[Ads-l] The good thing that Harvey washed away

Neal Whitman nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET
Thu Aug 31 11:28:24 UTC 2017


From a blog post shared on Facebook:

https://angeliagriffin.wordpress.com/2017/08/28/the-good-thing-harvey-washed-away/

My heart is bleeding. 

Yet, in the deluge, there is also something incredibly beautiful emerging. You see, Harvey has washed away something else–hatred. 



I think she means "the good thing for Harvey TO HAVE washed away". I get the intended meaning only by context; the normal meaning for me would be the intersective reading in which (1) hatred is good and (2) Harvey washed it away.

Maybe the writer was thinking "it's a good thing that Harvey washed away hatred" and the finite clause sneaked in that way. Or maybe this reading is totally fine and even licensed by some theory of syntax. What do you think?

Neal
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