Jose Carillo's Forum

MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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I am inviting Forum members to team up with me in doing My Media English Watch. This way, we can further widen this Forum’s dragnet for bad or questionable English usage in both the print media and broadcast media, thus giving more teeth to our campaign to encourage them to continuously improve their English. All you need to do is pinpoint every serious English misuse you encounter while reading your favorite newspaper or viewing your favorite network or cable TV programs. Just tell me about the English misuse and I will do a grammar critique of it.

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Fused sentences are very serious and annoying grammar violations

Of the many varieties of flawed English that I encounter when reading news and feature stories, I consider fused sentences the most serious and the most annoying. This is because I’m pretty sure that they are not just run-of-the-mill grammar errors arising from haste or oversight but a disturbing sign of an inadequate grasp of how the English language works. As discussed in my book The 10 Most Annoying English Grammar Errors, a fused sentence is formed when two or more clauses are improperly linked or wrongly punctuated, resulting in a poorly articulated and confusing statement. In an essay written by a college freshman, a fused sentence every now and then may be excusable, of course, but in the lead sentence of a major education newsstory?

Consider the following lead sentence I found in the Education news of a leading Metro Manila daily during the weekend:

The Philippine Star: Inscrutable run-on sentence

DepEd to tap services of 22,000 volunteers

Manila, Philippines - The Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach pre-school pupils expected to reach 2.5 million enrollees under its universal kindergarten program this coming school year.

DepEd Assistant Secretary Tonicito Umali said each volunteer, who will work for three to four hours a day[,] will receive a monthly allowance of P3,000.

Like me when I was reading the lead sentence above, you must have stumbled in bafflement at midsentence. The second clause, “expected to reach 2.5 million enrollees under its universal kindergarten program this coming school year,” simply won’t connect to the preceding clause. The sentence suddenly got garbled and won’t make sense because the writer (or perhaps the copyeditor) had been so intent to cram into that sentence every bit of information in just one long uninterrupted burst of words.

On inspection, we find that the problem with that sentence is that it nonsensically fused the following two independent ideas:

1. “the Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach pre-school pupils,” and

2. “enrolment is expected to reach 2.5 million under the DepEd’s universal kindergarten program this coming school year”

Note that these two ideas are actually coordinate and independent clauses—grammar elements that, of course, need to be linked properly and logically for them to make sense together. Of all things, however, the fused sentence was unable to do this basic sentence-combining task.

Here are four options for achieving that correct linkage:

1.  The relative cause option: “The Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach the 2.5 million pre-school pupils who are expected to enroll under its universal kindergarten program this coming school year.”

2. The coordinate conjunction option: “The Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach pre-school pupils this coming school year as enrolment is expected to reach 2.5 million under its universal kindergarten program.”

3. The subordinate conjunction option: “The Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach pre-school pupils this coming school year because enrolment is expected to reach 2.5 million under its universal kindergarten program.”

4. The total rewrite option: “The Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach the 2.5 million pre-school pupils expected to enroll this coming school year under its universal kindergarten program.”

My personal preference is Option 4, for this total rewrite makes for a much more logical, concise, and cohesive sentence—a far cry from the hopelessly tangled original and definitely more elegant and more readable than the other three options above.

SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:

 (1) GMA News: Very awkward, ungrammatical phrasing of sentence

Lacson to grill DOJ chief De Lima before CA

Sen. Panfilo Lacson said that he will be asking “a lot of questions” to Justice Secretary Leila de Lima when she faces the powerful Commission on Appointments (CA), of which he is now a member.

“Marami. I’m preparing all questions... Panoorin ninyo (I am preparing many questions. Just wait and see),” Lacson told reporters in an ambush interview Thursday.

This is a very awkward and ungrammatical phrasing that I rarely see in journalistic English: “Sen. Panfilo Lacson said that he will be asking ‘a lot of questions’ to Justice Secretary Leila de Lima.” As we all know, English is neither spoken nor written that way. You don’t “ask a lot of questions to somebody”; you “ask that somebody a lot of a questions.”

In that grammatically flawed clause, the verb “asking” is functioning transitively but because of the faulty construction, that verb couldn’t act on its legitimate mandatory direct object, the proper noun “Justice Secretary Leila de Lima.” Instead, it wrongly acts on the noun phrase “a lot of questions” as if it were its direct object, which it isn’t; “a lot of questions” is actually an adverbial phrase modifying the verb “will be asking.” In the process, the proper noun “Justice Secretary Leila de Lima” is relegated to a misshapen role as object of the preposition “to,” and this is where the grammar and semantics of that sentence get seriously messed up.

I’m sure that this correct rendition of that badly constructed clause is familiar to most everybody:

“Sen. Panfilo Lacson said that he will be asking Justice Secretary Leila de Lima ‘a lot of questions’.”

In this reconstruction, it’s clear that the proper noun “Justice Secretary Leila de Lima” is the direct object of the verb “will be asking,” that “a lot of questions” is an adverbial phrase modifying “will be asking,” and that the now-excised preposition “to” had no business being in that clause at all.

(2) The Manila Times: Subject-verb disagreement

Hot money continues to surge

TRANSACTIONS in foreign portfolio investments in the first week of May has already surged by more than a third, reflecting investors’ improved risk appetite for emerging assets.

Data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) showed that year-to-date foreign portfolio investments or hot money as of May 7 yielded a net inflow of $437.74 million, up 70 percent from $130.69 million in the same period last year.

I was hoping that after my extensive critique of media’s subject-disagreement errors in the previous two editions of the Forum, I would no longer be encountering grammar errors of this kind for quite a while. But here, in the first sentence of the lead passage above, comes another one: “transactions in foreign portfolio investments in the first week of May has already surged.”

The subject-verb disagreement here is, of course, between the plural noun “transactions”—the true subject of that clause—and the singular verb form “has already surged.” Obviously, this verb form should be in the plural form “have already surged” for it to agree with the plural “transactions,” but the reporter or the copyeditor appears to have decided that the subject of that verb is either the singular noun “May” or the singular noun phrase “the first week of May”—clearly an error in grammar judgment.

So, for good measure, I’m again posting below the boxed cautionary lesson on subject-verb agreement that I presented in last week’s Media English Watch:  

A SYSTEMS APPROACH TO AVOIDING SUBJECT-VERB DISAGREEMENT. The key to routine avoidance of subject-verb disagreement errors is a clear understanding of the concept of the nominal group in English grammar. As I explained in my critique of previous subject-verb disagreement errors in the print and broadcast media, the nominal group consists of a noun and all the other words that modify or characterize that noun. Within a clause or phrase, a nominal group functions as though it is that noun itself, which is referred to as the head or head noun; the items that precede the head noun are called its premodifiers, and the items that come after it are its qualifiers.

The important thing to remember is that in a nominal group, it is the head noun that determines whether the noun phrase is singular or plural. In other words, in a noun clause, the form of the operative verb is always determined by the number of the head noun—singular when the head noun is singular, and plural when the head noun is plural. As a rule, any other noun or pronoun found in the premodifier or in the qualifier of the head noun doesn’t determine or affect the head noun’s being singular or plural.


(3) Philippine Star: Unclear antecedent of pronoun

NAIA Terminal 2 gates cleared of bees

Manila, Philippines - Equipped with vacuum cleaners, maintenance personnel of the Philippine Airlines (PAL) yesterday cleared eight boarding gates of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 2 after a swarm of bees descended on them last Thursday.

Five PAL flights were delayed because of the incident, as the bees entered the passenger tubes, preventing the airport operator from connecting the tube to arriving planes.

In the lead sentence above, can you readily identify the antecedent subject of the pronoun “them” in the prepositional phrase “after a swarm of bees descended on them last Thursday”? Because “them” is a plural noun, the antecedent surely couldn’t be “Terminal 2,” “Philippine Airlines,” or “Ninoy Aquino International Airport,” all of which are singular nouns. But could “them” be referring to the plural noun “vacuum cleaners,” “maintenance personnel,” or “eight boarding gates”? With as many as six noun forms preceding the pronoun “them” in that sentence, it does get pretty confusing figuring out which of them is the correct antecedent.

To avoid confusion and second-guessing by readers in such situations, it’s highly advisable to replace the pronoun with its antecedent noun itself or, if that antecedent is a long phrase, with an abbreviated form or synonym of it.

See how the sentence in question gets much clearer when we do that:

“Equipped with vacuum cleaners, maintenance personnel of the Philippine Airlines (PAL) yesterday cleared eight boarding gates of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 2 after a swarm of bees descended on those gates last Thursday.”

(4) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Wrongly positioned modifier; mixed tenses

Politician behind probiotic health drink dies

CEBU CITY, Philippines—Cebu Vice Gov. Gregorio Sanchez Jr. is not just remembered as a politician whose career spanned 15 years. He was also known as the man behind a popular probiotic health drink sold in the Philippines and at least 9 other countries.

In the lead sentence above, the modifier “not just” is not in its optimal position; instead of modifying the phrase “as a politician whose career spanned 15 years,” it ends up seemingly modifying the verb “remembered” instead. That statement will become much clearer if “not just” is positioned after “remembered” to make it closer to the phrase it’s supposed to  modify.

Also, the two sentences of that lead have mixed their tenses—the first using the present tense “is” and the second the past tense “was.” It would be advisable to use the present tense consistently here.

Here, then, is that two-sentence lead as corrected:

“Cebu Vice Gov. Gregorio Sanchez Jr. is remembered not just as a politician whose career spanned 15 years. He is also known as the man behind a popular probiotic health drink sold in the Philippines and at least nine other countries.”

(5) Manila Bulletin: Uncalled-for use of the modifier “allegedly”

Anti-cyber crime: eight arrested

MANILA, Philippines — Operatives of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Friday swooped down a posh village in Pasig City and arrested at least eight foreign nationals allegedly being hunted by the Taiwanese government for alleged cyber crime.

But NBI-National Capital Region (NCR) chief lawyer Constantino Joson declined in an informal news conference to give the identities of the arrested suspects. He said that they have yet to establish if the suspects are indeed Chinese, or Taiwanese or Hong Kong nationals.

The use of the adjective “alleged” and the adverb “allegedly” is obviously called for when it’s not possible to conclusively establish the veracity or correctness of a declaration, particularly if the statement involves a possible criminal act. When those modifiers are indiscriminately used in the same sentence, however, they can seriously detract from the reliability of the report.

In the lead sentence above, “alleged” is a perfectly valid modifier in the phrase “for alleged cyber crime,” but “allegedly” in the phrase “allegedly being hunted” is totally uncalled for and just makes the statement dubious. After all, the NBI had been officially advised by the Taiwanese government about the fugitive status of those suspects and there’s really no point in casting doubt on the credibility of that advice.

So here’s that problematic sentence as corrected:

“Operatives of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Friday swooped down a posh village in Pasig City and arrested at least eight foreign nationals being hunted by the Taiwanese government for alleged cyber crime.”

(6) The Philippine Star: Wrong modal usage

PCSO mulls 20 percent tax on lottery winnings

Manila, Philippines - This could be bad news for lotto bettors.

The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) is looking into the possibility of imposing a 20 percent withholding tax on the jackpot prizes of lottery games, particularly the 6/55 grand lotto jackpot, which is now almost P300 million.

From the reader’s standpoint, is there any doubt that a 20 percent withholding tax on lotto jackpot prizes is bad news? You bet there isn’t, so that modal “could be,” which suggests less force or certainty to the declaration, should be changed to the categorical “is” instead, as follows:

“This is bad news for lotto bettors.”

(7) GMA News: Excessive semantic hedging in a news report 

2 vehicles with congressional plates caught speeding along “killer highway”

At least two vehicles with "8" plates were accosted Thursday for violating the 60-kph speed limit along the notorious Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City.
***
The driver of the Fortuner, initially identified as Eugenio Talyar, was found to be driving at 68 kph and was flagged down near the Iglesia ni Cristo compound.

However, the report did not immediately say if Aglipay was aboard the vehicle at the time it was flagged down.

A second vehicle with an "8" plate was flagged down for cruising at 63 kph. It had a second plate number ZDF-535.

The driver, identified as Vicente Santiago, did not immediately say who the House of Representatives member the "8" plate was assigned to.

This is actually not a grammar problem but an intriguing puzzler in semantics: What was the network TV reporter thinking when he wrote that the driver of the Fortuner was “initially identified as Eugenio Talyar,” that “the report did not immediately say if Aglipay was aboard the vehicle at the time it was flagged down,” and that the driver “did not immediately say who the House of Representatives member the ‘8’ plate was assigned to”?

Isn’t it obligatory for the TV reporter to verify the initial identification of the individuals being reported about, particularly if these individuals are involved in a crime or misdemeanor? And when the report did not immediately say “if Aglipay was aboard the vehicle at the time it was flagged down” and did not immediately say either “who the House of Representatives member the 8’ plate was assigned to,” shouldn’t the reporter have checked those details first before writing the story?

I believe that in this era of cellular telephony, there’s no acceptable  justification for such semantic hedging about the facts of a TV news report on the web—unless, of course, the reporter is using the phrase “did not immediately say” as a euphemism for “was requested or compelled not to disclose the names.”

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