MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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Almost a grammar-perfect day for the major broadsheets, but…

I thought I was in for a very pleasant surprise in my media English watch yesterday. I had already gone over two of the major Metro Manila broadsheets and was then halfway through the third without finding any notable grammar or semantic error in any of them. I was therefore about to make the happy conclusion that at least for the day, everything was well with the English of the three majors in Philippine print journalism.

That was until I came upon this lead sentence in the inside news section of the third broadsheet:

(1)
“Apart from its continuing campaign to eradicate illegal vendors, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) said on Monday it will soon launch a crackdown against illegal public utility vehicle terminals in the metropolis, especially those ‘protected’ by barangay officials and unscrupulous policemen for grease money.”

I asked myself, “eradicate illegal vendors”? Doesn’t that amount to extrajudicial killing? At the very least, it sounds like those vendors are to be exterminated like vermin!

After that, my eye was caught by this lead sentence of a lifestyle column in that same broadsheet:

(2)
“Constantly on Red Alert over old houses in demolition, hamburger joints on heritage ground, cultural treasures dazzling with candy colors, it doesn’t take much to warm the hearts of cultural heritage buffs. This time it’s over bits of paint.”

Hmm…I wondered: “What’s the subject of that first sentence?” And I had to ask myself this second question: “Precisely what’s the author saying in that first sentence?”

My temples tightening now, I soon also came upon this lead sentence of a feature story in that lifestyle section:

(3)
“The provinces of Iloilo and Guimaras are setting their caps to be the next big investment hub of the Philippines.”

“Setting their caps”? What does that mean? Is it a new idiom that I had never come across or learned in my life?

And then this, too, grabbed my attention:

(4)
“Did you know that nine out of 10 new restaurants fail? That was brought home to me in a country on the far side of the world, France, which I first visited a long time ago.”

What does the “that” in the second sentence refer to? There seems to be no referent or antecedent for it at all, or is there?

And finally, I was completely stumped by this lead sentence of a feature story in that same lifestyle section:

(5)
“For anyone who wants to have a taste of the historic and landmark events that has a touch of Malaysian culture, they can find it right here without leaving the country. In Sultan Kudarat in Mindanao, named after Sultan Muhammad Dipatuan Kudarat, who was a Maguindanao-sultan reigning from 1623 to 1627, the culture, the places, and its people speak for themselves.”

What, I asked myself, what is the author telling me here? And why had not the copyeditor corrected all those glaring grammatical errors in that sentence?

MY CRITIQUE AND SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS:

Let’s now analyze each of the problematic lead passages above and see how they can be improved.

 (1) Wrong word choice
“Apart from its continuing campaign to eradicate illegal vendors, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) said on Monday it will soon launch a crackdown against illegal public utility vehicle terminals in the metropolis, especially those ‘protected’ by barangay officials and unscrupulous policemen for grease money.”

I’m sure that the author meant that the MMDA’s campaign against illegal vendors was something much milder and more humane than “eradicating” them; otherwise, MMDA Chairman Bayani Fernando will have lots to answer with the Commission of Human Rights. Unless you are contemplating genocide, you can’t just eradicate vendors even if they are engaged in illegal activity. I therefore think that this is just a case of a wrong word choice. We actually can eradicate the “extrajudicial killing” aspect of that sentence by simply changing the word “vendors” to “vending”—meaning that you are eradicating the illegal activity but not the people doing it. Or, to fix the semantic problem, perhaps we can replace the phrase “to eradicate illegal vendors” with, say, “get illegal vendors off city streets.”

Here then are those two alternatives as fleshed out:

(1a)
“Apart from its continuing campaign to eradicate illegal vending, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) said on Monday it will soon launch a crackdown against illegal public utility vehicle terminals in the metropolis, especially those ‘protected’ by barangay officials and unscrupulous policemen for grease money.”

(1b)
“Apart from its continuing campaign to get illegal vendors off city streets, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) said on Monday it will soon launch a crackdown against illegal public utility vehicle terminals in the metropolis, especially those ‘protected’ by barangay officials and unscrupulous policemen for grease money.”

(2) Dangling modifier
“Constantly on Red Alert over old houses in demolition, hamburger joints on heritage ground, cultural treasures dazzling with candy colors, it doesn’t take much to warm the hearts of cultural heritage buffs. This time it’s over bits of paint.”

I’m sure that like me, you didn’t find the subject of that first sentence either, and it’s for the simple reason that none is to be found. It’s a classic case of a sentence with a dangling modifier, and that dangling modifier is “constantly on Red Alert over old houses in demolition, hamburger joints on heritage ground, cultural treasures dazzling with candy colors.” It dangles because its bad placement doesn’t allow it to modify anything in that sentence: not “old houses,” “not hamburger joints,” not “cultural treasures,” and much less the “it” in the main clause, “it doesn’t take much to warm the hearts of cultural heritage buffs.”

Indeed, that “it” couldn’t be the subject of that sentence at all. It’s an anticipatory pronoun that’s called an expletive in English grammar. My digital Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary defines expletive as “a syllable, word, or phrase inserted to fill a vacancy (as in a sentence or a metrical line) without adding to the sense; especially a word (as it in <make it clear which you prefer>) that occupies the position of the subject or object of a verb in normal English word order and anticipates a subsequent word or phrase that supplies the needed meaningful content.” (In linguistics, an expletive is defined as “a word or other grammatical element that has no meaning but is needed to fill a syntactic position, such as the words it and there in the sentences “It’s raining” and “There are many books on the table.”)

The only possible logical subject of that sentence is “cultural buffs,” but we need to reconstruct that sentence to make that subject take on its rightful role. The second sentence also needs to be rewritten to link it more strongly with the first sentence; as it is, the preposition “over” gets in the way and prevents “bits of paint” from being a proper answer to the question, “What doesn’t take much to warm the hearts of cultural heritage buffs?” Take out “over” and the two sentences click into a neat semantic interlock.

Another thing: I was puzzled by the use of the term “Red Alert” with the first letters capitalized; for a moment I thought the author was referring to the lantern or battery brand. To avoid such confusion, it’s advisable to render that term in all small letters, then set it off with an open quote and close quotes, as I have done below in my reconstructions of that sentence.  

Here’s my first reconstruction that eliminates the dangling modifier in that sentence while retaining the modifying phrase up front:

(2b)
“Constantly on ‘red alert’ over old houses in demolition, hamburger joints on heritage ground, and cultural treasures dazzling with candy colors, cultural heritage buffs don’t need much to warm their hearts. This time it is only bits of paint.”

And here’s a more straightforward reconstruction that puts the rightful subject of the sentence up front and immediately puts the burden of the action on that subject, thus making the sentence much clearer and easier to read: 

(2a)
“Cultural heritage buffs are constantly on “red alert” over old houses in demolition, hamburger joints on heritage ground, and cultural treasures dazzling with candy colors, and it doesn’t take much to warm their hearts. This time it is only bits of paint.”

Either way, the dangling modifier is nicely eliminated.

(3) Wrong idiomatic expression
“The provinces of Iloilo and Guimaras are setting their caps to be the next big investment hub of the Philippines.”

I doubt very much if “setting their caps” is what the author meant in that sentence. For one thing, it’s a very obscure idiomatic expression—a colloquial one—that the 1913 Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary defines as “to try to win the favor of a man with a view to marriage,” and that has also the obsolete meaning of “to make a fool of no one.”

Here’s a dialogue from Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1881) that actually uses that idiomatic expression (all italicizations mine):

“Aye, aye, I see how it will be,” said Sir John, “I see how it will be. You will be setting your cap at him [Willoughby] now, and never think of poor Brandon."

“That is an expression, Sir John,” said Marianne, warmly, “which I particularly dislike. I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit is intended; and ‘setting one’s cap at a man,’ or ‘making a conquest,’ are the most odious of all.”

This being the case, I have a strong feeling that the reporter who wrote that lead sentence in the broadsheet’s lifestyle section meant the expression “are setting their sights” instead, which means “determined to pursue a certain course of action,” as in this corrected version of that sentence:

(3a)
“The provinces of Iloilo and Guimaras are setting their sights to be the next big investment hub of the Philippines.”

Are there any other possible idiomatic expressions in place of “setting their sights” here? Do let me know.

(4) Failure of “that” to do its pointing job
“Did you know that nine out of 10 new restaurants fail? That was brought home to me in a country on the far side of the world, France, which I first visited a long time ago.”

I observed earlier that the word “that” in the second sentence of the statement above doesn’t seem to have any referent or antecedent noun at all. It certainly couldn’t be the noun “restaurants” that was brought home to the author; it must be something else. But precisely what was it?

Well, because it’s grammatically inadequate for the task, “that” in this case couldn’t possibly point specifically to anything in the first sentence. It is actually being used as a so-called repeated action reference word, which is meant to represent or point back to ideas, elements, events, or situations presented or described earlier in the composition. Unfortunately, there is no noun in the sentence preceding it that it can point to, so it can’t work as a demonstrative pronoun; instead, it has to take on the role simply of a demonstrative adjective, and a demonstrative adjective can only work with an appropriate noun that can stand for the idea expressed in the preceding sentence. And what might that appropriate noun be?

Under the circumstances, the author should have supplied that noun, which would be one that denotes the core idea of the sentence “Did you know that nine out of 10 new restaurants fail?” That noun might be, say, “realization,” “knowledge,” “information,” “idea,” or words to this effect. I’d pick “realization” anytime, and I’d pair if off with the demonstrative adjective “that.” In the process, though, I’d have to get rid of the phrase “was brought home to me” in the author’s second sentence, which doesn’t mesh well with “realization.” Instead, I would simply use the verb phrase “struck me.”

I will then reconstruct the original statement as follows:

(4a)
“Did you know that nine out of 10 new restaurants fail? That realization struck me in a country on the far side of the world, France, which I first visited a long time ago.”

The trick is to pair off the demonstrative adjective “that” with a suitable noun that sums up or captures the idea of the first sentence. Only then will such constructions using “that” work when, all by its lonesome, it’s unable to work as a demonstrative noun.

But there are two even simpler—if less dramatic—alternatives:

(4b)
“Did you know that nine out of 10 new restaurants fail? I came to know about this in a country on the far side of the world, France, which I first visited a long time ago.”

(4c)
“Did you know that nine out of 10 new restaurants fail? I learned about this in a country on the far side of the world, France, which I first visited a long time ago.”

(5) Inappropriate word choices and unclear phrasing; subject-verb disagreements; run-on sentence
“For anyone who wants to have a taste of the historic and landmark events that has a touch of Malaysian culture, they can find it right here without leaving the country. In Sultan Kudarat in Mindanao, named after Sultan Muhammad Dipatuan Kudarat, who was a Maguindanao-sultan reigning from 1623 to 1627, the culture, the places, and its people speak for themselves.”

The above lead paragraph is semantically and grammatically flawed and precisely what it’s saying is difficult to fathom. Here are the reasons why:

1. The first sentence is wordy, badly phrased, and seriously grammatically flawed:
(a) It invokes the wrong sense—“taste”—instead of the correct one—“sight” or
“feeling”—for things that are meant to be seen or felt, which in this case are
“historic and landmark events.” For a moment, therefore, the reader is led to think
that what the author is talking about is Malaysian cuisine, not culture.
(b) It uses the plural pronoun “they” as antecedent subject in the main clause, but uses
the singular pronoun to “anyone” to refer to refer to that pronoun in the subordinate
prepositional phrase. It makes another subject-verb disagreement error by using the
singular verb “has” to refer to the plural antecedent noun “events.”
2. The word “country” in the first sentence doesn’t clearly refer to the Philippines, which
it should; “country” thus could easily be mistaken for Malaysia because the preceding elements in the sentence refer to Malaysia.
3. The second sentence is a run-on sentence that’s so overloaded with details that what
it’s saying is very difficult to grasp. It needs to spin off some of its elements into another sentence to relieve the semantic congestion.
4. The phrase “named after Sultan Muhammad Dipatuan Kudarat” is actually a misplaced
modifier; due to its wrong position, it modifies the noun “Mindanao” instead of
“Sultan Kudarat.”

Below is a proposed major overhaul of the sentence:

“You don’t need to leave the Philippines to get an idea of the how much Malaysian culture had influenced the country. Just go to Sultan Kudarat province in Mindanao. In this province that was named after Sultan Muhammad Dipatuan Kudarat, a Maguindanao sultan who reigned from 1623 to 1627, that cultural influence is very much in evidence in the place and in its people.”

This will be all for this week.

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