‘A Woman Slapped Her Daughter Because She Was Drunk’. Who Was drunk? Ganiu Bamgbose, PhD

Thoughts are expressed in sentences, but the extent to which sentences capture intended thoughts is usually undeterminable by many a speaker or writer.  Ambiguities and linguistic complications do not emerge from the mind of speakers and writers; they are challenges faced by listeners and readers.

It is, therefore, important for speakers and writers to sift away such complications which hinder comprehension in the communication process. This piece will discuss some language pitfalls that serve as barriers to free-flowing communication.

One of such pitfalls of communication is the pronoun reference. Since pronouns are used to refer to nouns, they either have a backward or a forward reference. The reference of a pronoun has to be clear so that the decoder can tell the specific reference of the pronoun. The reference of a pronoun can be made difficult to identify in three ways.

 

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First is the problem of ambiguity. When a pronoun has two possible antecedents (an antecedent is a noun that precedes a pronoun), ambiguity occurs when it is not clear which of the nouns the pronoun refers to. The sentence in the topic of this article is a good example of this bad linguistic habit.

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When we say, ‘The woman beat her daughter because she was drunk’, only the speaker or anyone else who witnessed the situation can tell if it was the mother or the daughter who was drunk. The ambiguity in such a pronoun reference cannot be detected through any grammatical cue. Writers must, therefore, avoid letting pronouns refer to two antecedents. In such situations, a noun should be used; for instance:

A woman beat her daughter because the daughter/the mother was drunk.

Linguistic Complications

Another example is to say, ‘After my sister had screamed her daughter’s name twice, she angrily went downstairs’. Again, one wonders if it was my sister who angrily went downstairs or her daughter. The sentence will read better thus:
After my sister had screamed her daughter’s name twice, my sister/her daughter angrily went downstairs.

The second-language error relating to pronouns is when there is a remote reference for the pronoun. This happens when the antecedent of a pronoun is not placed in proximity to the pronoun, thereby making it difficult to determine the meaning of the pronoun, as illustrated below:

Dr GAB writes every week who lectures in Lagos State University (non-standard).
Dr GAB who lectures at Lagos State University writes every week (standard).
The place is far where the car is parked (non-standard).
The place where the car is parked is far (standard).

The third kind of error associated with pronouns is the broad reference. This happens when a pronoun does not have an antecedent and refers to a sentence with different propositions wherein it is difficult to determine which proposition the pronoun refers to. This is illustrated with the sentence below:
Some people feel the Federal Government ought to have yielded to the demands of ASUU, while others say ASUU ought to have found other ways of pressing home their demands than going on strike. This is really disturbing.

‘This’, as used in the second sentence, has a broad reference that is difficult to determine. Hence, one wonders which of the two ideas expressed in the first sentence is disturbing; that is, the Federal Government’s decision not to accede to ASUU’s demands or ASUU’s decision not to explore other options apart from going on strike. All of these reference errors must be deliberately avoided by language users.

 

‘A Woman Slapped Her Daughter Because She Was Drunk’. Who Was drunk?

 

Another common pitfall of sentence construction is faulty predication. Faulty predication happens when the predicate of a sentence fails to adequately capture what is being said about the subject. Faulty predication does not make the relationship between the actor and the action clear to the reader. This can happen by choosing a wrong subject for an active verb. Verbs select their subjects, and certain verbs do not attract some kinds of subjects, as the following sentences show:

The meeting will hold tomorrow at 10 a.m. (non-standard).
The meeting will be held tomorrow at 10 a.m. (standard).
We will hold the meeting tomorrow at 10 a.m. (Standard).

In the non-standard variant, the non-human subject ‘meeting’ cannot take up the action of the predicate, which makes the sentence inappropriate.

While it is the task of listeners and readers to decode messages, speakers or readers have to refrain from making such a task difficult through the avoidance of faulty constructions such as the ones treated in this piece. Linguistic complications can be avoided through the careful selection of words by language users.

© 2022 Ganiu Abisoye Bamgbose (Dr GAB)
Department of English,
Lagos State University