A dangling modifier ? You mean, like, I say, f*uck the Grice, something
dangling, you not mentioned ?*
On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 5:09 PM, Redacted sender jlsperanza for DMARC <
dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Or should it be, 'no modification without aberration'?
So we have identified the thing.
Now the question is what Popper or Grice would say.
Grice would be perhaps interested in distinguishing why a ‘split
infinitive’ does not compare (yet does compare) to a dangling modifier.
Popper might not.
Grice might also wonder if there can be a general theory of the dangling
modifier. Consider the cancellation of the implicature generated by the
dangling modifier in
i. Born in Japan, Ishiguro’s family moved to the UK
when he was five.
from “The Guardian”.
ii. Born in Japan, Ishiguro’s family moved to the UK
when he was five, leaving him under the care of his grandmother, who
stayed.
A dangling modifier is an ambiguously interpretable utterance part (as
Grice would have it), whereby, as the term of art has it, a
“modifier” could be misinterpreted as being associated with an expression
OTHER THAN the one m-intended (as Grice would have it – “m” stands for
‘meaning’), or with no particular expression at all.
For example, an utterer may have meant to modify the subject
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject_(grammar)>, but the syntax makes
the modifier seem to modify the object
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_(grammar)> instead.
Such ambiguities can lead to unintentional humour or difficulty in
understanding the utterance in some conversational contexts (One of Grice’s
conversational maxims is ‘avoid ambiguity’, under the super-maxim, ‘Be
perspicuous.’)
A typical example of a dangling modifier is illustrated by:
iii. A: Turning the corner, a handsome building appeared.
B: Amazing.
The modifying clause “turning the corner” is clearly supposed to describe
the behaviour of the utterer (or other observer), but syntactically it
appears to apply to nothing in particular or to the building! (Hence the
‘Amazing,’ in B’s cooperative reply).
Similarly, in:
iv. A: At the age of eight, my family finally bought a dog.
B: About time.
where the modifier “at the age of eight” “dangles,” as the term of art has
it, not attaching to the subject of the main clause (and possibly implying
or as Grice would prefer IMPLICATING) that the family was eight years old
when it bought the dog, or even that the dog was eight when it was bought,
rather than the intended meaning of giving the narrator's age at the time).
The “About time” possibly dangles, too.
As an adjunct, a modifier clause is normally at the beginning (as in “The
Guardian” example, (i) above), or the end of a sentence, and usually
attached to the subject of the main clause, as in:
v. Walking down the street, the man saw the beautiful
streets.
vi. Walking down the street (clause), the man (subject)
saw the beautiful trees (object).
However, when the subject is missing, or the clause attaches itself to
another object in a sentence, the clause is seemingly "hanging" on nothing
or on an entirely inappropriate noun.
The clause thus "dangles", as in:
vii. A: Walking down Main Street, the trees were beautiful.
Reaching the station, the sun came out.
B: Amazing.
In the first utterance, the adjunct clause may at first appear to modify
"the trees", the subject of the sentence.
However, it actually modifies the utterer of the utterance, who is not
explicitly mentioned (It might have been Grice – or Popper).
In the second utterance, the adjunct may at first appear to modify "the
sun", the subject of the sentence.
Presumably, there is another, human subject that did reach the station and
observed the sun coming out.
But since this subject is not mentioned in the utterance, the intended
meaning is obscured, and therefore this kind of utterance has been dubbed
“incorrect” in standard Oxonian (cfr. Spooner).
Strunk and White's The Elements of Style
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style> (White lived on a
New-England coastal town between Nova Scotia and Cuba) provides another
kind of example, a misplaced modifier (another participle):
viii. A: I saw the trailer peeking through the window.
B: Amazing.
Presumably, this means the utterer was peeking through the window.
But the placement of the clause "peeking through the window" makes it
sound as though the trailer were doing so.
The utterance can be recast as:
ix. Peeking through the window, I saw the trailer.
Similarly, in
x. A: She left the room fuming.
B: Amazing.
it is conceivably the room, rather than "she", that was fuming, though it
is unlikely that anybody – other than Grice in one of his wicked days --
would interpret it this way, and only to tease Sir Peter Strawson, mind.
Cheers,
Speranza
