Okay, so I'm drawn to the challenge. Keep in mind I haven't seen the movie, so I have made up plot . . . ignore that . . . it's about the language. Every dad wants to be a hero , and at Christmas the stakes are high-especially when gifts are a way to make up for broken promises and too much time away from home. Fathers, Howard and Myron (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad respectively), each have a son, and both dads have made Christmas Eve promises to bring home Turbo Man-the runaway hit toy of the holiday season. There's just one problem: there's only one Turbo Man left. Richard From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Richard Grant Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2012 11:09 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Grammar question "Each has promised his son . . . " is an improvement, but the writing as a whole is still ambiguous and incohesive. Because promise is transitive, "Each has promised his son, " allows for more than one interpretation: 1) He promised (to) his son that . . . 2) He promised his son in exchange for something else. The context of course helps clarify which is intended, but the ambiguity is distracting. An additional problem created by this choice is the incohesion with the referent when the pronouns are adjusted accordingly: "Each has promised his son, and he must not fail." Now the "he" can refer to either of the respective sons or to the fathers. Even if that ambiguity is ignored, the phonological loss of power caused by switching from Both . . . they to Each . . . his is also unfortunate. There's no denying our pronoun system leaves a little to be desired-mainly clarity. Not that I'd want to spend my Sunday morning doing it, but rewriting the whole piece would be worth the effort if it's meant to be published somewhere. Richard From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dick Veit Sent: Friday, July 20, 2012 5:22 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Grammar question "Each has promised his son..." is for me the least ambiguous. Dick On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 4:18 PM, Scott Lavitt <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Wrong pronoun. Both have promised "his" son. --- On Fri, 7/20/12, Martha Galphin <[log in to unmask]> wrote: From: Martha Galphin <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Grammar question To: [log in to unmask] Date: Friday, July 20, 2012, 12:53 PM Found in a book on screenwriting: "In that film, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad [sic] battle to achieve the same goal--the acquisition of the last popular action figure for sale that Christmas season. Both of them have promised their son, and they must not fail." My question concerns the clause "both of them have promised their son . . . ." Other than a rewriting of this sentence, is there any way to clarify the meaning? Now it reads as though Schwarzenegger and Sinbad have a son in common which is not the case. (Each has only one son; so, sons wouldn't work.) If rewriting is the answer, what would you suggest? Thank you, Martha _____ Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:34:53 -0400 From: [log in to unmask] Subject: politics on ATEG; instance of semantic broadening To: [log in to unmask] The ATEG list is dedicated to discussion of teaching grammar and other language-related issues. Its members represent a range of political viewpoints, and even serious political discussion would take us far afield, resolving nothing, and engender rancor. There are many outlets for political screeds; ATEG is not one of them. Those who abuse this list should lose their privilege to participate in it. To change the topic back to language: it was jarring to hear a Denver newspaper reporter, interviewed on NPR this morning, describe the Colorado mass murderer as "the gentleman who did this." For the reporter and likely for some Americans as well, the word "gentleman" has broadened from its original meaning to denote simply a male person, with apparently neutral connotation. 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