Is this sentence grammatically correct?

[CookingWithGas]

@Zoe

Oh yes. The same Sid Smith who doesn’t care for Hemingway. He longs for the return of longer and more complex sentences. (That’s fine by me. I liked Thomas Wolfe after Max Perkins had worked his magic.)

Well, the fact that Sid Smith posted it is irrelevant; the critique he linked was an article in Atlantic Monthly, not his own.

[CookingWithGas]

@KarlGauss

I think McCarthy’s using a definition of woke with which you’re not familiar. Woke, as McCarthy employs it, is the past tense of wake, with wake meaning “to be or continue to be awake” (definition from dictionary.com) or “to be or remain awake” (from Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary).

It may be a definition buried away someplace but it buoys the argument that McCarthy is writing for himself, or possibly a very narrow audience who is in on the esoteric style. The only way I have ever heard the verb “wake” used in my life is “transition from a sleeping state to a conscious state.”

[Sofis]

@Superhal

In studies, native speakers are consistently “wrong” (according to canonical “grammar”) when shown sentences like this:

The group of doctors _____… vs Two cacti _____.

The fact that Latin plurals do not work with English speakers’ language intuitions* does not mean that there is no such thing as grammar, just that people should stop trying to use Latin grammar while speaking English.

Grammar is as real as any other aspect of language. Sure, it changes with time and varies between dialects… just like any other aspect of language.

*) I see that a lot, actually, though mainly with words being pluralized where they shouldn’t. About half of all usages of “fungi” I see should really be “fungus”.

[Irishman]

Zoe said:

The Seventh Deadly Finn, for years the movement has been away from commas that are unnecessary for clarity’s safe. The section linked to by Contrapuntal is not missing necessary commas, although there are a couple of places where I would not have counted the use of a comma as a mistake.

Every comma I inserted was based upon rules (admittedly learned ~20 years ago). None of them were randomly inserted or superfluous.

Frylock said:

Are you serious about the sentence fragments, or am I missing a joke?

Yes, I am serious. While I admit that fiction is more casual writing and some sentence fragments are acceptable, it should generally be avoided. I found both of those awkward, though the first is better than the second.

Zoe said:

Nor did I have any difficulties with knowing who was behind whom in the snow and who was holding the pile of sticks or small limbs.

Your use of “nor” there is standard. You listed something you did not have a problem, and now you are adding to that list of things that are not a problem.

I think part of the problem was the lack of proper punctuation. I told you I missed it when listing issues, probably because after figuring out the sentence and adding commas, it slipped my mind it had been a problem.

I suspect that “the rage” requires more context. It’s possible they may be lost in a storm due to someone’s negligence.

I concede that there may be references to rage prior to this passage that establish the context for that use.

KarlGauss said:

I think McCarthy’s using a definition of woke with which you’re not familiar. Woke, as McCarthy employs it, is the past tense of wake, with wake meaning “to be or continue to be awake” (definition from dictionary.com) or “to be or remain awake” (from Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary).

I agree that we need a word that means that, but that use is certainly not common parlance. The verb is conventionally used to mean the transition from sleep to wakefulness (being awake).
Wendell Wagner said:

The rule for “a” and “an” has always been that “a” goes with a consonant sound and “an” goes with a vowel sound. There’s no such old rule as you claim.

Took me a bit to figure out what you meant. You are pointing out that the problem is not with the rule, the problem is the common understanding of what is a consonant and what is a vowel. It’s not the letter that defines the category, it’s how the letter is pronounced. Gotcha.

[Wendell_Wagner]

Most people use the terms “vowel” and “consonant” to refer to the graphic character, not the sound. Most people would say that “a” and “an” depend on what sound a word begins with, not on what graphic character it begins with. Claiming that the rule is the following:

“a” with a consonant
“an” with a vowel

is simply wrong for the usual definition and has always been wrong. The rule is the following:

“a” with a consonant sound
“an” with a vowel sound

Superhal was claiming that someone believed that the first rule above ever applied. That’s wrong. It’s always been the second rule.

[Yellowhippy]

Hi. I’m currently writing a piece of coursework on ‘The Road’ in comparison with ‘Nineteen Eighty-four’ if anyone is interested As i believe many others here have said, the missing comma after “fell” is really the only grammar issue; but a lack of punctuation, missing commas and apostrophes as well as incomplete sentences, is something that occurs throughout the book. As I explain in my essay, this appears to be intentional. It occurs consistently throughout so is not just a mistake or typo. I belive that it is used to show the effect that isolation has had on the man. It is clearly written from his point of view, even if it is not in first person. It seems to show that, in a world where he and his son are constantly on the edge of survival, grammar isn’t all that important. What is important to him though, is the loss of words: “The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality.”

[Boyo_Jim]

Welcome to the SDMB. FYI, it is better to start a new thread with your own issue rather than to resurrect someone else’s ‘zombie’ thread.

I’m always leery of attributing intent to the author for choices of grammar and punctuation. But Ii understand that legions of academics make decent livings doing just that.

So, let me take a wild guess about you, based on your user name and my old college days. Are you a student at Antioch in Yellow Springs?

[BigT]

@Wendell_Wagner

Most people use the terms “vowel” and “consonant” to refer to the graphic character, not the sound. Most people would say that “a” and “an” depend on what sound a word begins with, not on what graphic character it begins with. Claiming that the rule is the following:

“a” with a consonant
“an” with a vowel

is simply wrong for the usual definition and has always been wrong. The rule is the following:

“a” with a consonant sound
“an” with a vowel sound

Superhal was claiming that someone believed that the first rule above ever applied. That’s wrong. It’s always been the second rule.

While the thread is resurrected, I might as well respond to this, and see if anyone knows the answer: How does the common phrase “an historical” fit with that? I always assumed it was people who saw “an hour” and thought the rule was all vowels and the letter h.

[Boyo_Jim]

I’ve heard or read both choices for just about every word beginning with ‘h’. I assume half of them are wrong. My understanding is the same as Wendell Wagner’s. If the word is pronounced as if it begins with a vowel, it’s preceded by ‘an’, otherwise it’s preceded by ‘a’.

If there are exceptions for particular words (and with English it would be no surprise if there was such a list) I’ve never heard of it.

[Irishman]

Some people are prone to pronouncing h, some are prone to treating it silently.

“An 'istorical” is how they would pronounce that.

Same way the word “Houston” has two pronunciations - the Texan one (Hyooston, Texas) and the New York one (House-ton street). Or is it Yoos-ton?