More on grammar, punctuation, and prosody
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From "In the Groove, Jazz and Beyond", 12/17/2017:
We also pay tribute to another tragedy; the murder of John Lennon with jazz covers of several of his tunes.
Prepositional phrases like "with jazz covers of several of his tunes" are multiply ambiguous. Thus with can be comitative ("They rode with Kim") or instrumental ("open the can with a screwdriver") or several other sorts of things; and then there's the question of "attachment", i.e. which part of the preceding material it modifies.
In this case the author wants "with jazz covers of several of his tunes" to modify "we pay tribute to another tragedy". A spoken version would make it clear that "the murder of John Lennon" is an appositive on "tragedy", so the listener would parse the with-clause correctly without noticing the possibility of attributing lethal qualities to those jazz covers. The written punctuation will force some readers to do a double take, or at least to smile at the thought of one.
[h/t Antonio Fortin, who may either be banned from the Grammar Club or invited to the next meeting, I'm not sure which…]
George said,
December 19, 2017 @ 8:04 am
It's the paying tribute to a tragedy that I find weird.
Ralph Hickok said,
December 19, 2017 @ 9:09 am
To me, it seems primarily a problem of punctuation. "We also pay tribute to another tragedy, the murder of John Lennon, with jazz covers of several of his tunes" would be quite understandable, wouldn't it?
KevinM said,
December 19, 2017 @ 9:33 am
I've heard some jazz covers of Lennon tunes, and they might have meant it.
Alyssa said,
December 19, 2017 @ 11:49 am
Perhaps my understanding of the nuances of semicolons is lacking, but… isn't this a straight-up punctuation error? I don't think you can "attach" a phrase across a semicolon.
Other possible ways to punctuate this:
We also pay tribute to another tragedy, the murder of John Lennon, with jazz covers of several of his tunes.
We also pay tribute to another tragedy — the murder of John Lennon — with jazz covers of several of his tunes.
(?) We also pay tribute to another tragedy: the murder of John Lennon, with jazz covers of several of his tunes.
Dr. Decay said,
December 19, 2017 @ 12:37 pm
We also pay tribute to the victim of another tragedy, John Lennon, with jazz covers of several of his tunes … Dang. Is someone going to think that John Lennon was himself a tragedy? Ok, once more. We also pay tribute to John Lennon, the victim of another tragedy, with jazz covers of several of his tunes. Can't see anything wrong with that – for the moment.
David L said,
December 19, 2017 @ 1:04 pm
John Lennon, the victim of another tragedy,…"
Poor guy! How many tragedies must he endure?
ngage92 said,
December 19, 2017 @ 2:00 pm
John Lennon's music already sucks so I can only imagine how horrifying jazz covers of it must be.
David Morris said,
December 19, 2017 @ 5:25 pm
Imagine there's no prescriptivism
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you
You may say I'm a descriptivist
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one
J.W. Brewer said,
December 19, 2017 @ 5:53 pm
You can tweak the sentence so that it's not disambiguated by prosody or punctuation, e.g. "Tomorrow we will be observing the anniversary of the murder of John Lennon with jazz covers etc."
Jonathan Gress-Wright said,
December 19, 2017 @ 6:50 pm
@Alyssa
Yes, the semicolon is wrong, but also the lack of punctuation before "with jazz" creates the ambiguity.
Paul Garrett said,
December 19, 2017 @ 7:50 pm
David Morris… you absolutely win the prize. :) :) :)
ErikF said,
December 19, 2017 @ 8:02 pm
@KevinM: Killing anyone with jazz does seem cruel and unusual, especially bebop. I kid. Everyone knows that Schoenberg is much worse! :-)
JPL said,
December 19, 2017 @ 8:22 pm
I would say that the semicolon should be a colon: "We also pay tribute to another tragedy: the recurrent murder of John Lennon with jazz covers of several of his tunes." In all fairness, however, apart from the idea of paying tribute to the mangling of someone's tunes by other musicians, there are a lot of good versions of Lennon songs in the jazz field; e.g., if you think Mike Casey is too far out, try Herbie Hancock's version of "Norwegian wood", or Brad Mehldau's "Dear Prudence".
Jonathan Gress-Wright said,
December 19, 2017 @ 9:50 pm
@JPL:
The colon doesn't work because everything after the colon has to be part of the same constituent, but "with jazz covers of several of his tunes" is attached to "tribute" not to "murder". I think the best way to deal with it is with a comma before and after "the recurrent murder of John Lennon".
Jonathan Gress-Wright said,
December 19, 2017 @ 9:51 pm
Sorry "murder" not "recurrent murder". How did "recurrent" get in there? Did he die more than once?
Viseguy said,
December 19, 2017 @ 11:05 pm
As with many of these examples, I had no trouble understanding the intended meaning on a first reading; more than that, the alternate, humorous reading didn't even occur to me. The next time around, I found myself wondering if the semicolon was a typo for a comma or a colon. A comma would indicate an attempt at apposition; the omission of the second comma, after the appositive, is a common (comman?) error, and would suggest a tidy explanation for the slip. A colon is harder to rationalize, but actually may be more likely. The keeper of the website/radio program seems to have mental block against colons: the printed title is "In the Groove, Jazz and Beyond", when "In the Groove: Jazz and Beyond" seems to be more apt. (The title graphic uses an ellipsis, "In the Groove… Jazz and Beyond", which also works better than the comma, and has the virtue of looking less like the title of academic paper, but the graphic may well have been created by someone else.) So the writer may actually have intended to type a colon (or a semicolon, for that matter), without understanding its usual function. But even that seems unlikely, because, overall, the writing and punctuation in the web page are pretty standard. In the end, I put the error down to The Way We Live Now: a life full of distractions, punctuated by the endorphin rush of posting something — anything — to the web.
Brett said,
December 19, 2017 @ 11:11 pm
@KevinM: I don't know anything about jazz covers of Lennon. However, I happened to hear a big band version of Michael Jackson's "Billy Jean" this afternoon. It was… quite bad, but maybe not as bad as I was expecting.
David Morris said,
December 20, 2017 @ 6:56 am
@Paul: Thank you, for you're accolade.
Ralph Hickok said,
December 20, 2017 @ 12:35 pm
@viseguy:
As an editor, I have seen a lot of writers use semicolons when they should use a colon, and I've also seen many, many cases where the comma is omitted after the appositive, so I think both of your suggestions have a great deal of merit.
Eric said,
December 20, 2017 @ 1:45 pm
@George: Yeah, that's one of my pet peeves. "We are going to a 'March for Breast Cancer!'" Wait, you're for breast cancer?
Jonathan Gress-Wright said,
December 20, 2017 @ 3:14 pm
@Viseguy
Shouldn't that be "The Way We Live Now, a life full of distractions; punctuated by the endorphin rush of posting something — anything — to the web"?
seriously said,
December 20, 2017 @ 5:02 pm
I read the sentence to mean that the jazz cover versions of the Lennon songs were so bad as to constitute a figurative murder of his music. This may be because I have actually been driven out of a store by 'easy listening' "Muzak"-type versions of some rock songs.
mg said,
December 22, 2017 @ 7:56 pm
I read the sentence the same way @seriously did, for similar reasons.
@Brett – you made my ears bleed.