Ultan's grammar quip

Jason H · 13 May 2011, 19:11 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: beet31425 at gmail.com (Jason H)
Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 12:11:22 -0700
Subject: (urth) Ultan's grammar quip
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Hmmm... I *think* we're basically agreeing, Dan'l.

Severian's meaning is certainly clear, I grant you-- that's how Ultan knew
what he meant. And I'm sure that great writers, including Mark Twain, use it
that way, especially if they're writing colloquially. The question here is:
what grammatical fault is Ultan chiding Severian for? And I think the answer
is that this dangling adverb, modifying a non-adjacent word, is not just
"perhaps technically ambiguous", but, to Ultan, grammatically wrong.

-J



On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 11:44 AM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 11:33 AM, Jason H <beet31425 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I think that the problem is the placement of "mostly" (although for a
> > different reason from what David says). It needs to be adjacent to the
> word
> > it modifies. The correct statement is "Master Palaemon mostly teaches us
> > apprentices." That is, the main thing that Palaemon does is teach: he
> > "mostly teaches". In contrast, "teaches us apprentices, mostly" really
> means
> > that he teaches different kinds of people, and most of them are
> apprentices
> > (but e.g. there might be some journeymen that he also teaches). I don't
> > think this is what Severian means.
>
> If Severian meant that, he would probably say "Master Palaemon teaches
> mostly us apprentices" -- or, more properly, "mainly." The hanging
> adverb, separated by a comma from the rest of the sentence, is used by
> Mark Twain (especially in the voice of Huck Finn) exactly as
> Wolfe-through-Severian uses it here: to modify the verb, but to have
> that modification come as an afterthought. The sentence as provided is
> perhaps technically ambiguous, but the meaning is clear: it is the
> same as if the "mostly" had been placed before "teaches."
>
> --
> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
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