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RC
18th Jan 2005, 13:48
Would anyone care to parse the last sentence?

(from DBC Pierre's story, Tuesday January 18, 2005, The Guardian)




A mate of mine in the sixth form one day brought to school two supermarket bags containing most of a human skeleton. Burial tatters still hung from the bones. He said the remains answered our biology teacher's repeated wish for a life-size anatomical model.

This was harsh, even for Latin America. Even by the standards of we drug-addled sixth form cannibals.

ono no komachi
18th Jan 2005, 14:12
It's not a grammatical error, but a typo. Supposed to have been:

Even by the standards of wee drug-addled sixth form cannibals.

What would be your preference in correcting it, RC, if it were you wielding the blue pencil? '...of us drug-addled..' does sound a bit clunky.

How about:

'Even by the standards of drug-addled sixth form cannibals like us.' (Why 'cannibals', do you think? Is it meant to convey a more extreme impression than something like 'reprobates' or 'wastrels'? And if 'drug-addled is to be hyphenated, shouldn't 'sixth-form' also be?)

I'm assuming that we're tolerant of the fact that it's a fragment and not a complete sentence. Fragments are allowed, aren't they?

Somehow, though, I think DBC has the last laugh on me, because I'm never likely to write something energetic and entertaining enough to be published on the Guardian website.

RC
18th Jan 2005, 14:31
The addition of the 'e' is the best correction. :D

Certainly fragments are allowed.

"of us drug-addled.." sounds clunky I think mainly because this kind of structure is seldom properly executed any more.

I would have to go with the hyphen in 'drug-addled'. '..sixth-form..' ? Hm. One could say that 'sixth' isn't really a modifier, instead 'sixth form' is a compound noun. Does that work for you?

HP
18th Jan 2005, 14:37
Shouldn't that read:

Even by the standards of sixth-form, drug-addled cannibals like us.

As DBC Pierre has put it, it sounds like 'we' cannibalised the sixth form - ie - we ate them.

ono no komachi
18th Jan 2005, 14:41
I would have to go with the hyphen in 'drug-addled'. '..sixth-form..' ? Hm. One could say that 'sixth' isn't really a modifier, instead 'sixth form' is a compound noun. Does that work for you?

In the words of the wonderfully named Fred Dryer in some appalling cop show from the early eighties:

Works for me! :wink:

RC
18th Jan 2005, 14:54
If the cannibals had eaten the sixth form I'd show it this way:

we drug-addled sixth-form-cannibals

The problem with this one -

Even by the standards of sixth-form, drug-addled cannibals like us.

I think is that there is a tinge of a suggestion that the d/a s/f cannibals belong to a larger class, although it doesn't really affect the meaning of course.

And if you were going that way, I'd prefer 'such as we' rather than 'like us'. Because the phrase has an implied verb ('are').

HP
18th Jan 2005, 15:03
Whatever you say, RC. It's the use of the word 'cannibals' that intrigues me. Whom did they eat? Teachers? Each other? Or is DBC not so C after all?

RC
18th Jan 2005, 15:26
I rather like 'cannibals' there. As o/n/k suggested, it seems to me to be a beyond-the-known hyperbolic choice, brought on perhaps by the bags of bones in the preceeding lines.

HP
18th Jan 2005, 15:34
Oh, don't get me wrong. Am not objecting - not a bit of it. But I don't think he's just playing on the bag of bones theme; I think he may well be implying that they metaphorically feast on such pranks; that they are indeed a savage bunch.