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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 July 14

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July 14

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Subject-keyword disconnection

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  • "People taking 5 or more medicines a day rising"
  • "Man critical after being struck by train"

Those are 2 recent news headlines, both exhibiting the disconnection of a keyword from its proper subject and attaching it to some other subject.

By that I mean, people are not really rising, and the man is not really critical (mainly because he's probably in a coma and in no position to be complaining to anyone about anything).

In an ideal world the proper subjects would be:

  • "The number of people taking 5 or more medicines a day rising"
  • "Man's condition critical after being struck by train" (or "Man in a critical condition ...")

What's this type of stranding/disconnection/misconnection called, technically? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 21:03, 14 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

While having no answer to Jack's question, I dispute his claim that the second headline is an example. "Critical" can apply to a patient in critical condition according to the first online dictionary I checked. --69.159.11.113 (talk) 21:06, 14 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Are you referring to definition 3b: Medicine Being or relating to a grave physical condition, especially of a patient.? To me, that says that "critical" refers to the physical condition of a patient, not to the patient themself. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 23:33, 14 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As I read it, it works either way. --69.159.11.113 (talk) 04:19, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Headline writers try to keep things as short as possible. Hence "Sticks Nix Hick Pix". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:19, 14 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's well known, but shortening a sentence does not necessarily lead to what I'm referring to. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 00:39, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Did you understand what the headlines meant, at first glance, even though they fell a little short of perfect English usage? I recall a CNN headline not too long ago which read, "Crowds protest border conditions outside Senator Rubio's office." It's pretty clear what they were trying to say, even though it sounds like Rubio's office is next to the border. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:52, 14 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yes, I understood what the words meant. I'm not on some sort of pedantic high horse here. I'm simply wanting to know what grammarians call this sort of thing. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 00:39, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
We do have Headlinese. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:47, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
JackofOz -- it's related to "dangling modifier"... AnonMoos (talk) 04:58, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, maybe sort of ... -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 22:34, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I would call the original examples "contractions". There is nothing inherently negative in using them when space is a factor, such as with headlines. There is no ambiguity that could be considered a grammatical error. Jmar67 (talk) 06:20, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
But example one is grammatically wrong — it says that people taking 5 or more medicine are rising (surely that's not what it's intended to mean, right?), whereas it's the use of medicines that's actually rising. TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 09:13, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you about that, but my question was not at all about grammar. It asks what is the name of the construction whereby a keyword is attached to a subject other than the one it actually refers to. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 09:51, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I should have mentioned that I was replying to Jmar67 (though it was kind of obvious). I was just pointing out that there was a grammatical error, though they said there was not. TotallyNotSarcasm [lɨi̯v ə me̞sɪ̈dʒ] [kɔnt͡ɹ̠̝̊ɹ̠ɪ̈bjɨʉ̯ʃn̩z] 10:28, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think that this could be considered a form of Hypallage, in a broad sense. It's clearly a transfer of a quality ("rising-ness", criticality) from its logical referent (number, condition) to another, related referent (people, man). Deor (talk) 15:57, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think we're getting closer to the answer now. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 22:34, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think that Deor's mention of hypallage could be acceptable, though I'd like to point out that the typical idea one thinks of when hearing the word hypallage is a completely calculated poetic device, not a cheap headline abbreviation. Pallida  Mors 22:45, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Couldn't it be accidental or unconscious hypallage? I mean, people engage in hyperbole, oxymoron, litotes etc etc all the time without the faintest skerrick of awareness that they are doing so. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 23:08, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Technically, yes, I guess, since the term defines the syntactic transfer, not the intended meaning of such figure of speech. Pallida  Mors 12:31, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The pertinent concept is that of crash blossoms, though the examples given aren't quite confusing enough to qualify as such. Vide Language Log for plenty more--the idea certainly deserves a standalone article, maybe I'll write one this weekend. Temerarius (talk) 02:27, 19 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 04:45, 19 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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