| 词组 | squinting modifier, squinting construction |
| 释义 | squinting modifier, squinting construction The squinting modifier resides chiefly in college-level handbooks. The term is used of an adverb or phrase that stands between two sentence elements and can be taken to modify either what precedes or what follows. Let us construct an example: • To laugh often can be embarrassing. In our made-up example, often can be construed as modifying either laugh or can be embarrassing. But you can see right away that we are in learners' territory— most of us would have written can often be if we had intended often to go with the second part. Here is perhaps a better example, sent to us by a correspondent from Korea: • The store that had the big sale recently went bankrupt. Here recently can be interpreted as modifying either the preceding or following part. But the content of the sentence suggests it is a learner's sentence; a native speaker would not be likely to convey the information in such a flat and unspecific manner. The examples of the squinting modifier shown in college handbooks are comparable to the two we have used here, and they seem about as likely to occur in actual writing. This degree of improbability, along with the dearth of examples in our own files, suggests to us that the squinting modifier is more of a theoretical possibility—with, it must be admitted, a catchy title—than a real problem. It would seem most likely to occur when a split infinitive is being carefully avoided by putting the would-be splitting adverb ahead of the infinitive, as in • ... authorities would be required correctly to anticipate their requirements —W. Manning Dacey, The British Banking Mechanism, 1951 |
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