From: lannert@uni-duesseldorf.de (Detlef Lannert)
Subject: Re: I'm in a comma.
Organization: Universitaetsrechenzentrum, Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet Duesseldorf
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 15:27:48 GMT

slagle@lmsc.lockheed.com (Mark Slagle) writes:

>> I will have a minestrone, my favourite dish, and a pint of lager.
>> According to the German rule, "my favourite dish" is attributive to the
>> minestrone (otherwise there would be *no* "," before the "and"), and 
>> thus I'll order just two things. 
>> According to the "comma=yes"-rule, which seems to be preferred by English
>> grammar books (and by Tom), my favourite dish might be something else
>> (pizza perhaps), and thus the soup is only a starter.
>> So how would you avoid this ambiguity? Or isn't it one at all?

>"I will have a minestrone, which is my favorite dish, and
> a pint of lager."

Yes, I like that version; it wouldn't have been so compact (and
still preserve the "flow" of the sentence) in German.

>But it's hard to transfer between English and German
>rules for disambiguity.  The customary word order in
>the two languages is so different that it disables 
>the intuitive sense of what seems right.  Would the
>clause in question be in that place in the German
>version of the statement?

Very common - at least in written German. Most people
would probably make two separate sentences of it when
talking colloquially. (A majority of *speakers* tend
to avoid appositions, relative clauses, and the like.)
                                      ^ :-)

eepjm@wombat.newcastle.edu.au (Peter Moylan) writes:

>>       I will have a minestrone, my favourite dish, and a pint of lager.
>> 
>> So how would you avoid this ambiguity? Or isn't it one at all?
>      I'll have a minestrone - my favourite dish - and a pint of lager.
>      I'll have a minestrone (my favourite dish) and a pint of lager.
>      I'll have a minestrone, my favourite dish; and a pint of lager.
>Note that these all have the same meaning.  If I wanted the other
>meaning, I would probably re-cast the sentence to avoid ambiguity:
>      I'll have a minestrone, a pint of lager, and my favourite dish.
>Of course, I could say this only to someone who knew what my favourite
>dish was.  Taking that into account, there never was an ambiguity in
>the original example.
>This last example becomes interesting if one omits the second comma:
>      I'll have a minestrone, a pint of lager and my favourite dish.
>To me, this looks like an unconventional definition of the word
>"minestrone".

I'm not quite sure what sorts of liquids are used for a *real*
minestrone ... ;-)

>A minor point, unrelated to the original topic: the phrasing
>"I will have ..." sounds impolite to me; it would be better to say
>"I would like ...".  The abbreviated form "I'll have ..." is,
>however, often heard.  I suppose that this is because the abbreviation
>creates an informality which softens the impoliteness.

I remember having been asked "What will you have?" (or rather
"What'll ...") several times. I got the impression that my
standard "I would like ..." was getting old-fashioned; I take
it from your remark that it's wiser to stick to it.

--
Detlef Lannert      DC3EK      E-Mail: tsos@rz.uni-duesseldorf.de
"Ab morgen wird gearbeitet."
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english