no fun with pronouns

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Fri Dec 10 02:58:28 UTC 2010


I'm not Neal (nor Rappaport), but it surely would.  The problem for
me with the original is that the "on the 16th floor ..." clause looks
essential, to identify the restaurant -- and if Dillinger's is indeed
that restaurant then such an identifier is not needed.  So I think
that restaurant is not Dillinger's, but some other
establishment.  But as usual, this is a reception in the absence of
any preceding context.

Joel

At 12/9/2010 08:23 PM, Barbara Need wrote:
>Neal,
>
>Would that have been better with commas?
>
>"Dillinger's sometimes hands out fliers at Broad and High streets
>reminding people [that] the restaurant[,] on the 16th floor of the
>LeVeque Tower[,] has a patio just for smokers."
>
>Barbara
>
>Barbara Need
>Ithaca
>
>On 9 Dec 2010, at 12:24 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:
>
>>The journalistic squeezing in of additional information in the wrong
>>place
>>gave me trouble in interpreting an anaphoric relation in this
>>sentence:
>>
>>"Dillinger's sometimes hands out fliers at Broad and High streets
>>reminding
>>people [that] the restaurant on the 16th floor of the LeVeque Tower
>>has a
>>patio just for smokers."
>>
>>Dillinger's and the restaurant on the 16th floor are the same entity.
>>Instead of just saying "it", the writer tried to use a more elaborate
>>anaphoric device that didn't work.
>>http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2005/08/01/anaphoric-epithets-gone-wrong/

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