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Grammar errors too serious to be spared from rigorous postmortem

Due to the mounting international indignation over the horribly violent end of the hostage-taking incident in Manila last Monday (August 23), I was initially hesitant to do a grammar critique of the Philippine print media’s news coverage of the incident. As it is, their TV and radio network counterparts are at this very moment still taking a lot of flak for their intrusive live coverage of the standoff between the hostage-taker and the police forces, a coverage that some quarters say might well have contributed to the senseless deaths of eight of the foreign tourists and the hostage-taker himself. I therefore told myself that if the grammar error in their stories were anyway not that “major major”—a now hugely popular phrase because of the semantically faulty way it was used by the Philippine bet to the Miss Universe pageant in Las Vegas also last Monday—I would just close my eyes to them so as not to further exacerbate an already error-laden week dominated by profuse fault-finding.

Ultimately, though, I just couldn’t let pass without comment two major grammar errors in the news reporting of the hostage-taking incident by two of the Metro Manila broadsheets. I thought that those two grammar errors—like the bungled police operations to free the hostages—were much too serious and instructive to be spared from a rigorous grammar postmortem.

Let’s now closely dissect those major English grammar errors:

(1) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Convoluted sentence with dangling relative clause

There’s a very serious grammar error as well as a sentence construction problem in the first sentence of the lead passage above, but so we can clearly analyze both, let’s first drop the attribution of that statement, the phrase “the city’s chief of police told a Senate investigation Thursday,” which only serve to structurally complicate the problem. The simplified sentence will then read as follows:

“It was Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim who ordered the arrest of the brother of the dismissed policeman who held hostage Hong Kong tourists in Manila last Monday that resulted in the deaths of eight tourists.”

Now what we have here is a complex sentence with “it was Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim” as the main clause and with no less than three stringed-up subordinate relative clauses, namely (a) “who ordered the arrest of the brother of the dismissed policeman,” (b) “who held hostage Hong Kong tourists in Manila last Monday,” and (c) “that resulted in the deaths of eight tourists.”

Although stringing up three subordinate relative clauses isn’t necessarily grammatically or structurally wrong, more reader-friendly writers routinely avoid it because it tends to seriously convolute sentences and make them very confusing. This is because the repeated use of the relative pronoun “who” and the subordinating conjunction “that” in long sentences has a way of either making them lose their grip on their antecedents (the nouns they refer to) or making them end up as misplaced or dangling modifiers. It is therefore highly advisable to limit stringed-up relative clauses to at most two; using three or more is to court grammatical and structural disaster.

This is precisely what happened to the lead sentence in question here. The first two subordinate relative clauses, “who ordered the arrest of the brother of the dismissed policeman” and “who held hostage Hong Kong tourists in Manila last Monday,” manage to comfortably cling to their respective antecedent nouns because they are positioned adjacent to one another—the first relative clause to “Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim” as its antecedent (and therefore the noun that the clause modifies), and the second relative clause to “the dismissed policeman” as its antecedent ((and therefore the noun that the second clause, in turn, modifies).

But such isn’t the case with the third subordinate relative clause, “that resulted in the deaths of eight tourists.” No matter where we look in that sentence, we just couldn’t find a grammatical or logical antecedent for that clause; in other words, it has ended up as a dangling modifying phrase. Of course, what would qualify as antecedent for the relative clause “that resulted in the deaths of eight tourists” is a noun or noun phrase like, say, “hostage-taking” or “bungled rescue operation,” but the sentence had not provided for such an antecedent. So, with not a single noun to logically cling to, the relative subordinate clause “that resulted in the deaths of eight tourists” just dangles in that sentence.

How do we fix a problematic sentence with three stringed-up relative subordinate clauses, the last of which has ended up as a dangling modifier?

One quick, easy fix is to eliminate the third relative subordinate clause “that resulted in the deaths of eight tourists” by restructuring it into a modifying phrase introduced by the progressive form of the operative verb “result,” as follows:

“It was Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim who ordered the arrest of the brother of the dismissed policeman who held hostage Hong Kong tourists in Manila last Monday, resulting in the death of eight tourists.”

This isn’t a particularly effective and elegant fix, though, for it’s not easy for readers to grasp the fact that the antecedent of the modifying phrase “resulting in the deaths of eight tourists” is actually the verb phrase “held hostage Hong Kong tourists in Manila last Monday.” Indeed, in this rather abstruse but grammatically acceptable construction, the modifying phrase “resulting in the deaths of eight tourists” is acting as an adverbial modifier of the operative verb “held hostage.”

A much better grammatical device for avoiding the misplacement or the dangling of relative modifying clauses is the so-called summative modifier. A summative modifier introduces an altogether new word or phrase that sums up a core idea of the preceding clause, then makes that word or phrase the thematic subject of the succeeding relative clause or clauses. In other words, the summative modifier concisely recapitulates a major idea presented earlier in the sentence, and the relative clause in turn elaborates on it with new information.

In the case of the lead sentence in question here, a summative modifier that we can quickly come up with is the noun “incident,” which pretty well sums up the core idea of the main clause and the two subordinate relative clauses that follow it. We can then use that summative modifier to reconstruct the sentence, as follows:

“It was Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim who ordered the arrest of the brother of the dismissed policeman who held hostage Hong Kong tourists in Manila last Monday, an incident that resulted in the death of eight tourists.”

Of course, more imaginative and resourceful writers can come with an even better summative modifier than “incident.” For instance, a summative modifier that aptly adds relevant detail is the noun phrase “police rescue attempt,” as in the following construction of that sentence:

“It was Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim who ordered the arrest of the brother of the dismissed policeman who held hostage Hong Kong tourists in Manila last Monday, the police rescue attempt for whom resulted in the death of eight of them.”

We can come up with even more summative modifiers for sentences of this kind, but I think the point is already clear: To prevent misplaced or dangling relative modifying phrases, writers and editors need to avoid stringing up three or more subordinate relative clauses in a sentence, and that one way to effectively get rid of a dangling relative modifying phrase is to introduce it instead with a summative modifier.

Just one more thing to tidy things up: we need to restore the attribution to remain faithful to the original lead sentence. With a summative modifier in place, though, it wouldn’t be structurally advisable to attach that attribution to the tail end of the sentence. Look how choppy that sentence will read if we do that:

“It was Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim who ordered the arrest of the brother of the dismissed policeman who held hostage Hong Kong tourists in Manila last Monday, the police rescue attempt for whom resulted in the death of eight of them, the city’s chief of police told a Senate investigation Thursday.”

It will be much better to spin off the attribution into a separate sentence:

“It was Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim who ordered the arrest of the brother of the dismissed policeman who held hostage Hong Kong tourists in Manila last Monday, the police rescue attempt for whom resulted in the death of eight of them. The city’s chief of police made this assertion to a Senate investigation Thursday.”

(2) Manila Bulletin: Sentence constructions that extremely delay the delivery of the operative verb; wrong word choice (“smooth”)

If you found the first and third sentences so infuriatingly difficult to read, it’s because their operative verbs come too late in the sentence, so it’s only towards the end that we are finally able to figure out what each of these sentences is all about. In the case of the first sentence, the problem is further compounded by a wrong word choice, the adjective “smooth”; it should properly be the verb “smoothen” instead.

1. First sentence: The basic idea in that lead sentence—with all the qualifying and modifying phrases removed—is “The high-level delegation…did not leave as scheduled on Thursday.” However, a total of 22 words (“to smooth relations between China and the Philippines following the death of Chinese and Canadian nationals in the hostage-taking incident last Monday”) gets between the subject “delegation” and the operative verb “did not leave,” making the grammatical and semantic link between them weak and flimsy. A major principle in English sentence construction is that a verb works best when the doer of the action is positioned as near to it as possible. We therefore should always find ways to position a verb and the doer of the action close to each other—if possible adjacent to each other—to make our sentences clear and easily readable.
2. Third sentence: In the third sentence, the basic idea in the prepositional phrase that starts with “to ensure” is this: “to ensure that the mission of the high-level delegation to Hong Kong… is achieved.” However, as in the case of the first sentence, a total of 9 words (“to officially explain what happened during Monday’s hostage-taking incident”) gets between the subject (“to ensure that the mission of the high-level delegation to Hong Kong”) and the operative verb “is achieved.” Based on the same English grammar principle in Item (a) above, this makes the grammatical and semantic link between them weak and flimsy. For sentence clarity, we need to find a way to make that subject and the operative verb as close to each other as possible.

Here’s a suggested reconstruction of that structurally problematic passage:

“The high-level Philippine delegation assigned to explain Monday’s hostage-taking incident to Chinese officials did not leave for Beijing as scheduled on Thursday.

***

“The DFA said it is still awaiting arrangements from the Chinese side to ensure the success of the Philippine mission that will officially explain what happened during Monday’s hostage-taking incident.”

Note that in the first sentence, the gap between the subject and operative verb has been reduced from 22 words to only 9 words. In the case of the third sentence, a total rewrite was needed to close the gap between the subject and the operative verb of the prepositional phrase in question. The idea in the basic statement “to ensure that the mission…is achieved” was replaced with the semantically equivalent “to ensure the success of the Philippine mission” to make the operative verb and its object closer to each other, thus making the statement much clearer and more readable.     

SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:

(1) The Manila Times:

The first sentence of the lead statement above is a classic case of misuse of a restrictive relative modifying clause as a nonrestrictive relative modifying clause. The subordinate clause “who supposedly had mishandled a hostage crisis that left eight Hong Kong tourists dead” shouldn’t be set off from the main clause by commas because it is an integral part of the subject “four police officers,” making these particular police officers distinct from the universe of all other police officers.

The correct construction of that sentence is therefore as follows (without the commas):

“Four police officers who supposedly had mishandled a hostage crisis that left eight Hong Kong tourists dead were suspended by authorities on Wednesday.”

Of course, there are those who’d be bothered by the intervening 14 words between the subject of the reconstructed sentence (“the police officers who supposedly had mishandled a hostage crisis that left eight Hong Kong tourists dead”) and the operative verb “were suspended”—a situation that does make the sentence somewhat difficult to comprehend. For them, a good recourse is to render that sentence in the active voice:

“Authorities suspended on Wednesday four police officers who supposedly had mishandled a hostage crisis that left eight Hong Kong tourists dead.”

(2) Manila Bulletin: Semantically flawed sentence

The first sentence of the lead statement above is semantically flawed because of its misuse of the preposition “as.” It gives the wrong sense that Maria Venus Raj’s arrival was dependent on her call on her critics to stop making fun of her answer in the beauty contest. Her arrival and her call on her critics are actions that are actually additive in nature, and this rewrite of that sentence replacing “as” with “and” makes the semantic difference clear:

“Maria Venus Raj, 2010 Miss Universe 4th runnerup, arrived early Thursday morning and called on her critics to “move on’’ and stop making fun of her answer in the beauty contest in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, last Monday night.”

Another way to capture this correct sense is to render her call on her critics in the form of a progressive-tense modifying phrase:

“Maria Venus Raj, 2010 Miss Universe 4th runnerup, arrived early Thursday morning, calling on her critics to “move on’’ and stop making fun of her answer in the beauty contest in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, last Monday night.”

(3) Manila Bulletin: Subject-verb disagreement

This might still come as a surprise to not a few people, but the phrase “as well as”—along  with “together with” and “along with”—isn’t the same as the additive function word “and.” When “as well as” follows a subject and introduces a phrase, “as well as” doesn’t compound the subject and that phrase; instead, the phrase introduced by “as well as” simply modifies the subject. So when the subject is singular, the fact that it is followed by an “as well as” phrase doesn’t make it plural.

The correct construction of that sentence in question is therefore as follows:

“The government as well as local private companies is being invited to participate in VIV Asia 2011, a major international agricultural trade show that will be held in Bangkok on March 9 to 11 next year.”

The subject will similarly be singular when “along with” is used, so the verb will be in the singular form:

“The government along with local private companies is being invited to participate in VIV Asia 2011, a major international agricultural trade show that will be held in Bangkok on March 9 to 11 next year.”

It becomes clearer that the subject remains singular in such a sentence when it’s rendered in the following form:

“Along with local private companies, the government is being invited to participate in VIV Asia 2011, a major international agricultural trade show that will be held in Bangkok on March 9 to 11 next year.”

However, when “and” is used instead of “as well as,” the two subjects are indeed compounded and require the plural form of the verb, as follows:

“The government and local private companies are being invited to participate in VIV Asia 2011, a major international agricultural trade show that will be held in Bangkok on March 9 to 11 next year.”

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