For a restive volcano that was described by a major Metro Manila broadsheet the other week as about “to blow its top,” Mayon is turning out to be actually courteous and sociable—and with a consummate sense of timing at that. That is, if this reportage by another broadsheet last January 31 is to be believed:
Manila Bulletin: Full moon can coax Mayon fireworks
LEGAZPI CITY — Natural loud bangs and fireworks display courtesy of Mount Mayon could welcome 2010 here as volcanologists said Wednesday the full moon on January 1 might trigger the long-awaited hazardous eruption of the volcano.
Resident volcanologist Ed Laguerta admitted that there were cases in the past when major eruptions of Mayon occurred during full moon or what volcanologists called as earth tide, a time when the moon is closer to the earth and its gravitational pull stronger.
“Statistically, it happened in the past. So it is accepted as a trigger factor,” Laguerta said.
In the spirit of the New Year that’s now upon us, we probably can let pass the highly imaginative and exuberant figurative language of that headline, “Full moon can coax Mayon fireworks.” After all, in the natural scheme of things as described by the Phivolcs experts, the full moon’s stronger gravitation pull could indeed be scientifically shown to be capable of triggering a major eruption. We can therefore take the extreme literary license used by the reporter for that statement at its face value.
But I think we should take exception to the reporter’s attribution of a good nature to Mayon when he says that the volcano could extend the “courtesy” of “natural loud bangs and fireworks display” to the Albayanons and kibitzers when New Year’s Day comes. I think this personification of Mayon, complete with a sociable desire to indulge humans in their primal urge for explosive year-end revelry, is dangerously wayward and misleading language. For whether it’s New Year’s Day or not, that’s still a very restive, violent volcano out there. Treating Mayon as if it were a fellow New Year’s Day reveler and consorting with it would be a very perilous enterprise indeed!
And this misguided personification of Mayon isn’t all that’s wrong with that lead sentence. Its semantics is also perilously way off the mark. By saying that Mayon’s hazardous eruption is “long awaited,” that sentence gives the wrong impression that the eruption is something people look forward to as a welcome development—something to be greatly desired. It definitely isn’t. That hazardous eruption is something not to be awaited but to be deathly feared, something that everyone should pray mighty hard wouldn’t happen.
(This expectation of a big bang as the end of a story is perhaps a manifestation of a culture that largely treats news—whether good or bad or disastrous—as mass entertainment. As they do in the movies, newspaper readers and TV viewers get to expect an obligatory slam-bang denouement, complete with incendiary explosives that obliterate entire villages or building complexes.)
With these thoughts in mind, I propose the following rewrite for that lead sentence to put it on an even keel both semantically and logically:
“LEGAZPI CITY —
Natural loud bangs and fireworks by Mount Mayon could welcome 2010 here as volcanologists said Wednesday the full moon on January 1 might trigger
a much-feared hazardous eruption of the volcano.”
Even with this rewrite, though, the slippery use of the coordinating conjunction “as” should also be cause for semantic concern. It’s clear, of course, that “as” is functioning in that sentence in the sense of “because,” but the reader has no way of figuring out precisely who’s saying which of the two independent statements in that sentence. The second independent statement is that “the full moon on January 1 might trigger a much-feared hazardous eruption of the volcano,” and it’s properly attributed to the volcanologists. But what about the first independent statement, “Natural loud bangs and fireworks by Mount Mayon could welcome 2010 here”? Was it said by the volcanologists, too, or was it the reporter’s own interpretation? It looks like the latter is the case, but we can never be sure owing to the slippery linking of the two coordinate yet actually independent clauses by the coordinate conjunction “as.”
One way to clarify which statement should be attributed to whom is to spin off the two statements into separate sentences, as follows:
“LEGAZPI CITY — Natural loud bangs and fireworks by Mount Mayon could welcome 2010 here. This is because the full moon on January 1 might trigger a much-feared hazardous eruption of the volcano, volcanologists said Wednesday.”
This time, it’s clear that the first statement is the reporter’s own figurative interpretation of the volcanologists’ expert pronouncement in the second sentence. It also avoids the semantic confusion that often attends the use of the coordinate conjunction “as,” which could actually mean several things other than the “because” sense that newspaper writers sometimes wrongly assign to it. (
Click to read a discussion of the uses and misuses of “as” earlier in My Media English Watch.)
In closing, I would like to note that except for the problematic lead sentence above, the major reportage of the four leading Metro Manila broadsheets last January 31—like their reportage that I critiqued the previous week—was admirably free of notable English grammar and usage errors.
SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:(1) Manila Bulletin: Total narrative failure due to mixed-up storytellingSister ferries collide off Batangas, none hurt“Hundreds of people onboard Starlite Nautica
traversing to Calapan cried for help after the ferry bumped its sister ferry, Starlite Navigator,
when it was being towed after its engine broke down.
“When the Starlite Nautica
slightly collided with the Navigator, people staying at the rear-end of the Starlite Nautica immediately got their life jackets and were readying to leave the ferry.
“At 8:45 p.m., Starlite Nautica announced that it needed to stop
to rescue another ship that encountered an engine problem after it received a distress call from the Navigator.”
Until now I still couldn’t make heads and tails of this story, and I doubt if many of those who read it did. To begin with, the first sentence of the story is incoherent and confusing, overloaded as it is with no less than five operative verbs—all clamoring for the reader’s immediate attention. As might be expected, the result is semantic bedlam. The sequence of events is so hazy we can’t even figure out how many marine vessels were involved, and which ferry was being towed and which ferry’s engine broke down.
I’m afraid that I couldn’t offer a decent rewrite of that story. Any volunteers from among the Forum members who would like to try? Or if the reporter who wrote that story chances upon this critique, perhaps he or she could write a more coherent and clearer account of the incident the second time around?
(2) Manila Bulletin: Overly modified noun that’s not even the proper subjectNegros Oriental encounter yields another dead NPA rebel“Philippine Army troopers recovered
a second dead suspected New People’s Army rebel Tuesday morning in the hinterlands of
Sta. Catalina, Negros Oriental as massive military operations against the insurgents continue without
let-up.”
The noun phrase I have underlined in the lead sentence above is a case of an extremely overmodified noun—one that’s not even the real subject of the noun phrase. Note that the operative noun “rebel” is modified by a total seven words piled on top of one another, semantically crushing it almost beyond recognition. I would think that as a rule, anything in excess of four layers of modifiers makes a noun phrase semantically unstable.
Here’s that problematic sentence using a reconstruction of that noun phrase with fewer layers of modification:
“Philippine Army troopers recovered
the body of another suspected New People’s Army rebel Tuesday morning in the hinterlands of
Sta. Catalina, Negros Oriental, as massive military operations against the insurgents continue without
letup.”
Note that the operative noun of the noun phrase is no longer the noun “rebel” but the noun “body,” which is actually what was recovered.
(3) The Manila Times: A matter of physical location, not inclusion2,000 plus foreigners get close to lava daily “LEGAZPI CITY, Albay: Thousands of tourists were flocking to the restive Mayon Volcano here, with many even risking their lives to get close to the spectacular flowing lava, authorities said Wednesday.
“
Gov. Joey Salceda, whose province of Albay includes Mayon, said that 2,400 tourists a day have been pouring into the area since the famously active volcano started oozing lava on December 14,
compared with about 200 a day before.”
The nonrestrictive relative modifying clause that I underlined in the second sentence above is improperly worded and constructed. The verb “includes” is semantically defective because Mayon Volcano’s being in Albay province is not a matter of inclusion but of physical location.
Also, the phrase “compared with about 200 a day before” is a badly misplaced modifier, positioned so far apart from the noun phrase it’s supposed to modify (“2,400 tourists a day”) that it seems to be modifying something else.
Here’s a better rendition of that problematic sentence:
“
Gov. Joey Salceda of Albay, the province where Mayon is located, said that 2,400 tourists a day—
compared to about 200 a day before—have been pouring into the area since the famously active volcano started oozing lava on December 14.”
Here’s an even better and more straightforward construction of that sentence, considering that the first sentence already makes it clear that the province in the story is Albay:
“
Albay Gov. Joey Salceda said that 2,400 tourists a day—
compared to about 200 a day before—have been pouring into the area since the famously active volcano started oozing lava on December 14.”
Note that for clarity, both alternative reconstructions treat the phrase “compared to about 200 a day before” as a parenthetical, setting it off from the main body of the sentence by a pair of double-dashes. (
Click this link for an extensive discussion of parentheticals in the Forum.)
