Ask the English Teacher

Dangling Modifiers

Haemi wrote to me:

"I'll have to refresh my memory of the dangling modifier. I've been trying to remember it, and I kinda sorta do, but it is really faint (much like my trip to Hawaii as a 5-year-old). Should really learn a few things, as I can't remember if the dangling modifier was a good thing or not!"

Dangling modifiers are not good things. A modifying phrase should refer to the subject:
Writing to Crawford, Haemi poured out her feelings about English grammar.

A dangling modifier, however, refers to the subject when it shouldn't:
Walking up Vermont, Griffith Park Observatory loomed against the northern sky.

When the observatory starts walking up Vermont, it's time to leave Los Angeles. In a case like this, the writer is assumes that we know who's walking up Vermont--but we don't! It ought to read something like:
Walking up Vermont, Crawford saw Griffith Park Observatory looming against the northern sky.
In other words, whoever is doing the writing or walking in the modifying phrase must show up as the subject of the sentence!

If necessary, we could turn the phrase into a subordinate clause:
As Crawford was walking up Vermont, he saw Griffith Park Observatory looming against the northern sky.

But dangling modifiers can pop up in all kinds of embarrassing places.

Possessives of Possessives

My friend Haemi asks:

"I have been shuffling the pages of my arcane grammar books, but could not quite find the answer for this one. Until now, my policy with this particular problem was to avoid it at all cost -- but sometimes the cost became too high to just work around it.

"I know a person named John. John has a brother, who shall remain nameless. If I am borrowing his (the brother's) bicycle, how do I say that in a sentence?

"Would it be 'I borrowed John's brother's bicycle?' Obviously, in this example, it wouldn't be so difficult to re-word it -- I could have easily said, 'I borrowed a bicycle from John's brother.' There are situations, however, where re-wording is not really an option, and I often had to risk being too verbose."

The bicycle OF the brother OF John really is "John's brother's bicycle." And we could go on like this for a long time: If the bicycle belongs to the brother's classmate, we'd call it "John's brother's classmate's bicycle."

By then, however, all those apostrophes are calling attention to themselves. We'd do better to say "I borrowed a bicycle from a classmate of John's brother." But this is a question of style, not of grammar.

Present Perfect: Perplexing!

I've received a question from a Chinese teacher of English about a problem with the present perfect tense:

It is well known that, according to grammar books, we don't use present perfect tense when there is a past time adverbial mentioned:
e.g. I have seen him yesterday. (ungrammatical)
Nearly every grammar book reminds us of this important rule, so we have accepted it without question.

Because of this rule, however, we Chinese usually use simple past tense with "in the past few years", for this time adverbial is as past as you can possibly define what is past:
e.g. He worked there in the past few years.
We cannot interpret the adjective 'past' as referring to present or future time, can we? From schools to even government departments, we usually choose only simple past tense for such time adverbials as in the past four years, during the past three weeks, etc. It is as simple and logical as can be.

However, gradually, English native speakers strongly reminded us we shall use present perfect tense with such time expressions:
e.g. He has worked there in the past few years.

At first we didn't believe this. We argued ferociously against them how possibly could present perfect tense stay with past time expressions?