|
I suppose that not a few readers are still puzzling
out a fix for this highly problematic sentence from a senator’s
recent press release:
“[The senator] issued the
statement in response to the removal of the Philippines by the New
York-based Freedom House from its list of world democracies due to
political killings.”
That sentence was among the
grammar curiosities and crudities I came across in the mass media in
recent weeks, and I listed it in my preceding column as No. 2 in
the order of battle for grammar fixing. However, I realize now that
it might not have been fair to give readers such a difficult,
complex task too early in the exercise. Indeed, that sentence
isn’t amenable to a simple grammar and structural fix, as I was to
find out myself when I started scrutinizing it.
The problem with that sentence,
of course, is that it has a seriously misplaced modifier. In that
sentence, the subordinate phrase “due to political killings”
seems to be modifying the noun phrase “list of world
democracies,” which of course gives rise to an utterly absurd
idea: “a list of democracies due to political killings.” Whoever
heard of such a thing? Indeed, the logical subject of that
subordinate phrase should be the noun “removal,” but a 15-word
barrier between the two prevents them from achieving a tight grammar
and semantic interlock.
Our usual recourse for fixing
this problem is to apply the basic rule for dealing with misplaced
modifiers: position the modifying word or phrase as close as
possible to the noun it modifies. However, this obviously doesn’t
work for the two possible positions that the subordinate phrase
“due to political killings” could logically take in the
sentence. Look:
“[The senator] issued the
statement in response to the removal due to political killings of
the Philippines by the New York-based Freedom House from its list of
world democracies.”
“[The senator] issued the
statement in response to the removal of the Philippines due to
political killings by the New York-based Freedom House from its list
of world democracies.”
In both positions, the
subordinate phrase “due to political killings” fractures the
sentence and makes it nonsensical. The basic fix for misplaced
modifiers just doesn’t work here.
So what do we do now?
Well, it looks like the only way
to straighten out and clarify that sentence is to rewrite and break
it into two sentences, such that the subordinate clause can find a
place where it won’t create semantic trouble. The following
construction does that:
“[The senator] issued the
statement in response to the removal of the Philippines by the New
York-based Freedom House from its list of world democracies. The
group had taken the action due to political killings in the
country.”
That looks like a good, decent
fix all right. However, there’s an even clearer, more elegant way
of solving that misplaced-modifier problem without breaking the
sentence into two. It is to use a summative modifier, an advanced
sentence development technique that introduces a new word or phrase
to sum up a core idea of the preceding clause, then makes that word
or phrase the thematic subject of the relative clause or clauses
that follow. For the problematic sentence here, in particular, I
recommend using the noun “action” as the summative modifier,
summing up the core idea of “the removal of the Philippines by the
New York-based Freedom House from its list of world democracies.”
That done, the sentence will now
read as follows:
“[The senator] issued the
statement in response to the removal of the Philippines by the New
York-based Freedom House from its list of world democracies, an
action that it had taken due to political killings in the
country.”
As we can see, the summative
modifier solution has efficiently moved the misplaced modifier to
its proper place while dramatically improving the correlation of
ideas in the sentence.
j8carillo@yahoo.com
|
