It's happened again. I'm riveted by Sarah Dunant's latest novel and enjoying the intricacies of life in an Italian Renaissance convent and I'm pulled up sharp by a grammatical infelicity, such as happened in each of the other two novels I've read by this author. Each time it occurs in the latter stages of the story, and each time it comes as a shock because of the obvious linguistic skill displayed up to this point. What on earth happens? Does she too become so caught up in the story she's weaving that she grows careless?
I'll come back to this book when I've finished reading it, but for anyone out there who cares about such things, the sentence in question is this: "Instead, he, like she, had been a master of deception." "Like" is not a conjunction - I can hear my father's voice as I write this - and the subsequent pronoun should have been "her" - the object of the preposition "like".
Do dinosaurs say harrumph?
Well, it's not like grammar is taught in schools these days ;)
ReplyDeleteI would rate my own English as, at least, fair and a conjunction is not something I would think about. Not by name, at least.
Ah, but would you misuse one? It only matters to language specialists to know why something is right/wrong, but there are those who simply know what is right. I don't know if this is caused by instinct, by having read widely, or by teaching in their youth which they have forgotten about but retained the knowledge.
ReplyDeleteHope you had some bubble wrap handy.
ReplyDeleteJimmy, you've lost me. The mind, however, boggles ...
ReplyDeleteIf you had some bubble wrap handy you would have been able to pop a few bubbles to relieve the shock of this grammatical infelicity.
ReplyDeleteOH, quite. Nothing like the pop of plastic bubbles in the night - unless it's the sound of popping bladderwrack!
ReplyDeleteHowever, there is a certain poetic timbre to the words selected by the author ......
ReplyDeleteI know, Chickpea - but I always find the grammar casts out thoughts of poetry! My burden, perhaps...
ReplyDelete