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Grammar

Posted by Word Camel on October 07, 2004

In Reply to: Grammar posted by TheFallen on October 07, 2004

: : : : I need help about grammatical errors. I'm not sure if below sentences were written correctly. Could you help me out?

: : : : First question

: : : : " President Bush is trying to bring all of North Koreas neighbors together in a coalition, but Kerry thinks that this is wrong and the US should go back to one-on-one with North Korea even though this is what brought the nuclear nightmare that America is facing today. But he blamed *the North Koreans* getting nukes Bushes fault when the materials for building them came under the prior administration "

: : : : Could you tell me why the last sentence used * the North Korean*? Can we say the North Korean

: : : : second question

: : : : " To judge this debate as if it were a forensics tournament is to miss the point. "

: : : : why does a sentence above use "forensics"? Is forensics noun or adjective in this sentence?

: : : : Thanks in advance

: : : To the second question above, from Merriam Webster,
: : : Main Entry: 2forensic
: : : Function: noun
: : : 1 : an argumentative exercise
: : : 2 : plural but singular or plural in construction the art or study of argumentative discourse.

:
: :
: : It's very difficult to answer your first question directly because the last sentence doesn't entirely make sense.

: : It's not clear who "he" is for a start, whether you are talking about Bush or Kerry. It's also unclear what the subject of the sentence is. Are you talking about North Korea's nuclear capability? Are you talking about the fact that the North Koreans have aquired nuclear weapons? Is he blaming Bush for this situation or is Bush blaming the previous administration? Is he stopping short of blaming Bush?

: : Whether you use "North Korean" or "North Korea's" depends on what the subject of the sentence is.

: :
: : Maybe if you could rewrite the last sentence (you might want to make it into two sentences) so that what you are trying to say is a little clearer we could be more helpful.

: : Camel

: Despite the fact of the last sentence being somewhat unclear, whether you choose to use "North Korea" or "the North Koreans", in both cases you'd need an apostrophe... so either "North Korea's getting nukes" or "the North Koreans' getting nukes". This is because "getting" in this sense is effectively a noun rather than a present participle - if my L@tin were better, I'd probably know whether it was a gerund or a gerundive.

I see what you're saying and I know that there is a 99.9 percent chance that you are right, but what I want to know is why it sounds so awkward? Instinctively I wouldn't use either. I'd say "North Korea's nuclear capasity" or "North Korean nukes" or "The North Korean's nukes" or even "The fact that the North Koreans got nukes". I'd use almost anything but what is there. Am I just, linguistically-speaking, an old fart?

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