Re: Off Topic: English Grammar, Spelling, colloquialisms, etc.
- Posted by jimcbrown (admin) Apr 23, 2012
- 4068 views
Here's another that i see every day that gets me every time, because it explicitly says the wrong thing:
<quote>
"The assert is intended to only execute the test during the development phase of the application."
</quote>
I'm not sure that it does. At the very least, the intended meaning seems obvious from the context. Alone, the sentence is arguably ambiguous, but since it is not ambiguous in context, I don't see a problem. Your version of it, below, has the same problem.
The word "only" seems to be getting placed as far away as possible from the word or phrase it's modifing. In this case, i believe the sentence should be:
"The assert is intended to execute the test only during the development phase of the application."
You mean that the adverb "only" should be modifying the phrase "during the development phase of the application" as opposed to "to execute the test" ?
I disagree. The previous statement to that ("It always executes the test.", available here: http://openeuphoria.org/forum/m/118018.wc ) has the adverb preceding the verb "execute". It makes sense that the following sentence would want to modify the same verb in an analogous way.
Additionally, the phrase "during the development phase of the application" is a adverbial phrase that describes time, and it modifies the preceding verb, "to execute".
Regardless, your version of the sentence is grammatically correct and clearly have the same meaning. It places an adverb ("only") describing the manner of the verb ("to execute") immediately after the verb and its noun ("the test"), and follows with an adverbial phrase describing the time. It also avoids the use of a split infinitive, unlike the original.
(Ever since Star Trek, I have embarked on a campaign to boldly make use of split infinitives whenever possible.)
In this sense, aside from the position of the adverbs, the two sentences are grammatically and logically identical. This means that both sentences should share the same level of ambiguity.
I don't believe that there is anything wrong with having one adverb preceding the verb and another adverb at the end of the sentence, however. This may make sense for stylistic reasons, e.g. to convery emphasis. For example:
"Andy always reads a comic every afternoon." (Original taken from here: http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/grammar/adverbs_position.htm)
Obviously, it's not meant to only execute the test, it's also supposed to take some action based on the test result.
Not necessarily. Based on the test result, no action may be taken at all. In fact, this is the ideal scenario.
Also, this line doesn't specify what happens at any other time,
Your version also fails to explicitly specify what happens at non-development time.
