammer experts consulted agreed that it was grammatically correct but they didn't want to keep fighting over it, because a fight over grammar would only reveal the bankrupcy of the entire system. Linguists, mathmaticians, physicists, hell, even psychologists get into public fights all the time. That's because at the end of the day someone is right by some standard other than because everybody else with a degree in the same field says so.
Anyway, not to rant against grammar. But they checked that question out with plenty of experts before they put it in the test, they just didn't check with this guy, who happens to have been marking his students wrong for using a pronoun to refer to a noun that is in possession of another noun. That's the kind of useless nitpicky rule that makes me (and other writers) utterly allergic to having my grammar corrected.
quote:Linguists, mathmaticians, physicists, hell, even psychologists get into public fights all the time.
True enough, but I like the fact that someone from the lower end of the scale won. I'm sure my glee at the verdict derives from the memory of a nun in elementary school refusing to acknowledge that the dialogue she wanted me to perform for a play was stilted. She got indignant when I commented that a person wouldn't say, "I went there. Too, and after Mass...." but would more naturally say, "I went there, too. And after Mass...." I did the rehearsals her way, but the performance went my way. <Hoptoad's wicked smilie here>
quote:using a pronoun to refer to a noun that is in possession of another noun.
Nice distillation. Maybe we need a clear rule on that. <another wicked smilie>
[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited October 25, 2005).]
posted
Just to clarify: my point wasn't really that this pronoun in this case could have refered to a noun in another sentence, it was really just that there are no hard and fast rules as to which word a pronoun references. In fact, the only rule I can think of is that it has to refer to a noun. which disqualifies the adjective form from consideration as a possibility. We have to look elsewhere, and so we find the easy implicit connection between "her" and "Toni Morrison."
Now, if you want bad grammar, check out the fall issue of "The FIrst Line." See if you can figure out why I chose not to submit a story...
"Having little to his name when he died, the reading of Henry Fromm's will went quickly."
posted
Have you written to the contest people and asked them if they've ever heard of dangling participles?
Posts: 603 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Thing is, I am *sure* I've heard this before, as an example of a dangling participle. I suspect The First Line editorial board thought it was funny and used it with full awareness. Of course, I have no evidence.
Posts: 2830 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
Somebody came up with a story for that which had a pretty good concept and an even better "first line". I don't remember who, and I'm too lazy to check
Evil grin is , or .
Baffled is covered by , but I think KDW was being somewhat ironic.
posted
A dangling participle? The Toni Morisson sentence doesn't contain any participles, let alone dangling ones.
But it does contain a minor nonparallelism. Heh, many well-trained readers don't catch minor nonparallelism like that, so if most people don't know/care it exists, is it still wrong?
posted
The dangling participle isn't in the Toni Morrison sentence. It's in the "First Line" contest first line, and it was quoted by Christine only a few posts above this one.
Posts: 603 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Sorry for the confusion...I vered the topic slightly off-course to something indirectly related since I thought we'd exhausted the initial sentence...you can only say so many things about one sentence. Posts: 3567 | Registered: May 2003
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I think those PSAT boys are out to get me! 
, but I think KDW was being somewhat ironic.
fair nuff 
