I have a question about grammar that’s been driving me insane for the past hour or two:
What’s the dope on the sentence structure I used (awkwardly) to title this thread? It seems fairly common, especially in scientific writing.
I’ll give you some more examples:
You can get there faster by taking the cable car.
We can warm the coffee by placing it in the microwave.
It’s this ‘goal-by-method’ structure I’m curious about. Does it have a name? Is it even correct?
Furthemore, is it correct to use ‘by-method, goal’ instead?
By focusing your camera, you can emphasise key parts of a scence.
I know very little about grammar, so I’ve been googling like mad. I can’t find anything explaining how ‘by’ can be used in this way. It seems that the ‘by’ is linking two dependent clauses. But that would mean the whole sentence is a fragment.
In trying to remember how we talked about grammar back when I was in school (hasn’t really come up since then ) I seem to recall that, while the “by” clause is considered a “dependent clause,” the other is not. You can end the sentence before “by” and still have a complete sentence.
As to whether its okay to put the “by” clause first, I can’t see why not. It sounds natural to me, in all contexts I can imagine. It just changes the emphasis a little.
I just got reamed on another grammar thread, so take my input with however much salt you want.
It’s not a complex sentence. That’s what you’re thinking of when you look for the independent/dependent clauses. You’ve got an independent clause there, but the “by” part of it isn’t a dependent clause. (It doesn’t have a subject - required to be considered a clause. All it’s got is a direct object.) The best way I can categorize it would be a prepisitional phrase with a a present participle. (I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t be classified as a gerund.)
Thanks… prepositional phrase is what I was looking for.
Dependent clause was the closest thing I could find on my own. I don’t even know why I thought there were two. Bear in mind that I’d never even heard of the concept until today.
The sentence has basically a simple structure with only one clause. Parsing diagrams are easier, but I can make do without. The basic structure is
NP VP (NP is noun phrase and this one is “I”. VP is verb phrase and this is all the rest. The VP expands to
Vt NP PP PP where Vt means transitive verb, in this case “asked” (I could go into the inflectional detail, but it would not help), NP as before is noun phrase, here “a question”. Then you can have, in principal, at least, indefinitely many PPs or prepositional phrases, which are best treated as adverbial. Generally PP expands to preposition followed by NP. The first PP is “about grammar”. The second is more complicated because the noun is a verbal noun, in this case transitive, so that NP expands to verbal noun plus complement NP. The preposition is “by” and the NP is “posting this thread”, made up, as I said, of a transitive verbal noun followed by its NP complement. There is just one clause and no other, dependent or independent.
The question here is: “Who should focus more attention on proper word use:” I or my visitors? Grammatically, the sentece says that my visitors should focus more attention, but the writer probably thought that the addressee should focus more attention, etc.
It’s a common, and error that often occurs. Usually the reader can figure it out.
I’ve been helping someone create an essay for a graduate school application and he would inflict this particular mistake on sentence after sentence. My explanation about why it was wrong and how he could tell in the future when other sentences of his were wrong sounded so similar to this quote that it could have been an echo.
I did keep reassuring him that his mistakes were extremely common ones. I didn’t say how appalling his inability as a college graduate to write grammatically correct sentences was.
But then, nobody learns anything about English grammar or good usage from their college professors.
The sentence, “By focusing more attention on proper word use, your visitors won’t highlight and pinpoint your mistakes.” is grammatically correct. That it doesn’t mean what the writer intends is not a grammar mistake. Grammar and meaning are separate issues.
Hmm. While this last sentence gramatically correct, I think that, stylistically, using ‘won’t have’ as the verb is so weak that it still feels like the prepositional phrase ends up referring the visitors. I’d prefer a stronger, more active, verb that will claim the prepositional phrase: “By focusing more attention on proper word use, you’ll avoid having your visitors highlighting your mistakes.” [/EditWankery]
Its a grammar mistake because it is by virtue of a misunderstanding of the rules of grammar that the author has written a sentence which doesn’t mean what he means it to mean.
Yes they are, but in this particular case the grammar is wonky.
Agreement is part of grammar. Tenses must agree; number must agree; subjects must agree.
If the sentence had read, “By not focusing more attention on your party, your guests won’t have enough plate.” few people would argue that is a mistake in meaning rather than grammar.
The subject of a dependent clause must agree with the subject of the main clause. That is a rule of grammar. In fact, you can’t even argue that this is really a mistake in meaning. This mistake is so common that every literate English speaker would know instantly what the intended meaning of the writer was.
You know what I meant is a weak defense for formal writing, but it’s no big deal in the normally casual speech-substitute that comprises message board writing. The mistake of lack of agreement is even more common in the spoken language because only those who have had the rule ingrained in them will know enough when starting with a dependent clause to be able to automatically make the main clause agree.
Here’s one from Sports Illustrated.
Grammatical errors abound, but few readers would misunderstand Clady’s meaning.
However, this bugaboo is ubiquitous on this site. People constantly attack the literal meaning of a poster’s words even though the thought being expressed is obvious. Yet, especially in political threads, one side will defend a politician’s literal words as not having the negative connotations it clearly has just because they were not spelled out in so many words.
Grammar is clearly important. But centuries of “bad” grammar infiltrating every aspect of casual speech has so inured us to understanding each other that meaning is rarely compromised. It’s one prime reason why computer comprehension of language, translations from one language to another, and smooth composition of prose has proven to be so difficult to achieve.
) I seem to recall that, while the “by” clause is considered a “dependent clause,” the other is not. You can end the sentence before “by” and still have a complete sentence.