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Can You Make Sense Of Any Of This?

sstamm

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The ones in red are the only sentences I see that, even with punctuation, cannot be made interpretable. (Although even the ones that can be made interpretable are not necessarily grammatically correct, in my opinion.)



Fifteen could be written: "The horse raced past the barn, fell." You could understand it that way but I'm not sure it's truly grammatically correct.

The same goes for 23: "The raft floated down the river, sank." It's awkward, but at least it makes sense.

Number two uses "prime" as a noun...as in the prime people, or ever numbers! (e.g. There are few prime numbers in the world, and few prime people in the world.)

Number five just needs a comma after "of"...although again, that just makes it easier to understand.

Ok, that helps me with 15 and 23.

In #2 prime is definitely the noun, could be prime people, prime students, prime candidates, etc. Whatever the prime, they number few. In the same way, "old" is used as the noun in #21.

I agree that some, although understandable, are not necessarily written the best way or are grammatically correct.

I still don't see a way for #25 to make sense.
So for me that still leaves # 1, 6, 12, and 25 as the ones that don't make sense.
 

Enrico

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I think #3 makes sense if you consider Ace to be a person; i.e.: Jim hungers the growing plant.
 

sstamm

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I think #3 makes sense if you consider Ace to be a person; i.e.: Jim hungers the growing plant.

I see it a little differently. Below are the sentences that make sense to me, without adding words, but perhaps adding punctuation.


3. Ace hungers the growing plant. (Ace is noun, maybe a name?)

__________________

That's how I was looking at it. I tried to find another meaning, but could not come up with one.
 

pjrose

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I think #3 makes sense if you consider Ace to be a person; i.e.: Jim hungers the growing plant.

That's how I was looking at it. I tried to find another meaning, but could not come up with one.

I don't think Jim hungers the growing plant makes sense. Hungers for the growing plant, maybe?
 

sstamm

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I don't think Jim hungers the growing plant makes sense. Hungers for the growing plant, maybe?

While I agree that "hungers for the growing plant" sounds better and makes more sense, I'm not sure if the original sentence just doesn't sound good or if it is grammatically incorrect. For the sake of this weird exercise, I'm going with the original sentence makes sense.

The only other way I can think of to interpret the sentence is if Ace (whatever the heck Ace is) is the object that causes the growing plant to hunger. For example: Blood hungers the ravenous vampire. Ace hungers the growing plant.
:shrug:
 

3kids4me

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Above I wrote:
------------
"The horse raced past the barn, fell." You could understand it that way but I'm not sure it's truly grammatically correct.
-------------

After thinking about this a little, I realized that, "The horse raced past the barn, fell, and then got back up again." would sound fine, so it's like you just chopped off the last thing the horse did.
 

3kids4me

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I still don't see a way for #25 to make sense.
So for me that still leaves # 1, 6, 12, and 25 as the ones that don't make sense.

What if it said, "The tycoon sold the offshore oil tracts for a lot of money, wanted to kill JR, and wore red clothes all the time." It's just one less descriptor. Again, stilted, but correct.
 

3kids4me

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I don't think Jim hungers the growing plant makes sense. Hungers for the growing plant, maybe?

Well, one definition of hunger is actually a verb:

v.tr.
To cause to experience hunger; make hungry.

I guess Jim could hunger the growing plant by not feeding it enough plant food. So if Ace is a person that isn't giving the plant enough food, which makes the plant hungry, then Ace hungers the growing plant.
 

sstamm

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What if it said, "The tycoon sold the offshore oil tracts for a lot of money, wanted to kill JR, and wore red clothes all the time." It's just one less descriptor. Again, stilted, but correct.

I guess you are right. Like you said, it sounds very stilted. I guess it is grammatically correct, but I don't know for sure.
 

JoeP

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Well, one definition of hunger is actually a verb:

v.tr.
To cause to experience hunger; make hungry.

I guess Jim could hunger the growing plant by not feeding it enough plant food. So if Ace is a person that isn't giving the plant enough food, which makes the plant hungry, then Ace hungers the growing plant.
Wow! It's hard to talk nonsense to knowledgeable and creative people who are seeking meaning. It's time to 'fess up. Sentence #3 was not intended to make sense. But taking "Ace' to be a proper noun and "hunger" to be a transitive verb seems to have thwarted my purpose. (When articles, prepositions, and conjunctions are considered given names, nonsense will die.) But, no matter, you live and learn. Of course, since I never specified which sentences were nonsensical, I could have taken credit for a really tricky nonsensical sounding meaningful sentence. Were I not confessing here, I would have gotten away with it!

According to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary the transitive use of the verb Hunger is rare. (TUGers are very special people.) According to the American Heritage Dictionary, it's Middle English. (TUGers are somewhat older than the general population.) It isn't in the medical dictionaries referenced by Dictionary.com, nor should it be. (Unless hungering is a medically diagnosed sadistic pathology.)

 

JoeP

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15. The horse raced past the barn fell.

23. The raft floated down the river sank.

25. The tycoon sold the offshore oil tracts for a lot of money wanted to kill JR.

Fifteen could be written: "The horse raced past the barn, fell." You could understand it that way but I'm not sure it's truly grammatically correct.

The same goes for 23: "The raft floated down the river, sank." It's awkward, but at least it makes sense.

If you understand 15, 23, and 25 to be meaningful as they were originally worded, can you explain what they mean, and thereby show the originals to be perfectly clear (upon reflection)?
 

Mel

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Above I wrote:
------------
"The horse raced past the barn, fell." You could understand it that way but I'm not sure it's truly grammatically correct.
-------------

After thinking about this a little, I realized that, "The horse raced past the barn, fell, and then got back up again." would sound fine, so it's like you just chopped off the last thing the horse did.
No, it doesn't really work that way.

In your second example you are using the commas to make a list of three things the horse did. But to chop the end of the sentence off, you would need to replace the comma with the word "and." "The horse raced past the barn AND fell" does not have the same meaning of "The horse raced past the barn fell. To me, the original sentence could be changed to "The horse which was raced past the barn fell." The original sentence is grammatically correct, though it looks wrong - when spoken we insert a slight pause, but a comma does not really belong. If you're going to add a comma, I would change it to "The horse, raced past the barn, fell." Alas, how many of us remember how to diagram sentences? They don't seem to teach that anymore, and maybe that's why teens today don't understand sentence structure (and why they struggle with foreign languages too, because they don't understand the difference between an adverb and an adjective.
 

Mel

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If you understand 15, 23, and 25 to be meaningful as they were originally worded, can you explain what they mean, and thereby show the originals to be perfectly clear (upon reflection)?

15. The horse raced past the barn fell.

The horse fell.
Which horse?
The one (which was) raced past the barn.

23. The raft floated down the river sank.

The raft sank.
Which raft?
The one floated down the river.

25. The tycoon sold the offshore oil tracts for a lot of money wanted to kill JR.

The tycoon wanted to kill JR.
Which tycoon?
The one to whom JR sold the offshore oil tracts for a lot of money.
 

jackio

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Above I wrote:
------------
"The horse raced past the barn, fell." You could understand it that way but I'm not sure it's truly grammatically correct.
-------------

After thinking about this a little, I realized that, "The horse raced past the barn, fell, and then got back up again." would sound fine, so it's like you just chopped off the last thing the horse did.

What about:
The horse raced past; the barn fell!
 

sstamm

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15. The horse raced past the barn fell.

The horse fell.
Which horse?
The one (which was) raced past the barn.

23. The raft floated down the river sank.

The raft sank.
Which raft?
The one floated down the river.

25. The tycoon sold the offshore oil tracts for a lot of money wanted to kill JR.

The tycoon wanted to kill JR.
Which tycoon?
The one to whom JR sold the offshore oil tracts for a lot of money.

It is funny that you brought up diagramming sentences. I was thinking about that as I pondered these. I am quite sure that it is not still taught in school! Contrary to my belief at the time, I now believe it has a value!!

I think the way you wrote the sentences make them more clear.

I agree with you on all but one.

#25 The tycoon sold the offshore oil tracts for a lot of money wanted to kill JR.

The tycoon wanted to kill JR.
Which tycoon?
The one to whom someone sold the offshore oil tracts for a lot of money.

I'm not sure one can infer that it was JR who sold the oil tracts to the tycoon. But for the purposes of understanding your illustration, it doesn't really matter.

Great job everyone! :cheer:
 

sstamm

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What about:
The horse raced past; the barn fell!

I like that one too! I'll have to show that to my DD who is a senior in high school. She is the queen of semicolons! I've never seen a writer so fond of a punctuation mark!! (But at least, like the above example, she uses them correctly!) LOL
 

3kids4me

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No, it doesn't really work that way.

In your second example you are using the commas to make a list of three things the horse did.

I was actually using the comma to add one extra thing the horse did, so that it would do two things instead of one. So instead of the horse just falling, it would fall and then get up again. It made more sense to me to think of it that way. Maybe I should have not added the second comma?

"The horse raced past the barn, fell, and got back up again."

"The horse raced past the barn, fell and then got back up again."

Maybe the second one is clearer. But I think you need the first comma whether you add the fact that the horse (having been raced past the barn and then fallen) got back up again or not.
 

scrapngen

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No, it doesn't really work that way.

In your second example you are using the commas to make a list of three things the horse did. But to chop the end of the sentence off, you would need to replace the comma with the word "and." "The horse raced past the barn AND fell" does not have the same meaning of "The horse raced past the barn fell. To me, the original sentence could be changed to "The horse which was raced past the barn fell." The original sentence is grammatically correct, though it looks wrong - when spoken we insert a slight pause, but a comma does not really belong. If you're going to add a comma, I would change it to "The horse, raced past the barn, fell." Alas, how many of us remember how to diagram sentences? They don't seem to teach that anymore, and maybe that's why teens today don't understand sentence structure (and why they struggle with foreign languages too, because they don't understand the difference between an adverb and an adjective.

I have been mostly too late to add anything that everyone else didn't already come up with. Should have given the sentences to my daughters, who are in sixth and fourth grades. Both have been taught how to diagram sentences!! (So it is still taught in a few places) This is not part of my education - just a lot of reading...
 

pjrose

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I have been mostly too late to add anything that everyone else didn't already come up with. Should have given the sentences to my daughters, who are in sixth and fourth grades. Both have been taught how to diagram sentences!! (So it is still taught in a few places) This is not part of my education - just a lot of reading...

When I was taught to diagram sentences in the 8th grade I thought it was the stupidist, most useless thing ever. My grammar was good, and I didn't need to do such ridiculous busy work. Guess what - over the years I've diagrammed more than a few sentences to try to show students and my kids the problems with theirs, and how to fix them. When I'm having trouble writing a sentence, I often diagram it in my head. To that English teacher from decades ago, wherever he might be, I say, "thank you".
 

JoeP

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No, it doesn't really work that way.

In your second example you are using the commas to make a list of three things the horse did. But to chop the end of the sentence off, you would need to replace the comma with the word "and." "The horse raced past the barn AND fell" does not have the same meaning of "The horse raced past the barn fell. To me, the original sentence could be changed to "The horse which was raced past the barn fell." The original sentence is grammatically correct, though it looks wrong - when spoken we insert a slight pause, but a comma does not really belong. If you're going to add a comma, I would change it to "The horse, raced past the barn, fell." Alas, how many of us remember how to diagram sentences? They don't seem to teach that anymore, and maybe that's why teens today don't understand sentence structure (and why they struggle with foreign languages too, because they don't understand the difference between an adverb and an adjective.


The reason that there's difficulty with this famous "garden-path" sentence seems to be that readers are lead down the wrong path of understanding by habit. The sentence doesn't work when we use "race" as an intransitive verb, as is usual. "Fell", the verb, comes at the end of the sentence and upsets the applecart. (The price of animal exploitation.)
 

JoeP

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