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Sat 7 Mar, 2015 07:20 pm
Following lines are from the film "Listen Up Philip."
"As with any punctual individual, Philip loathed when people ran late, which Mona typically was."
"The emotions that arose from the spectacular confrontation with his daughter enraged and excited Ike in such a way as he no longer felt possible."
"He recalled the lessons learned from Ike’s novels, about character, sense of place, and dialogue, before realizing that his hero and new friend had imparted Philip with more than either of them had realized, for better or worse."
"Staring down at the small creature, Ashley’s emotions were at last completely hers to control."
A critic pointed out that these sentences are grammatically incorrect. I've been reading these four sentences the past couple of days, and I can't see any of the solecisms. I want to improve my grammar, so any help in pointing out the errors would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
@eddieyang888,
eddieyang888 wrote:
Following lines are from the film "Listen Up Philip."
"As with any punctual individual, Philip loathed when people ran late, which Mona typically was."
"run late" is a dynamic (phrasal) verb, but "was" is a stative verb. They don't match.
Quote:"The emotions that arose from the spectacular confrontation with his daughter enraged and excited Ike in such a way as he no longer felt possible."
"...in such a way that he had not thought possible."
Quote:"He recalled the lessons learned from Ike’s novels, about character, sense of place, and dialogue, before realizing that his hero and new friend had imparted Philip with more than either of them had realized, for better or worse."
The only thing I can think of at the moment is that maybe someone doesn't like the Oxford comma.
Quote:"Staring down at the small creature, Ashley’s emotions were at last completely hers to control."
Ashley's emotions were staring down, Ashley was.
Hope that helped.
"He recalled the lessons learned from Ike’s novels, about character, sense of place, and dialogue, before realizing that his hero and new friend had imparted Philip with more than either of them had realized, for better or worse."
If the subject of the first clause, "He," is Philip, then the word "Philip" should be replaced with "him." If that's the case, then the original sentence is switching from the 1st to 3rd person perspective, which is a no-no.
I don't see any grammatical errors in these sentences.
They are just over-written and laborious to read.
Did you guys read my responses? Are those things in my imagination?
@FBM,
Thanks for the replies, guys. This really helped a lot.
Additional question, FBM: In the first sentence, ""As with any punctual individual, Philip loathed when people ran late, which Mona typically was." What should one do to make those verbs parallel? Any examples?
@eddieyang888,
eddieyang888 wrote:
Thanks for the replies, guys. This really helped a lot.
Additional question, FBM: In the first sentence, ""As with any punctual individual, Philip loathed when people ran late, which Mona typically was." What should one do to make those verbs parallel? Any examples?
"...ran late...typically did."
Then you have a dynamic verb (run late) matched with another dynamic verb (do).
Hope that was helpful. Parallelism is a major problem among my students. It's one of the many pain-in-the-ass issues with English that many other language learners don't have to deal with.
@FBM,
Budd my response was ironic sardonicism. Incidentally, you meant:
Quote:"Staring down at the small creature, Ashley’s emotions were at last completely hers to control."
Ashley's emotions were NOT staring down, Ashley was.
Or, 'Philip loathed when people were late, which Mona typically was'.
@knaivete,
Ah. I went back and watched the vid.
And, yep. Typo. Good eye.
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