Grammar Q: "Your absolutely amazing deal is only those things to yourself."

Factual Questions
1

Ok, pretend I am in a toaster store, and a salesman approaches me and tells me about an “absolutely amazing deal” on the 432-X model.

Having just looked at said model and deciding it was craptacular and overpriced, I retort “Your absolutely amazing deal is only those things to yourself.” (My intention is to imply that the deal is not absolutely amazing, and in fact the price is such a ripoff that it’s not a deal at all. Hence, I do not believe him- the only one who believes him is himself.)

Is the sentence “Your absolutely amazing deal is only those things to yourself” grammatically correct? If not, how should it be re-written?

2

“Your absolutely amazing deal is only that to you.”

But personally, I don’t think it’s worth starting up arguments with salespeople. I’d just say, “No thank you, I’m not interested,” and walk away.

3

I’d rewrite to it “Sez you, sucker.”

Even as corrected by Giles, it’s still an unwieldy sentence and should be scrapped and rewritten for clarity and ease.

4

I’d question the use of “yourself” here, but I can barely parse this sentence at all; it doesn’t appear to be ungrammatical according to my linguistic knowledge, but it sounds bizarre as hell. I’d second the suggestion of “Sez you” - succinct and comprehensible.

Oh, wait - you seem to treat “absolutely amazing” as two units (you match it to “those things”) - but it’s not. “Absolutely” modifies “amazing”, so an “absolutely amazing deal” is “that thing”, not “those things”.

5

Thanks for everyone’s replies. I suspected that Giles’ version was probably correct before posting, but wanted to check. And yes, it is a somewhat befuddling sentence.

6

Your deal is only absolutely amazing to you.

7

If you want to be pedantic, jawdirk’s paraphrase is better said “Your deal is absolutely amazing only to you.”

8

It’s the ‘those things’ which got you discombobulated. Keeping with your wording, it would be clearer to have said:

Your “absolutely amazing deal” is only a deal to yourself.

As Giles points out, the correct pronoun would be ‘that’ as in…

Your “absolutely amazing deal” is only that to yourself.

But in conversational English it’s more common to use ‘to you’ or ‘for yourself,’ and so we have…

Your “absolutely amazing deal” is only a deal to you.
Your “absolutely amazing deal” is only that to you.
Your “absolutely amazing deal” is only a deal for yourself.
Your “absolutely amazing deal” is only that for yourself.

I would have said:

Duh, for you, maybe.

Peace.

9

Hmm, your hypothetical sentence sounds an awful lot like something Mockingbird wrote earlier today (“Your perfectly honest observation is only those things to you obviously.”).

In either case, I don’t think the problem is with word choice/order so much as punctuation. “Your ‘absolutely amazing’ deal is only those things to yourself” may be a little awkward, but I understand the meaning and don’t think it’s grammatically incorrect. Likewise, I think that “Your ‘perfectly honest’ observation is only those things to you, obviously” would have helped things in the other thread.

10

“Just as the Holy Roman Empire was not holy, not Roman, and not an empire, your ‘absolutely amazing deal’ is neither absolutely amazing nor a deal.”

11

Well, an unattractive, misrepresented, overhyped deal is still a deal - even if a bad one.