Author Topic: GIVE YOUR ENGLISH THE WINNING EDGE CHAPTER 1-3 Part 2  (Read 8700 times)

curiouscat

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GIVE YOUR ENGLISH THE WINNING EDGE CHAPTER 1-3 Part 2
« on: May 30, 2010, 11:41:18 AM »
1) I liked the line "He was blissfully unaware to the gaffe", I imagine a newscaster still smiling confidently after a blunder. After a few minutes, I tried to recall the line, and I found myself saying: "He was blissfully unaware of his own gaffe."  Can gaffe be used this way?

2) Can one also say Compounded with instead of Compounded by dangling prepositions?

3) Can one also say "Most of them are clueless about how to write a decent letter", instead of saying "Most of them are clueless on how to write a decent letter".

4) Is the word muddle commonly used to pertain to confusion of action or speech?




Joe Carillo

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Re: GIVE YOUR ENGLISH THE WINNING EDGE CHAPTER 1-3 Part 2
« Reply #1 on: May 30, 2010, 02:43:10 PM »
(1) The form “unaware of” is just one of the many adjective phrases in English that, by convention, require a specific preposition to go with it. There might be some semantic reason for using “of” instead of, say, “to” in “unaware of,” but it would be extremely difficult to explain it; for nonspecialist purposes, it’s better to simply say that “of” in “unaware of” just came be the norm after long, repeated use by native English speakers. This is how I used the adjective phrase in my original sentence in Chapter 1 of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge: “He was blissfully unaware of the gaffe.” The other sentence you gave as an example is, of course, also perfectly correct: “He was blissfully unaware of his own gaffe.” Here, the statement makes it specific as to whose gaffe it was.

However, in the case of, say, the adjective “oblivious,” the norm is to use “to” after it in the adjective phrase “oblivious to,” as in “He was blissfully oblivious to the gaffe.” We can therefore say that the choice of preposition for an adjective phrase is largely conventional and on a case-to-case basis depending on the adjective itself. As I said earlier, there might me a semantic justification for that choice, but it’s very difficult to explain it and to make people understand it. For nonnative English speakers, in fact, a much better approach to being scrupulously correct in using adjective phrases is just to memorize them. To begin with, here are some of the most common adjective phrases:

“angry with Angela” (not “angry of Angela”), “capable of” (not “capable with”), “identical with” or “identical to” (not “identical of”), “impatient at her conduct” (not “impatient of her conduct”), “impatient of restraint” (not “impatient with restraint”), “impatient for a raise” (not “impatient of a raise” or “impatient with a raise”), “impatient with a person (not “impatient in a person” or “impatient for a person”), “independent of” (not “independent from”), “oblivious of something forgotten” (not “oblivious with something forgotten”), “prior to” (not “prior from”), “similar to” (not “similar with”), and “superior to” (not “superior of” or “superior from”).

(2) I used the phrase “compounded by” in this statement in Chapter 2 of Give Your English the Winning Edge: “‘what is going on and where it is going to’ is a prosaic expression without a clear antecedent and one that’s further compounded by a dangling preposition” [the italicization here is only for emphasis]. The phrasal verb “compounded by” is used here in the sense of “adding to” or “augmenting” in a negative way; in other words, “further complicating the problem.” In contrast, the phrasal verb “compounded with” means “combined with,” as in “The hydrogen was compounded with oxygen to form water.” This sense is entirely different from “compounded by.”

(3) Yes, I think we can interchangeably use the prepositions “on” and “about” in that sentence:  “Most of them are clueless on how to write a decent letter.” “Most of them are clueless about how to write a decent letter.” On hindsight, though, I should have used the more commonly used “clueless about,” which is the usage cited by my Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary.

(4) Is the word “muddle” commonly used to pertain to confusion of action or speech? Yes, but that’s when the verb is in its intransitive sense, as in “She muddles her conversations with a lot of obscure sayings.” In the transitive sense, however, “muddle” can mean any of the following: (1) to make turbid or muddy, (2) to befog or stupefy especially with liquor, (3) to mix confusedly, and (4) to make a mess of or to bungle. The verb has to have a direct object in all of these meanings, as in “The raw sewage from the factory muddled the stream nearby.” “He muddled his job to the point of getting fired.”
« Last Edit: May 31, 2010, 09:24:24 AM by Joe Carillo »

curiouscat

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Re: GIVE YOUR ENGLISH THE WINNING EDGE CHAPTER 1-3 Part 2
« Reply #2 on: June 01, 2010, 10:53:36 PM »
Thank you for answering my questions. I like how distinct your explanation is to the subtle word combination of "compounded by" and "compounded with". I hadn't seen the stark difference before you pointed it out.