Re: off topic: Grammer Question

[Leslie Bialler lb136@xxxxxxxx]

Caballero wrote:

You note the uncertainty of meaning (what modifies wha?t) in the typical
English pile-up "a Chinese silk wedding dress," and it's precisely this
ambiguity that French (and some other languages) can't tolerate. I think
the phrase would be either:

une robe de noces fabriqué en soie de Chine (if the silk is Chinese)

or

une robe de noces chinoise faite en soie (if the silk is from, say,
Nicaragua)

I'm not capable of improving on the French but in actuality a writer of English would be more likely
to use a construction like that (a wedding dress made of Chinese silk) than to actually write
"a Chinese silk wedding dress."

And maybe that's the point: we've been tossing out a lot of examples in order to look for structure,
etc. That's fine. But in doing so we're also creating conundrums that seldom occur in real-world
situations.

You can't imagine Bob Dylan writing "Spanish leather boots" now can you?


--
Leslie Bialler, Columbia University Press
lb136@xxxxxxxx
61 W. 62 St, NYC 10023
212-459-0600 X7109 (phone) 212-459-3677 (fax)
> http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup