tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post4198932709818782601..comments2023-04-20T17:34:06.468-07:00Comments on Disputed Issues: A comma puzzle: The false-interjection errorStephen R. Diamondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-31772215283704430382013-06-03T12:23:23.335-07:002013-06-03T12:23:23.335-07:00If sentence 2 is excessively disfluent for your pu...If sentence 2 is excessively disfluent for your purposes or taste, the best solution would usually be to rewrite the whole sentence. I confined myself to changing only the punctuation. Sentence 2 is punctuated correctly because it alone precisely states the author's (probable) intended meaning: trips to places like Canada exemplify rather than exhaust "shorter trips," so the adjectival phrase should be nonrestrictive (set off by commas) for greatest precision.<br /><br />In general, grammar reflects the first stage of parsing, according to most psycholinguistics. Modern generative grammars wouldn't parse such a sentence differently than school-taught grammars.Stephen R. Diamondhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07165258952900481659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637977923375441839.post-46079879711649077312013-05-22T08:08:22.116-07:002013-05-22T08:08:22.116-07:00I think you're using "correct" incor...I think you're using "correct" incorrectly. Grammatical rules are an approximation of how language works. Making clarity subservient to grammar puts the cart before the horse. I don't care if version 2 is "correct" by your particular rules; it's confusing, because "driving and shorter trips" are grouped together and separated from "to places like Canada". The reader has to do a lot of post-processing, using semantic information, to pull apart the parse tree she's constructed on first reading, and put things back together in a way that makes sense.<br /><br />If version 2 were correct because of "grammar", where "grammar" is commonly taken to mean "rules about category types like 'verb' and 'noun' but not about category types like 'animate agent', 'country', and 'vehicle'", then these sentences should be parsed the same way:<br /><br />Residents decide driving and shorter trips, to places like Canada, are safer options.<br /><br />Residents decide beer and wine, in moderation, are better options.<br /><br />But they aren't. They have different parse trees. Parsing is not governed by "grammar" as commonly understood, so neither can "correctness" be dictated by grammar. Version 2 is a bad sentence, and if your grammar says it's right, your grammar is wrong. Version 3 is the best of the 4 you list, because it groups together the words that must be parsed together. The only version I'd call correct doesn't appear:<br /><br />Residents decide driving, and shorter trips, to places like Canada, are safer options.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com