Sphinx, let’s see if you’re right that there’s something grammatically wrong about this sentence:
“Despite prayers and pleas of his countrymen, China yesterday executed a 35-year old man convicted of drug trafficking…”
Since the usage in the lead sentence above isn’t the typical open-and-shut case that I usually deal with here in My Media English Watch, I invited Forum members and good-English fanciers to comment on your feedback.
IMAGE CREDIT: ALJAZEERA.COMHOLY MASS 2011 FOR FILIPINO DRUG MULES EXECUTED IN CHINA (2011)
Forum member Hill Roberts, who’s based in Malaga, Spain, posted this lone comment about that sentence construction:
“Why should the PDI reporter start the sentence with a preposition ‘despite’ anyway? Wouldn’t it have been better if the sentence started with, ‘A 35-year old Filipino man was convicted of drug trafficking despite...’”
From the standpoint of logic and relevance, I think Hill’s suggested approach to the construction of that lead sentence is much better than the
Inquirer’s. My reason for preferring her approach, however, goes beyond just grammar considerations. I really can’t see the journalistic propriety of giving more prominence in that lead sentence to the prayers and pleas of his Filipino countrymen on his behalf. It’s bad enough that in reporting the efforts to stave off China’s execution of that doomed Filipino drug mule, the news story made it wrongly appear that many if not all Filipinos were actually rooting for him as if he were not a convicted criminal.
Indeed, that lead statement conveys a strong but irrational cause-and-effect premise that China’s justice system can be swayed or subverted by prayers and pleas. The fact, however, is this: China’s justice system operates on an entirely different social, ideological, and religious plane compared to ours, one that’s impervious to our devout religious desire or predisposition to have justice done our way for a capital offense committed in another land. It therefore seems to me that the strident calls to China to spare that convicted drug mule’s life was nothing more than an excessive and unreasoning exercise of political and sectarian theater.
But now back to your suspicion that something’s not right about the grammar and construction of that lead sentence in the
Inquirer story:
“Despite prayers and pleas of his countrymen, China yesterday executed a 35-year old man convicted of drug trafficking…”
It’s clear that what you had in mind was that the prepositional phrase “despite prayers and pleas of his countrymen” is a dangler or perhaps a misplaced modifier, considering that it appears to be wrongly modifying the proper noun “China” as its subject instead of the noun phrase “35-year old man convicted of drug trafficking.” For that reason, you suggested the following rewrite for that lead sentence:
“Despite prayers and pleas of his countrymen, a 35-year old man convicted of drug trafficking in China was executed yesterday…”
I would say that your version is superior grammatically to the original lead sentence. It removes any doubt that it’s the doomed drug mule and not China that’s the subject of the modifying phrase up front of that sentence. This time, the semantic connection between the pronoun “his” and its referent noun phrase “a 35-year old man” is strong and airtight, so we can totally banish from our mind the fleeting fugitive thought that the pronoun “his” could actually be referring to a person named “China.”
But I think the big question remains unanswered:
Is that lead sentence in the Inquirer grammatically wrong and indefensible? My answer is no. It’s no doubt an iffy construction, but I think the propitious presence of the pronoun “his” in the modifying phrase “despite prayers and pleas of his countrymen” saves the day for that sentence. That pronoun establishes a grammatically and semantically valid link to the subject “a 35-year-old man” in the main clause; without that “his,” that modifying phrase certainly would have dangled in that sentence. As it is, with the pronoun “his” as grammatical anchor, that phrase can be validly viewed as modifying not the noun phrase “a 35-year-old man” but the entire main clause instead.
Still, I think the reader would have been spared from the confusion if that lead sentence were constructed along the lines suggested by Hill Roberts. For greater clarity, I would just make a little tweak to her approach so the reconstruction can be made as faithful as possible to the facts in the original lead sentence.
Now, considering everything that we have discussed above, here’s the improvement of that original sentence that I have in mind:
“A 35-year-old Filipino convicted of drug trafficking in China was executed by lethal injection yesterday despite prayers and pleas of his countrymen to have his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment. The doomed man, who was not identified at the request of his family, is the fourth national from the Philippines to be put to death in China for peddling dangerous drugs.”
---------------
*POSTSCRIPT: Simply for the record, the complete two-paragraph lead passage of that news story read as follows (underlining mine):
Despite prayers and pleas of his countrymen, China on Thursday executed a 35-year-old man convicted of drug trafficking, the fourth national from the Philippines to be put to death for peddling dangerous drugs by the world’s most prolific executioner.
Hours before he received lethal injection, the Filipino, who was not identified at the request of his family, was allowed to meet briefly with his two siblings and two cousins, who traveled to south China’s Guangxi province, where the execution was carried out.
Sphinx actually overlooked an even more grievous error—this time an indefensible one—in that lead sentence: the grammatically faulty construction of the phrase “the fourth national from the Philippines to be put to death in China for peddling dangerous drugs by the world’s most prolific executioner.” Here, the phrase “by the world’s most prolific executioner” is a horribly misplaced modifier, making it appear that the drugs peddled by the death convict were manufactured by China itself. Even worse than this grammar error, the statement makes the gratuitous, insolent, and bizarre statement that China is “the world’s most prolific executioner.” Since when was the execution of criminals made a measure of a country’s productivity? I would think that even a rabidly adversarial editorial in a respectable newspaper would shy away from using such a pointedly disparaging and incendiary tag, so what was the reporter thinking when she wrote it, and why did the editor allow it to see print in that news story?RELATED READING:China executes Filipinos for drug trafficking (2011)SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:(1) GMA News Online: Wrong word choiceCanadian musical inspired by Cebu dancing inmates
A group of Filipinos in Canada shed a new and “popping” light to life in prison with an interactive musical web series inspired by the viral video starring the “dancing inmates” from the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines.
Titled “Prison Dancer,” the musical series shown via YouTube features an Asian-Canadian cast bringing life to an RnB-pop repertoire originally composed by its director Romeo Candido.
The lead sentence above misuses the intransitive verb “shed” in the phrase “shed a new and ‘popping’ light to life in prison.” The sense of “shed” ranges from “spill,” “scatter,” “disperse,” and “discard” but certainly not in the “to send or put forth” context of that sentence. The correct verb for that sense is the transitive verb “cast,” as in this rewrite:
“A group of Filipinos in Canada
cast a new and ‘popping’ light to life in prison with an interactive musical web series inspired by the viral video starring the ‘dancing inmates’ from the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines.”
(2) The Philippine Star: Wrong measure of crowd sizeActivists march again to Mendiola
MANILA, Philippines - A large volume of protesters today marched in Manila and will try to enter the historic Don Chino Roces Bridge (formerly Mendiola) as they commemorate the International Human Rights Day.
I know that there are occasional instances where the colloquial phrase “a large volume of people” is used to refer to the movement of people as measured at some point, but I think that the more subject-specific phrase “a large volume of protesters” still has a long way to go before becoming acceptable in journalism. The use of “volume” for such a measure is in the same grammatically iffy league as the noun “amount” in this sentence I critiqued long ago in my English-usage column: “A large amount of people are attending the multisectoral rally at Rizal Park” (
“The Proper Use of ‘Amount’ and ‘Number’”). The correct word to refer to the size of crowds in both instances is, of course, “number,” so that lead sentence is best rewritten as follows:
“
A large number of protesters today marched in Manila and will try to enter the historic Don Chino Roces Bridge (formerly Mendiola) as they commemorate the International Human Rights Day.”
(3) Manila Bulletin: Use of wrong prepositionPublic warned of holiday diseases
MANILA, Philippines — Doctors on Friday warned of the possible rise of non-communicable diseases, heart attack and stroke in particular, this holiday season.
“Cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, and diabetes mellitus, the four major non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the country are linked by four most common and preventable risk factors related to lifestyle – tobacco use, unhealthy diet, lack of physical activity and alcohol use,” Department of Health (DoH) Secretary Enrique T. Ona said in a conference Friday.
The lead sentence above misuses the preposition “of” in the phrase “the possible rise of non-communicable diseases.” The correct preposition is “in,” as in the following rewrite of that sentence:
“Doctors on Friday
warned of the possible rise in non-communicable diseases, heart attack and stroke in particular, this holiday season.”
(4) ABS-CBN News Online: Use of wrong prepositionDTI brings Christmas discount caravan to Makati, QC
MANILA, Philippines - As a Christmas present to consumers, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) will bring its "Diskwento Caravan" in two of the busiest cities in Metro Manila next week, offering Noche Buena food items and other goodies at factory prices.
DTI Director Ferdinand Manfoste, officer-in-charge of DTI-National Capital Region, said the caravan will be in Makati City on December 12, and in Quezon City on December 15.
The lead sentence above misuses the preposition of location “in” in the phrase “will bring its ‘Diskwento Caravan’ in two of the busiest cities in Metro Manila next week.” The correct preposition is the directional “to,” as in the following rewrite of that sentence:
“As a Christmas present to consumers, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)
will bring its ‘Diskwento Caravan’ to two of the busiest cities in Metro Manila next week, offering Noche Buena food items and other goodies at factory prices.”
(5) Manila Bulletin: Misplaced place modifierSkipper held for petrol smuggling
MANILA, Philippines — A skipper was apprehended recently for transporting dangerous cargoes without the necessary permit in Palawan.
Lt. Commander Algier Ricafrente, Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) Public Affairs chief said that skipper Renato Quncela was transporting 150 drums of assorted petroleum products onboard his small shipping vessel, M/V Q-Carrelyn III, from Delpan, Manila to Taytay, Palawan.
In the lead sentence above, the phrase “in Palawan” is a misplaced place modifier, wrongly modifying the noun “permit” instead of its true subject, the verb “apprehended.” That sentence should therefore be rewritten as follows:
“A skipper was apprehended
in Palawan recently for transporting dangerous cargoes
without the necessary permit.”
