Here's another grammatically interesting quote from a story in today's NYT:
In Gleneagles, Mr. Bush drew the comparison between the aims of the summit and the bombers.
"On the one hand, you have people working to alleviate poverty and rid the world of the pandemic of AIDS and ways to have a clean environment and, on the other hand, you have people working to kill people," he said.
Take a close look at the three things that Bush says people are doing at the G8 in Gleneagles.
The first two appear to be conjoined like this:
1. working to [ alleviate poverty ] and [ rid the world of the pandemic of AIDS ]
But then where does the third one fit? I think the only grammatical attachments are:
2. rid [ the world of the pandemic of AIDS ] and [ ways to have a clean environment ]
3. rid the world of [ the pandemic of AIDS ] and [ ways to have a clean environment ]
We might of course assume that what Bush meant to say was something like either of the following, each filling in a word that Bush hypothetically missed:
4. working [ to alleviate poverty, etc. ] and [ on ways to have a clean environment ]
5. working to [ alleviate poverty, etc. ] and [ find ways to have a clean environment ]
Given the Bush Administration's track record on environmental issues, I'm inclined to think Bush spoke grammatically. This time.
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Posted by Eric Bakovic at July 8, 2005 11:48 PM