If latter, the grammatical form is wrong (should be rewritten as "to be doused")?
Context:
State retribution for tiny thefts, such as stealing a potato, even by a child, would include being tied up and thrown into a pond; parents were forced to bury their children alive or were doused in excrement and urine, others were set alight, or had a nose or ear cut off. One record shows how a man was branded with hot metal. People were forced to work naked in the middle of winter; 80 per cent of all the villagers in one region of a quarter of a million Chinese were banned from the official canteen because they were too old or ill to be effective workers, so were deliberately starved to death.
It's grammatically fine to me. It also fits the sentence and its repeating structure of ... "parents were forced to bury their children alive or were doused in excrement and urine, others were set alight...."
It's grammatically fine to me. It also fits the sentence and its repeating structure of ... "parents were forced to bury their children alive or were doused in excrement and urine, others were set alight...."
But you haven't answered my question:
If it's fine, it is the "parents" who were doused?
It reads as if some parents were forced to bury their children alive, and other parents were doused with urine etc. I suspect that the piece was clumsily written, and that in fact some people were forced to bury their children, and others were doused.
0 Replies
ehBeth
1
Reply
Wed 13 Feb, 2013 12:06 pm
@oristarA,
oristarA wrote:
If it's fine, it is the "parents" who were doused?
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