Your classmate Clarence says we readily produce routine expressions like
“What time is it?” and “Fine, thanks” because we hear them so frequently.
But he wonders how we produce and understand sentences we’ve never
heard before. What do you think?
• Your sidekick Amber reports that reading Steven Pinker’s The Language
Instinct made her think about ambiguous language. She understands how
a word like bank can mean ‘savings bank’ or ‘bank of a river’ but not how
a string of unambiguous words like new drug combinations can mean both
‘combinations of new drugs’ and ‘new combinations of (old) drugs.’ What’s
your explanation?
• With the Los Angeles Times in hand, reader Ron asks whether it’s legitimately
grammatical to write, “Not a drop of rain had fallen on Roanoke Island, said
John Wilson.” He thinks the correct grammatical form is, “John Wilson said
not a drop of rain had fallen on Roanoke Island.” He wants to know about
the correct order of subjects, verbs, and objects. What can you tell him?
• Nerdy Ned expresses annoyance that the grammar checker in his word
processor objects to nearly every passive sentence he writes. Instead of The
winning team was hobbled together by a hodgepodge of friends, the checker
recommended A hodgepodge of friends hobbled together the winning team.
Ned claims the checker assumes all passives are bad, and he disagrees. Is
Ned right?