The bird was observed using binoculars is grammatically correct just as much as The distance was measured using a ruler. The grammatical structure is the same.

Indeed. But the meaning is unclear. The bird example may be a bit silly, but I have seen similar examples in tech trouble shooting and wondered what I was supposed to do. Bob

I am enjoying this thread :biggrin:The last couple of posts about birds & binoculars do illustrate that there can be bad and/or confusing use of language even when grammar, syntax and so forth are strictly correct. Bad or thoughtless writers come up with stuff like, "His breath came in short pants", or (another old favourite), "His eyes crawled down the front of her dress".

Actually, 'the bird was observed using binoculars' is only grammatically correct (in the sense of using punctuation to clarify grammar, since the grammar itself is technically fine) if you intended to state that you saw a bird using binoculars. To give it what is presumably the intended meaning, you would write 'the bird was observed, using binoculars'. The comma splits the statement into logical sections and this makes the meaning apparent. Of course grammar and punctuation are two different things, but they are meant to work in concert with one another to remove ambiguities.Al

Or perhaps..."The flaming bird was so blasted far away that I had no choice but to waste a bunch of time and dig through my knapsack until I found my binoculars so that I could observe it and thereby verify that it was indeed a flaming bird."Bob

Or perhaps..."The flaming bird was so blasted far away that I had no choice but to waste a bunch of time and dig through my knapsack until I found my binoculars so that I could observe it and thereby verify that it was indeed a flaming bird."Bob

I wish my back garden was so big that I needed binoculars to see the barbeque...(I first read your post as 'was blasted so far away' and wondered what you used to light the charcoal. Saltpetre and sulphur?)

I wish my back garden was so big that I needed binoculars to see the barbeque...(I first read your post as 'was blasted so far away' and wondered what you used to light the charcoal. Saltpetre and sulphur?)

...and did he really mean he wasted "a bunch of thyme" flaming the bird?

I am enjoying this thread :biggrin:The last couple of posts about birds & binoculars do illustrate that there can be bad and/or confusing use of language even when grammar, syntax and so forth are strictly correct. Bad or thoughtless writers come up with stuff like, "His breath came in short pants", or (another old favourite), "His eyes crawled down the front of her dress".

Exactly! Oneof the simples gammatically correct structures for an English sentence is <noun><verb>. You can substitute any noun-verb combination to get a grammatically correct, yet totally meaningless sentence .

....and Double Negatives!"What did you do today?""Well...I didn't do nothing, actually"I'd always come back with; "...well, if you didn't do nothing, then you surely must have done SOMETHING!"....Another horrible one you hear in speech; "What did you see at the accident site?""Well...when I come by there.....the tow trucks were already rolling away..." 'come' instead of the proper; 'came', past-tense.English is butchered today...

Double negation is not a universal rule. The french say Je n'ai jamais rien volé meaning I have never stolen anything. but whichliterally reads I have never stolen nothing.Many other languages are the same.

Double negation is not a universal rule. The french say Je n'ai jamais rien volé meaning I have never stolen anything. but whichliterally reads I have never stolen nothing.Many other languages are the same.

Very true. But we are talking about English. There is no doubt that English is an a strange contruction of a language. At least among countries that speak English, we have a good shot at understanding each other. Not like some places where dialects are so different from one end of the country to the other, that people in the north can't understand people in the south. Is it possible we can understand English speaking folks most places, at least in some small part, because of all the rules English has? I know there is a lot more to it than that. Just a thought. Maybe not.Bob

An English speaker would surely understand what "I have never stolen nothing" means?What about "I ain't never nicked nothing" - that's a triple negative!

Not like some places where dialects are so different from one end of the country to the other, that people in the north can't understand people in the south.Bob

That does happen in Wales... My country's only about 100 miles by 50 but has as many dialects as valleys. Grammar's similar all over but vocabulary differs wildly from place to place, hence my earlier gripe about standardisation by lexicographers. Personally, suffering a tidy mind, I have a fondness for the rules of grammar but deplore the impoverishment of any language that arises from insistence on their strict and ubiquitous use.The structure of the previous sentence was deliberate...:( Regards,D

If you compare a very rough Manchester accent with an extremely broad scouse accent, you can hear that only 30 miles will make a huge difference in dialects around the UK. And if you want a quintuple negative, check out some 1930s cockney (especially in Ealing films), where they'll occasionally say stuff such as: 'why I ain't not never done nothing, so I ain't.' Occasionally with an inappropriate aitch added in there too, so really, butchering the English language is nothing new.Al

Double negation is not a universal rule. The french say Je n'ai jamais rien volé meaning I have never stolen anything. but whichliterally reads I have never stolen nothing.Many other languages are the same.

000000000000000000000000000000000000000....ah...but you are translating another language INTO English which you cannot really do and say that stands. For instance, also in French, you would say 'the red house' as 'la maison rouge', or in English; 'the house red'. Translations to English simply do not work that would allow a relaxed interpretation as to be accepted in English,for use of a double negative. English is English...French is French. :)

000000000000000000000000000000000000000....ah...but you are translating another language INTO English which you cannot really do and say that stands. For instance, also in French, you would say 'the red house' as 'la maison rouge', or in English; 'the house red'. Translations to English simply do not work that would allow a relaxed interpretation as to be accepted in English,for use of a double negative. English is English...French is French. :)

It is not a matter of translation but of principles.In English a double negatives are taken as cancelling each other and produce a weak affirmative - in many other languages they are taken as strengthening the negativity.