"conducive to"

Seán Fitzpatrick grendel.jjf at VERIZON.NET
Fri Apr 25 04:14:04 UTC 2008


<< " And those open spaces that landscape architects so love are not really
conducive to the desert climate."

 

the speaker's intention is, it seems to me, pretty clear: having lots of
open spaces through which people will walk is not a good idea in a

desert climate (who would want to stroll there?)>>

 

Is this an example of right church-wrong voice, reversing subject and
object?  People do it all the time, but not everything become standard, like
using "comprise" for "compose"?  An example:  On NPR's Day to Day yesterday
(http://tinyurl.com/65vcqw), Edward Norton said the new TV program he is
hosting “investigates the ways that seemingly disparate phenomenon (sic) in
the global environment are actually interconnected . . . . the old (sic)
adage that, you know, 'a butterfly's wings beat in China  and you get a
hurricane in Africa' is actually starting to sort of BEAR OUT
scientifically”.

 

Seán Fitzpatrick

Why doesn't global warming just go up out of the ozone hole?

http://www.logomachon.blogspot.com/

 

 

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