Author Topic: A confused and grammatically flawed sentence about a fallen dictator  (Read 7135 times)

jonathanfvaldez

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Hi Joe,

Is this sentence, from an article titled "How Qaddafi Reshaped Africa" in the online edition of The Atlantic, grammatically correct?

"Of the three North African countries at the heart of the popular uprisings that have riveted the world over the last several weeks, Libya's Muammar Qaddafi has always done the most to assert his country's African identity, staking its prestige, its riches and his own personal influence above all on its place in the continent."

The way its author Howard French wrote it, shouldn't the subject be "Libya" instead of Libya's Muammar Qaddafi"?

Thanks for you comments.

Jonathan
« Last Edit: October 25, 2011, 07:58:55 AM by Joe Carillo »

Joe Carillo

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Re: A confused and grammatically flawed sentence about a fallen dictator
« Reply #1 on: October 24, 2011, 09:39:04 AM »
The following sentence from the Atlantic’s online edition is confused and grammatically flawed—a serious case of a dangling modifier being made to illogically modify a wrong subject:

“Of the three North African countries at the heart of the popular uprisings that have riveted the world over the last several weeks, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi has always done the most to assert his country’s African identity, staking its prestige, its riches and his own personal influence above all on its place in the continent.”

But no, its subject shouldn’t be Libya but Muammar Qaddafi. The architecture of that sentence tells us that “Muammar Qadaffi,” not “Libya,” is what it wants to talk about. But the problem is that its author Howard French—or the editors of The Atlantic—mistook the possessive form “Libya’s” as the subject of that front-end modifying phrase. Sad to say, even professional writers and editors fall for this treacherous grammar error—thinking that the “apostrophe-s” possessive form remains a noun instead of the adjective that it has become. The fact is that in the possessive form “Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi,” the subject is “Muammar Qaddafi” and the word “Libya’s” is just a modifier, no longer able to function as a subject or object.

So shall we now fix that sentence by doing major grammatical surgery on both the front-end modifying phrase and the main clause? This, understandably, is what a conscientious writer or editor would immediately think of doing when he or she finds something terribly wrong with a sentence. But the surprising thing is that that troubled sentence from The Atlantic doesn’t need any major restructuring at all. Indeed, the culprit that caused all that trouble is just one ill-chosen word—the preposition “of” that starts off that front-end modifying phrase.

See what happens when we replace that “of” with “in”:

“In the three North African countries at the heart of the popular uprisings that have riveted the world over the last several weeks, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi has always done the most to assert his country's African identity, staking its prestige, its riches and his own personal influence above all on its place in the continent.”

With “in” introducing it, that front-end phrase properly becomes a modifier indicating location of the subject “Muammar Qaddafi” rather than an attribute or description of the proper noun “Libya,” which was the faulty sense created by the improper use of the preposition “of” in the original sentence.

The moral of the story here is, of course, that we should be judicious in using prepositions. Despite their unprepossessing size and heft, they can make an astoundingly breathtaking semantic difference in what a sentence says or fails to say.
« Last Edit: October 25, 2011, 07:59:43 AM by Joe Carillo »

Joe Carillo

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Re: A confused and grammatically flawed sentence about a fallen dictator
« Reply #2 on: November 01, 2011, 01:10:51 PM »
“Learn English with Alqaddafi”

The feedback below was e-mailed to me last October 30, 2011 by Forum member Rocky Avila along with a link to a YouTube video entitled  “Learn English with Alqaddafi.”

Rocky wrote:


I’d rather go back to first grade than to attend the English class of Sergeant Kadaffi. Ooooopppps! Colonel pala. That’s a wrong mistake. Ooooppps! Ako naman yata ang maling mag-English. Baka pagagalitan ako ni Mr. Jose A.Carillo nito. Baka sabihin niya, “Rocky, napaka bobo mo naman! Ano ba ang napagaralan mo sa loob ng siyam na taon na binabasa mo ang aking weekly column sa Manila Times Internet Edition? Bukod niyan, bumili ka pa ng libro kong English Plain and Simple, No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today’s Global Language - Second Edition? Member ka pa ng aking Forum. Bobo ka ba talaga, o nagpapatawa ka lang?”
 
Nagpapatawa lang ako, mga kaibigan. Hindi marunong magmura si Mr. Carillo. I learned much from him, that’s why he earned my admiration and utmost respect. Regards and may God bless you all. Have a nice weekend!
 
Rocky

Click this link to view “Learn English with Alqaddafi” on YouTube