Not descriptivistly correct, but...

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:27 AM -0700 3/24/09, Margaret Lee wrote:
>I think it is a dangling modifier rather than a misplaced modifier
>since the real subject is missing from the phrase.
>
>--Margaret Lee

Right; I first wrote it up that way, and then changed it to achieve
alliteration.  But I should have realized the two terms aren't
interchangeable.  So "Dangling Modifier of the Day".

LH

>
>________________________________________
>
>--- 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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>
>
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