Not descriptivistly correct, but...

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

I had to read this 3 times before I got the point. Semantics overrides prescriptivist grammar! Cf. "Riding a bicycle, a snake crossed the road"
------Original Message------
From: Laurence Horn
Sender: ADS-L
To: ADS-L
ReplyTo: ADS-L
Subject: [ADS-L] Not descriptivistly correct, but...
Sent: Mar 23, 2009 9:17 PM

...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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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org