Not descriptivistly correct, but...

[Herb Stahlke]

He should have kept his pregnant paws off her.

Herb

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 9:17 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Not descriptivistly correct, but...
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ...I can't resist nominating this TV show capsule summary for the
> Misplaced Modifier of the Month award:
>
> Roommates
> "The Roommate" - Hours before giving birth, a woman's boyfriend
> leaves her for her best friend and quits the talent agency they run
> together in order to start his own competing business; the woman
> discovers that the father of her baby is not she thought it was.
>
> [Note that "a woman's boyfriend leaves her" is also a violation of
> that possessive-antecedent-of-pronoun pseudo-constraint Arnold waxed
> so eloquently upon a few months back, but that's the least of its
> problems--or evidently of hers.]
>
> LH
>
> P.S.  I don't suppose the boyfriend could be another one of those
> pregnant guys we've been hearing about lately...
>
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