这个英语句子是否正确?

学英语,总会有好事发生的。
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最近有读者在后台提到了一个问题:



这里提到的句子出自The Economist在6月份的一篇文章Have Siberian fires been smouldering underground all winter?



Seen from the sky, the northern stretches of Siberia in early May were a splodgy white, their thinning winter snow cover interrupted by the brown veins of meandering rivers. Nestled within some of these curves, though, satellites picked up patches of soil warmer than the ground around them. The patches grew and multiplied as the month went on. Before it was over, some were visibly ablaze.


段落意思是:从天上望下去,5月初的西伯利亚北部地区是一片斑驳的白色,覆盖在上面的冬季积雪在不断变薄,被蜿蜒的褐色河流切开。但是卫星发现一些处于河流拐角处的土壤比周围的土地要更加温暖。这些土壤在5月份面积不断增大,到5月结束之前,一些土壤已经明显燃烧起来了。



这里值得讨论的句子是第二句:



Nestled within some of these curves, though, satellites picked up patches of soil warmer than the ground around them.


Nestled within some of these curves这一分词结构在句子中充当状语,其中nestle的用法是something is nestled among/within XX,含义是“某事物坐落于XX之间”,比如《韦氏高阶英语词典》里面就有这样的例句:The vacation resort was nestled among the hills. 那个度假胜地坐落在群山之间。



根据语境,nestled within some of these curves这一部分修饰的是patches of soil,即:patches of soil were nestled within some of these curves,但句子的主语却是satellites,也就是说,句子中做状语的分词短语的逻辑主语跟句子的主语不一致,句子事实上出现了“垂悬结构”(Dangling modifier)。


所谓的垂悬结构是指非谓语动词短语和介词短语作状语时,其逻辑主语与主句主语不一致,导致出现了逻辑问题。垂悬结构是一种很常见的写作问题,不仅英语学习者很容易犯,就连英语母语者也经常会出错。比如《卫报》就曾写过一篇文章提醒读者要注意写作中的垂悬结构问题:



具体来讲,垂悬结构一般出现句首,包括分词、不定式以及介词短语等,比如下面这几个例子:


(1) Turning the corner, a handsome school building appeared.


(2) To improve his results, the experiment was done again.


(3) At the age of eight, my family finally bought a dog.


第一个句子中作者想表达的意思是“转过拐角后一座雄伟的学校建筑出现了”,但turning the corner的逻辑主语应该是描述者,而不是学校建筑,因此这里出现了垂悬结构问题。为了统一主语,这里可以改为:Turning the corner, he saw a handsome school building.


第二个句子中to improve his results逻辑主语应该是人,而不是实验本身,句子可以调整为:To improve his results, he did the experiment again. / He improved his results by doing the experiment again.


第三个句子想表达的意思是在主人公8岁时,他家终于买了一条狗,但是英文句子中at the age of eight可以理解为“在我的家庭8岁时”,从而造成表意偏差。我们可以将句子改为:My family finally bought a dog when I was eight years old.


需要注意的一点是,当分词短语用来表明说话者的态度或意见时,它们不需要逻辑主语,这个时候形成的垂悬结构并不算错。对此,维基百科关于垂悬结构的词条里面有这样的说明:



Participial modifiers can sometimes be intended to describe the attitude or mood of the speaker, even when the speaker is not part of the sentence. Some such modifiers are standard and are not considered dangling modifiers.


这种情况一般出现在常见的几个结构里面,比如judging by/from, given (that), considering (that), owing to, provided (that),比如柯林斯词典中就有这样一个例句:Judging from the way he laughed as he told it, it was meant to be humorous.



此时Judging from的逻辑主语和主句主语it并不一致,但Judging from…已经成了一个固定结构,用来表达说话者的态度,相当于“根据……判断”,因此这一句子也是正确的。



参考资料:


[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_modifier

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2010/aug/04/dangling-modifiers-hanging-participles

[3]https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/mechanics/dangling_modifiers_and_how_to_correct_them.html

发布于 2020-12-23 10:14:01
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