I think Paul's right. I was looking at it as a reduced pseudo-cleft, but the well-formedness of exclamations like
What a mess you made!
And we also get
How messy that room is!
where the wh-word clearly plays a specifier role to "messy".
This is apparently a very old construction. Sir Philip Sidney used it in the 16th c. in his sonnet
With how sad steps, O Moone, thou climbst the skies!
How silently, and with how wanne a face!
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of PAUL E. DONIGER
Sent: Thu 8/5/2004 1:38 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc:
Subject: Re: how to punctuate this
I have two thoughts on this (amazing that my brain can fucntion so well, isn't it?):
1. If Bruce is right (and I think he is -- having thought the phrase, "What a paradox" was eliptical before I read his response), then 'a paradox' becoems s subject ccomplement for 'it'. Or, I guess, it makes it a subject (but iof the elided 'is' -- not the one in the clause about the Internet.
2. I think that Christine might have been better off to ask, "How might this be punctuated?" rather than "How should this be punctuated?" -- there are more possibilities than the two supplied.
Paul
Bruce Despain <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Christine,
It is hard to disagree with Herb. One little observation, however. I think something needs to be said about the possibility that "what" in an exclamative is a modifier of the article. I am more comfortable with the exclamative being a full NP. This would make "what a paradox" parallel to "many a paradox." The full form would be "What a paradox (it is)!" rather than "What (is) a paradox" (! for ?) or "What a paradox (is is)," which both seem vapid at best. (These last two involve the so-called headless relative, which I prefer to call the indefinite noun clause.)
Bruce
>>> [log in to unmask] 8/5/2004 8:21:13 AM >>>
Christine,
I like your second version. The problem with the first is that it makes a difference what the subject of "is" is, to paraphrase a well-known Rhodes Scholar. Grammatically, the sujbect has to be "a paradox", and what's within commas is an appositive. However, "a paradox" is also the complement of "what" in an exclamatory sentence. Exclamations beginning with wh-words typically lack verbs, just "what" + NP. So "a paradox" is being asked to play to grammatical roles at once, something that doesn't usually work well. The reader is tempted to make "the Internet" the subject, but then the sentence becomes a comma splice.
Herb
Dear Group,
How should this be punctuated?
What a paradox, the Internet, the very cutting edge of communication
technology, is creating an anti-social society.
What a paradox! The Internet, the very cutting edge of communication
technology, is creating an anti-social society.
Christine Martin
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