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Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Wed May 14, 2003 11:52 am

... but, for the sake of amusement:"Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create novels that arise from and express the injustices African Americans have endured." Is there something grammatically wrong with this sentence? (Washington Post)

ADKbrown · **Posted:** Wed May 14, 2003 12:13 pm

Hmmmm. Whether there is or not, it's awkward to say that Morrison's novels are a) created by her genius and b) arise from injustices suffered by African-Americans.Do you think the original sentence wants a "that" before "African Americans"?Should the last term be hyphenated?

moab · **Joined:** Sat Mar 22, 2003 1:01 am **Posts:** 190

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by blanp:
... but, for the sake of amusement:"Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create novels that arise from and express the injustices African Americans have endured." Is there something grammatically wrong with this sentence? (Washington Post)<hr></blockquote>Well, for starters, it should read "Toni Morrison's UNIQUE genius enables her to create novels that arise from and express the injustices African Americans have endured."Unique always improves a sentence.Or were you talking about the second one?

ADKbrown · **Posted:** Thu May 15, 2003 9:58 am

I just meant that it's a clumsy sentence, with or without a grammatical error.

grouch_in_training · **Posted:** Thu May 15, 2003 10:39 am

<blockquote>quote:<hr>"Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create novels that arise from and express the injustices African Americans have endured." <hr></blockquote>The original question was if there is a grammatical error. Is this a "that" question? I'd vote for another one, but why add more words?Assuming you keep the sentence, delete the irrelevant bits until you end up with: "Toni Morrison's genius enables her to express the injustices [that] African Americans have endured."Better yet, lose "genius," "enables" and "endured." Please.Send it back for a re-write. Suggest: "Toni Morrison's voice comes from injustices African Americans have suffered."It hardly sings -- but neither does the original.Oops. Wait. It was a rhetorical question, wasn't it?[ May 15, 2003: Message edited by: grouch_in_training ]

SusanV · **Posted:** Thu May 15, 2003 11:54 am

I guess none of you had a few minutes to read the Post story (other than blanp). The "error" is apparently using the pronoun her in conjunction with Morrison's.I'm admittedly glad to see that nobody jumped on it. There are at least five of us here who couldn't figure out what was wrong with it either, including our former general editor, long retired, who was the most likely candidate to spot it quickly. We still aren't ready to agree that it was wrong; none of us recalls being taught any such rule, and different sources have differing rules.

grouch_in_training · **Posted:** Thu May 15, 2003 12:18 pm

:o I need a vacation. Maybe a nice, long snipe hunt...

KfitzR · **Posted:** Thu May 15, 2003 2:22 pm

"Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create novels that arise from and express the injustices African Americans have endured." In that case, Susan V, how about:
Toni Morrison's genius comes through in novels that arise from, and express, the injustices that African Americans have endured.

ADKbrown · **Posted:** Thu May 15, 2003 3:53 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by SusanV:
I guess none of you had a few minutes to read the Post story (other than blanp). The "error" is apparently using the pronoun her in conjunction with Morrison's.<hr></blockquote>I don't see why that's a problem. Would it be wrong to say, "Her genius allows her to create . . . "? If not, then why is the original wrong? The first "her" in my example is simply a stand-in for "Toni Morrison's." I'm curious to know what the objections are.[ May 15, 2003: Message edited by: ADKbrown ]

ADKbrown · **Posted:** Thu May 15, 2003 4:23 pm

I just read the Post story, which I should have done earlier, before taking this thread in the wrong direction.The story says: *Many grammar manuals insist that a pronoun such as "her" should refer only to a noun, not, as in the case of the possessive "Toni Morrison's," an adjective.*Yet the noun that the pronoun refers to does not have to appear in the same sentence as the pronoun. (See my example in the previous post.) The context makes the reference clear. In this case, the sentence appeared in isolation on an SAT. The lack of context is problematic, but it's hard to argue that the sentence is therefore ungrammatical. If grammarians cannot agree, however, then of course the sentence does not belong on the test. Does a pronoun always have to refer to a noun? That would seem logical, but language is not always logical. The sort of construction that prompted this debate is so common in speech (and probably writing) that prounouncing it "ungrammatical" sounds a bit pedantic. Nevertheless, I'll be careful not to violate this "rule" in the future.[ May 15, 2003: Message edited by: ADKbrown ]

Matthew Grieco · **Posted:** Fri May 16, 2003 12:02 am

I agree that ETS was right to throw out the question because established grammar manuals disagree.That said, I don't agree with this supposed rule, and I find no grammatical errors in the sentence.

tim · **Posted:** Fri May 16, 2003 4:45 am

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by blanp:
... but, for the sake of amusement:"Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create novels that arise from and express the injustices African Americans have endured." Is there something grammatically wrong with this sentence? (Washington Post)<hr></blockquote>That Toni Morrison gets around. I went to my copy of The Elements of Style searching for an answer. I didn't find what I was looking for, but did find this interesting example. It illustrates that the subject and verb of a sentence should not be separated by a phrase or clause that could be put at the beginning of sentence."Toni Morrison, in Beloved, writes about characters who have escaped from slavery but are haunted by its heritage."

ADKbrown · **Posted:** Fri May 16, 2003 8:40 am

Another thought occurred to me: The Post story says "many grammar manuals insist that a pronoun such as 'her' should refer only to a noun, not, as in the case of the possessive 'Toni Morrison's,' an adjective." But "her" is an adjective, not a noun, so why shouldn't it refer to an adjective, such as "Toni Morrison's"?

Wayne Countryman · **Posted:** Fri May 16, 2003 4:17 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by ADKbrown:
Another thought occurred to me: The Post story says "many grammar manuals insist that a pronoun such as 'her' should refer only to a noun, not, as in the case of the possessive 'Toni Morrison's,' an adjective." But "her" is an adjective, not a noun, so why shouldn't it refer to an adjective, such as "Toni Morrison's"?<hr></blockquote>seems to me it's being used as a pronoun there.

ADKbrown · **Posted:** Fri May 16, 2003 4:23 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Wayne Countryman:
seems to me it's being used as a pronoun there.<hr></blockquote>Yes, but it's an adjectival pronoun.

Bakelite · **Posted:** Mon Jun 02, 2003 12:05 pm

Interesting to see this issue come up in Sunday's NYT Week in Review. Any thoughts?http://nytimes.com/2003/06/01/weekinreview/01NUNB.html

SusanV · **Posted:** Mon Jun 02, 2003 1:46 pm

Thanks for posting it. I think he's got it absolutely right.

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