WANTED: Grammar Expert

[psychic_serpent]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, Ladi lyndi <ladilyndi at y...> 
wrote:
> 
> --- "Cindy  wrote:
> > "Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create
> > novels that arise from 
> > and express the injustices African Americans
> > have endured."
> > 
> > What is the error?
> 
> 
> Lynn:
 > So, I think the sentence should either read:
> 
> Toni Morrison's genius enables it to create
> novels that arise from and express the injustices
> African Americans have endured.

Definitely not.  It changes the meaning.  Toni Morrison is still the 
one doing the creating.  It is not some disembodied 'genius' that is 
doing the creating.  For style purposes, I dislike saying that 
her 'genius' enables her to do something because in this 
case 'genius' is too vague and undefined.  What is meant by this?  
One could as easily say that her opinions help her to write, but 
it's still not clear what those opinions are nor what role they play 
in her writing (even though her opinions might be very important in 
shaping her writing).

> or
> 
> Toni Morrison's genius enables Toni Morrison to
> create novels that arise from and express the
> injustices African Americans have endured.

This is awkward, but at least it doesn't change the meaning.  The 
problem with saying that the first version has a grammatical error 
(rather than citing the style problems, which I'll get to) is that 
there was no question of what the first version of the passage 
meant, apart from the question of what is meant by 'genius.'  
Despite being technically correct, it was abundantly clear to whom 
the 'her' referred, and that is probably why it was difficult to 
detect the error.  Normally, errors spring out at us because they 
make it difficult to read something or to discern the meaning.  If 
no such difficulty arises, we find ourselves scratching our heads 
and shrugging.  If J.K. Rowling wrote, "Harry's thirst was all he 
could think about; he had to get something to drink soon," we would 
know that 'he' was referring to 'Harry,' even though the subject of 
the sentence is 'Harry's thirst.'  It's not technically grammatical, 
but it's not confusing either.  There's no question of what is 
meant.  (We know what thirst is, for instance, whereas I don't think 
anyone has yet pinned down what 'genius' is.)

The first thing I noticed about this passage, actually, is that the 
verbs produce a bit of a problem.  They are not the same type, and 
so using them together is awkward.  If we separate them and thus 
create these two new versions of the end of the sentence, we get:

"...novels that arise from the injustices African Americans have 
endured."

and

"...novels that express the injustices African Americans have 
endured."

The first version gives us a verb followed by a prepositional phrase 
(preposition and object of preposition, which is itself a phrase--
"the injustices African Americans have endured.")  The second 
version gives us a verb followed by the object of the verb ("the 
injustices African Americans have endured.")  Stylistically, using 
the same phrase to be the object of a preposition and the object of 
a verb is something I wouldn't recommend.  They are not equal.  
Frankly, the entire thing needs a rewrite.  Something like this 
would work better:

"Toni Morrison has shown an ability to create novels that both arise 
from the injustices that African-Americans have endured and express 
those injustices."

While it's a little more repetitive than the original, it doesn't 
use an amorphous word like 'genius' and the same phrase is no longer 
being used as the object of a verb and the object of a preposition.  
The antecedent error has also been banished.  The real problem with 
asking people to find the 'error' in the original passage is that 
even with the 'error' fixed, it's still rife with badly-chosen 
words.  I would still replace 'express' with 'vividly depict' for 
greater precision, and I'm still unclear about what might be meant 
by 'arise from.'  The civil rights movement arose from the 
injustices endured by African-Americans; many of Morrison's novels 
were inspired by those injustices, and the fight to end those 
injustices.  In my experience, novels don't 'arise from' anything.

--Barb

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