Grammaticality judgements wanted.

[tsukikage]

"I had two more, better, videos, but they're too big to send over Gmail."

It's been way the fuck too long since I took syntax, but despite having written that it feels... off. I'm thinking it might have something to do with more being a complement and better being an adjunct? (Or vice versa?) I think "two better, more, videos" is completely ungrammatical, implying that better's the complement, but the "comma structure" might be fucking with things.

It also strikes me that I may be approaching this *completely* wrong, since better obviously modifies videos, but more may be modifying two. Gah, I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Comments

[jadeejf.livejournal.com]

If you're ever unsure about the grammaticality (heh) of a sentence, it's usually best to just rewrite altogether. I had two more videos that were better, but they're too big to send over Gmail, for instance.

[tsukikage85.livejournal.com]

Oh, indeed, but I meant from a linguistic standpoint, not stylistic.

[hitokiridirk.livejournal.com]

That's waaaaay too many commas, no matter what the context is.

It would read better like this; "I had two more, better videos, but they're too big to send over Gmail."

I'm also a fan of using the ellipses to indicate what would constitute a verbal pause in a written statement. The core sentence structure is a little wonky, it could have been worded WAY more gracefully than it was.

[tsukikage85.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you're probably right that I didn't need that second comma. Still... "I had two videos, but they're too big to send over Gmail" vs. "I had two videos but they're too big to send over Gmail"... The second seems like a run-on (?) sentence to me.

If you don't mind me jumping in here...

[hitokiri-neko.livejournal.com]

The second one doesn't read like a run-on sentence to me, but you might preserve more of the original intentions, perhaps you could try "I had two more videos but they're too big to send over Gmail"?

Re: teh grammars!

[tsukikage85.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I'm not exactly sure about the tense thing. I mean, isn't there some justification for putting it in the past tense because they're no longer relevant to the situation? "I had some photos for you, but now I don't have them for you; they're only for me."

Re: teh grammars!

[akaneko.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I think it bothers me precisely because it rolls out an implication of further details being left unsaid - but it's not exactly clear WHAT further details are being left unsaid. It's conspicuously open to interpretation, so it flags it as something the reader has to stop and think about a smidge - but it's probably not a sufficiently important detail to stop and think about, if that makes sense?

I guess I'd have to see the context it appeared in to judge it on that count.

Re: teh grammars!

[tsukikage85.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that does make sense. And now that I think of it, I wonder if it would make more sense to use "had' and "they were" if my own interpretation were intended. (That said, the more I think about it the more convoluted my interpretations is.)

Overthinking

[akaneko.livejournal.com]

Linguistics often carries that risk.

Re: Overthinking

[tsukikage85.livejournal.com]

* my interpretation
Gah.

[akaneko.livejournal.com]

I think matching past tenses would be fairly natural-sounding in describing the situation in question.

Re: teh grammars!

[akaneko.livejournal.com]

In other related news, your cat made you a cookie, but he eated it.

Re: teh grammars!

[tsukikage85.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Actually, my mind already went there, but it's nice to know I'm not the only one who spends too much time on the internet (or reading belindabird's LJ).

Cluttering up your inbox with grammatical edits. :D

[akaneko.livejournal.com]

It's definitely a clunky sentence, but I can see how it could occur naturally in speech, when a speaker wants to throw in "better" as an afterthought when they started out structuring the sentence with just the "two more" in mind. In writing, though, it doesn't seem very natural to express an afterthought in that particular manner, not even when I try to think of it as part of an AIM conversation or something else similarly quick-paced - a person might start typing it, but they and/or their reader would probably find it strange as soon as they saw it. Starting out with something like "I had/have two more videos which were/are better than (those)..." would probably work out better structurally.

There's an additional problem in the tense mismatch between "I had" and "they're". Did you delete them from your own computer when you realized they were too big to send to someone else?

Re: Cluttering up your inbox with grammatical edits. :D

[tsukikage85.livejournal.com]

You need a paid account so I don't accidentally reply to non-existent comments. *nods authoritatively*

Re: Cluttering up your inbox with grammatical edits. :D

[akaneko.livejournal.com]

so many sorries! ToT

[carve037.livejournal.com]

I think "two more" may be modifying a null (ellipsed) noun, while "better videos" is another DP. So underlyingly it's more like "two more (ones), better videos". That's my instinct on this.

[tsukikage85.livejournal.com]

Hmm, interesting. So, given that you even suggested a analysis, I'm guessng this is at least somewhat grammatical for you? And is you analysis pure hunch, or is there something in particulqr that makes you think that?

[carve037.livejournal.com]

It's kind of a hunch, but it's one based on vague memories of something I took in a class. I think this is how we analyzed phrases like "two more" in isolation, because those have to be attached to a noun, even if it's a phonetically null one. And it sounds awkward as hell for me, but I'm not sure if it's a syntactic issue or something else, and it doesn't feel bad to the degree that it would without the comma; if I try to analyze it in my head as though it's a single noun phrase, it explodes.