Important notice from the GRAMMAR POLICE. Plz read. This means you.
littleblackdog:
" This being the reason for asking in the first place"
Midwing:
The whole sentence can't be a misplaced modifier, surely? The only thing in that sentence which I would have thought could be a misplaced modifier would be "in the first place" but as has been discussed ad infinitum, I'm no grammatical expert. It strikes me that unless you know your stuff, you'd best leave this kind of thing to those who do.
littleblackdog:
Quote from: Midwing on 2009 July 24, 20:36:18
The whole sentence can't be a misplaced modifier, surely? The only thing in that sentence which I would have thought could be a misplaced modifier would be "in the first place" but as has been discussed ad infinitum, I'm no grammatical expert. It strikes me that unless you know your stuff, you'd best leave this kind of thing to those who do.
I do not know my stuff, that is why I was asking. I will go and see if I can find the answer on the internet.
rufio:
littleblackdog, it is not good enough to just memorize catch phrases - you actually have to learn what they mean, too.
A misplaced modifier is a verbal adjective which is itself the head of a clause, which also modifies a noun in a higher clause; however, the clause it heads is placed in such a way that it is not clear which noun it modifies, causing (often hilarious) syntactic ambiguity. Is what Midwing said ambiguous? No. This is a hint. I suppose you could count "being" as a verbal adjective, but it's obvious that it's modifying "this". If you want to say that it's not clear what "this" refers to (which is not the case) that would be an ambiguous anaphor. "Asking" is a gerund and not a verbal adjective at all.
Midwing:
I find that this website is a useful exercise that may help. I just scanned through it.
Asking a question, no matter how much initiative you are attempting to show at improving the level of your grammar, apparently doesn't protect you from the wrath of those who know better than you do. Bear that in mind.
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