Not descriptivistly correct, but...

[Margaret Lee]

I think it is a dangling modifier rather than a misplaced modifier since the real subject is missing from the phrase.
 
--Margaret Lee

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--- On Tue, 3/24/09, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:


From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
Subject: Not descriptivistly correct, but...
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Date: Tuesday, March 24, 2009, 1:17 AM


...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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