Is this missing a verb?

March 31, 2008 9:41 AM

I have a grammar question that has been driving me crazy. It's probably a matter of style but...

On NPR lately I've been hearing a bit of usage which is really bothering me. I think I'm wrong in believing that it's wrong, but I'm hoping someone could explain why. Here's a representative example of the phenomenon from something I'm working on:

A) "We climbed down to the cave along a knotted rope fastened to a stake."

Every time I hear/read something like this, I want to put a verb between "rope" and "fastened". So, for example, "...a knotted rope that was fastened..." Two sentences after this example there's another that could be constructed the same way, but isn't:

B) "Through the well we entered the cave, which was red and damp like a sick person's mouth."

This makes sense to me, but if A is correct couldn't B also be written:

C) "Through the well we entered the cave red and damp like a sick person's mouth."

To me, C seems completely dysfunctional. But if C is so off, why is A "correct"?

posted by mekanic to writing & language (17 comments total)

C is indeed messed up. The difference is that "fastened" is a past participle. As such, the relationship between "fastened" and "rope" is not identical to the relationship between "red" and "cave."
posted by Hypocrite_Lecteur at 9:50 AM on March 31, 2008

The "cave red and damp" does read funny, and, without "which," leads to ambiguity as to what "red and damp" modifies ("we" or "cave"); whereas "fastened to a stake" (or, simply, "fastened") couldn't modify anything but the rope.
posted by not_on_display at 9:54 AM on March 31, 2008

A and C are both ambiguous, though the ambiguity in C is worse. You call this a "grammar question," but I don't think this is so much about grammar as it is about clear, straightforward writing.

(A) What was "fastened to a stake"? The "knotted rope" or us? It's obvious that the rope is what was fastened to the stake. You could read it as meaning that "we" were fastened to a stake while we were entering along a rope -- but that's so unrealistic that no one would read it like that.

You point out that it seems like "that was" should be added before "fastened." Yes, you could do that. Or you could leave it out. Either is permissible. If you leave it out, the "that was" is implied. This is a useful device for keeping your writing concise, but you need to use your judgment about whether it's too confusing in each particular instance.

(C) This is a perfect example of when omitting "that was" is too confusing. I don't think there's a significant grammatical difference from A. I think the difference just has to do with the meaning, context, and rhythm of the sentence. C is just too ambiguous and unclear to be a good sentence. It should be rewritten so that this problem is taken care of. You could probably do this by changing it to: "...the cave, which was red and damp...."
posted by Jaltcoh at 10:03 AM on March 31, 2008

"Fastened" is a participle acting to modify the noun "rope". The reason this is more acceptable than your example C is because participle modifiers can commonly follow the modified noun while, outside of poetry, simple adjectives (like "red") always precede the noun. We can build some sentences from your example C where you can see this in action:

"Through the well we entered the cave described by Sir Hildebrant as 'red and damp like a sick person's mouth'."

"Through the well we entered the red, damp, cave."

"Through the well we entered the cave revealed by the earthquake."

Adjectives need to precede the noun "cave" while adjective-like participles and their associated modifying phrases can follow it.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:05 AM on March 31, 2008

outside of poetry, simple adjectives (like "red") always precede the noun.

Really? Wouldn't it be correct to say: "I felt that I was talking to a man happy with his position in life." This seems to be a grammatically correct sentence, and it's clear that "happy..." refers to the man I was talking to, not me. Yet "happy" (adjective") follows "man" (noun).
posted by Jaltcoh at 10:10 AM on March 31, 2008

Maybe a better example: "We're looking at something unprecedented." It's clear that the thing that's "unprecedented" is "something," not us.
posted by Jaltcoh at 10:11 AM on March 31, 2008

What about:
"Through the well we entered a cave red and damp like a sick person's mouth."

Does it feel different than your original example:
"Through the well we entered the cave red and damp like a sick person's mouth" ?

I think that in the second case, where the article before "cave" is definite, most people would read "red and damp" as describing "we" instead of "the cave." (Though if I knew that there were two caves, one of which was red and damp and the other blue and arid, I'd have an easier time reading things differently.) The first case, where the article is indefinite, is more ambiguous, but I think most people would attach "red and damp" to "a cave" than to "we."

Similarly, suppose (A) were
"We climbed down to the cave along the knotted rope fastened to a stake."
I'd read it with a pause after "rope," as "we did this thing, all the while fastened to a stake" - unless previous sentences had set up a context where there were multiple ropes, one of which was fastened to a stake and consequently chosen by us.
posted by trig at 10:12 AM on March 31, 2008 [1 favorite]

Both sentences (a) and (c) you provided are fine. In both cases, an adjectival phrase follows the noun it's modifying. Take, for example, the sentence: "I pulled the heavy wagon". You could state this equally as: "I pulled the wagon, which was heavy". If you desired to use a longer adjectival phrase "heavy with bricks" instead of the short adjective "heavy", you would have to place it after the noun: "I pulled the wagon heavy with bricks". You could not say: "I pulled the heavy-with-bricks wagon" -- though, interestingly enough, this is how they would say it in German. You could also say: "I pulled the wagon, which was heavy with bricks".
posted by Sar HaPanim at 10:18 AM on March 31, 2008

Really? Wouldn't it be correct to say: "I felt that I was talking to a man happy with his position in life."

OK; there are definitely exceptions, but as a general rule, if you follow a noun with an adjective, it will sound stilted or intentionally poetic. This isn't the case for participle forms.

You could state this equally as: "I pulled the wagon, which was heavy". If you desired to use a longer adjectival phrase "heavy with bricks" instead of the short adjective "heavy", you would have to place it after the noun: "I pulled the wagon heavy with bricks".

Well, it would probably be better to write, "I pulled the wagon, heavy with bricks", and this does come off as stilted or intentionally stylized in most forms of writing.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:21 AM on March 31, 2008

I was worried style was the answer. I'll just have to learn to live with it. Thanks everyone.
posted by mekanic at 10:34 AM on March 31, 2008

If you're interested in this, explaining why ambiguous sentences are read in one way or another and why particular syntactic constructions "feel wrong" is a big issue in linguistics, especially in syntax and psycholinguistics. If you want to search for more information, some keywords to try are "late closure" and "minimal attachment" (those are some early ideas about what's going on, which most later papers will reference). There's a wikipedia article about it (I don't know if it's good). Some theories have the brain just working off of fixed rules that only take the current sentence into account, some bring context into the picture, some say it's basically just a matter of statistics (if you're exposed to one reading far more often than another, then that's the reading that will feel right), and some combine all of the above.
posted by trig at 10:40 AM on March 31, 2008

"Through the well we entered the cave red and damp like a sick person's mouth."

This sentence is fine with a comma, viz:

Through the well we entered the cave, red and damp like a sick person's mouth.

It's overtly evocative literary/poetic language. You might not want to use language like that in a public policy report or memo to your boss at IBM. But there's nothing at all wrong with it.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:48 AM on March 31, 2008

All C needs is a comma, so that it reads: "Through the well we entered the cave, red and damp like a sick person's mouth." Totally OK. Cf. "There's Joe, skinny as he's ever been."

Outside of poetry, simple adjectives (like "red") always precede the noun.

Here are some examples of postnominal adjective constructions.
posted by Cucurbit at 10:52 AM on March 31, 2008 [1 favorite]

Here are some examples of postnominal adjective constructions.

My initial answer was excessively and wrongly absolutist, but I hold that the issue here is adjective placement relative to the noun, which creates a stilted or stylized tone.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:56 AM on March 31, 2008

A healthy person's mouth is red and damp too, by the way.
posted by Caper's Ghost at 11:05 AM on March 31, 2008

This is a semantic/syntax question, to be more precise. Also, the constructions in A and C aren't exactly comparable for your purposes, as Hypocrite_Lecteur [has/had] succinctly stated above.

For me, the changes in A vs. B are important because they convey slightly different semantic interpretations. It's very subtle, but worth noting. Again, for me (your interpretations may vary), the difference between the two sentences is one of focus. Including "that was" before "fastened" removes the ambiguity, sure, but it seems to give more weight to the secondary clause, emphasizing how you climbed down into the cave (because the clauses are clearly defined and separated by "that was"). Leaving "that was" out makes the sentence a little more ambiguous, yet also seamless at the same time. If I close my eyes and think about the two sentences, and recall the event that happened in each, I come up with two different responses. In the first (A), I recall that a group, labeled "we", climbed down to a cave. For (B), the manner in which the "we" climbed down into the cave is more ever-present.

There may be semantic reasons why someone would subconsciously choose one construction over another. They may be wanting you to focus on what's more important to them in their telling of the story (and they do this subconsciously and in a way that makes the most sense to them for you). They may want you to see that the climbing down to the cave shouldn't be noticeably marked as separate from the manner in which they did it.

So while it bothers you, keep in mind that it may not be laziness or bad grammar on their part, but intention to convey what's important in a way they think it will be received as they've intended. And that could also be as simple as them thinking that unnecessary "that was"'s clutter a sentence, and since its optional, is therefore superfluous. They may have a pet peeve opposite yours too, and they talk how they see fit. This is the liveliness and flexibility of language. If you free yourself from "right and wrong", you can start to marvel at the variability and intricacies of how we all communicate. It may be less irksome for you that way.
posted by iamkimiam at 1:21 PM on March 31, 2008

Sentence A here is somewhat ambiguous and awkward. It may not be incorrect, per se; however it's not a very good sentence. Revised to include "that was" ("rope that was fastened to a stake"), it seems ungainly--still not very good. As usual, when facing an awkward construction such as this, the best thing to do is just to to back out and rewrite the sentence.

Here, one has to wonder why it's worth mentioning that the rope was tied to a stake at all. After-all, readers would assume that the rope was fastened to a stake, or something. If it really were important to mention the stake (because, for example, it's going to break or cause trouble later in the story), then you can just mention the stake early in the sentence: "We drove a stake into the rock near the edge of the entrance, tied our knotted rope to it, and climbed down." Or etc.

In short, the ambiguity in sentence A is noticeable, and imho you're right to find it annoying; however there are usually better fixes for this sort of problem than to insert "that is."
posted by washburn at 2:57 PM on March 31, 2008