RE: ambiguous sentences

Subject: RE: ambiguous sentences
From: "Sean Brierley" <sbri -at- haestad -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 13:14:15 -0400


I guess I'm not a linguistic god. LOL!

The sentence makes no sense to me. It makes sense like this:

>The horse, which was raced past the barn, fell.

>The horse fell after it raced past the barn.

>The horse was raced past the barn and fell. ("Was raced" bugs me, as
well.)

Writing "the horse raced past the barn fell" seems to be an incomplete
thought, any way you slice it. I would say that you have two thoughts,
"the horse was raced past the barn" and "the horse fell," and that by
writing "the horse raced past the barn fell" is a failure to integrated
those two thoughts into one sentence. I cannot see this any other way.
Really, I just don't get it.

Yours in linguistic ignorance,

Sean

-----------------------------------------
Sean Brierley
Software Documentation Specialist
Haestad Methods
http://www.haestad.com
203-805-0572 (voice)
203-597-1488 (fax)



-----Original Message-----
From: Sean Hower [mailto:hokumhome -at- freehomepage -dot- com]

-------------------------------
David Cooper wrote:
ooooooooooohhhhhhhhh, careful Sean! Never tug at a linguistics thread on
this list...it's like standing up in the middle of church and saying
"Come on, am I REALLY supposed to believe this?"
-------------------------------

DO NOT CHALLENGE THE AUTHORITY OF THE LINGUISTIC GODS BWAH
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA.

Oh, sorry, don't know what came over me. tee-hee. :-)

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