I've seen those English dramas too, they're cruel

[venta]

I avoided all the BBC frothing about bad grammar the other day. Much as I like a well-placed apostrophe, the sort of people who say "I think you'll find you mean 'fewer'" are, largely, arses (up with whom one should not put).

However, a nice grammar quiz? oh yes, that sounds like fun. I can answer it and feel all smug. Except, of course, I disagreed with it.

Question 3: Read this sentence carefully. "I'd like to introduce you to my sister Clara, who lives in Madrid, to Benedict, my brother who doesn't, and to my only other sibling, Hilary." Which of the following is correct?

1. Hilary is male
2. Hilary is female
3. It's impossible to know from the context

Now, the BBC's answer is that Hilary is male, because there isn't a comma after 'brother'. Benedict is described as "my brother who doesn't [live in Madrid]", so there must also be another brother, and thus that brother must be only-other-sibling Hilary.

I claim the answer is morally 3: it's impossible to tell. Because I, for one, got so lost among the commas of that god-awful sentence that I was frankly quite bewildered enough by the end without worrying about whether Hilary was a boy or a girl. Good grammar aids clarity, it doesn't reduce English to a puzzle of whether you knew the rules well enough to divine the writer's intent correctly. If your reader has to count commas to understand your statement, you've already got it monumentally wrong.

Bah.

Comments

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting example of a verb in transition. "They sat me down" would have been considered incorrect until fairly recently (preferred: they seated me down, I was seated).

It's originally two separate verbs, 'to seat [someone]' (past tense 'seated') and 'to sit' (past tense 'sat'). But 'sit' has stealthily been taking over the work of 'seat'. I wonder if this is because the main use of 'seat' these days is reflexive, so eg. 'please seat yourself' meets 'please sit down' to become 'please sit yourself down'.

[eniel]

I'm not sure at all, and my dictionary (Websters, and I am wondering if this use might be an Americanism) is unable to help solve my dilemma, since it only gives "origin" dates for the verb itself, and does not distinguish between transitive and intransitive uses. That said, it does state that "to sit someone" is an acceptable use of the verb when meaning "to place on a seat" (in my example, I was), whereas "to seat" is "to cause to sit or assist in finding a seat".
Interesting way in which both verbs have been intertwining though :)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Looking at usage of 'sit yourself' vs 'seat yourself', this is interesting:
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sit+yourself%2Cseat+yourself&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=18&smoothing=3&share=

The US pattern is similarish but sit has not yet overtaken: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sit+yourself%2Cseat+yourself&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=18&smoothing=3&share=

Not a sophisticated enough query to prove anything much, but it might be indicative.

[eniel]

*nods* Yes, it does seem to infer that the differences between the verbs are being progressively erased. Thanks for the link!