Bathtub cheese

05.12.04, 00:55
This is old piece, from Julay, but what the cheese???

"San Diego County health officials warned against buying or eating cheeses
made in bathtubs that were being sold door to door."

It is not totally clear, from this wording, whether it is the cheese that is
being sold door to door, or the bathtubs. To be on the safe side, I would
urge residents of San Diego County to avoid both bathing AND eating
suspicious cheese, lest you wind up becoming ill and producing what
gastroenterologists refer to as an "Erie Special".

    • Gość: lufcik Re: Bathtub cheese IP: *.3web.net 05.12.04, 02:42
      ynvme, you've got to learn how to read: if the sentence meant that it's the
      bathtubs that are being sold, then it would have the appropriate article THE
      before that word, bathtubs. Also, there would have to be a coma and the word
      "which" following the word "bathtub, for it to be ambiguous. But otherwise the
      sentence as is seems okay to me.
      • jan.kulczyk Re: Bathtub cheese 05.12.04, 03:19
        I don't really get lufcik's point.
        The sentence is ambiguous alright.
        No comas are ever placed before "that", especially when it's a "zero" that (ommited). Ever. No the is required. Note that there is no the before cheeses either.
        • cynik5 Re: Bathtub cheese 05.12.04, 03:57
          jan.kulczyk napisała:

          > I don't really get lufcik's point.
          > The sentence is ambiguous alright.
          > No comas are ever placed before "that", especially when it's a "zero" that
          (omm
          > ited). Ever. No the is required. Note that there is no the before cheeses
          eithe
          > r.
          >
          >
          Mystery solved, boys and gals:
          www.nbcsandiego.com/news/3536563/detail.html
          • jan.kulczyk Re: Bathtub cheese 05.12.04, 12:11
            Tee hee hee

            Wasn't much of a mystery at all.
            I hope even the initiator of the thread did not have any serious doubts abt the real meaning of the sentence.
            Still, it was fun.
            • ynvme Re: Bathtub cheese 05.12.04, 15:37
              jan.kulczyk napisała:

              > Tee hee hee
              >
              > Wasn't much of a mystery at all.
              > I hope even the initiator of the thread did not have any serious doubts abt
              the
              > real meaning of the sentence.
              > Still, it was fun.
              >

              Right on, mate. I personally am very thankful that there are people like you
              out there who have terrific senses of humor and thus recognize that I am
              just "kidding around".
              • Gość: allo Re: Bathtub cheese IP: *.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl 05.12.04, 18:26
                And what about this:
                "old car dealer" - Is that an old person selling cars (maybe brand new) or
                someone selling old cars?
                • jan.kulczyk Re: Bathtub cheese 05.12.04, 23:45
                  > And what about this:
                  > "old car dealer" - Is that an old person selling cars (maybe brand new) or
                  > someone selling old cars?

                  Maybe not the best example...

                  See, used car dealers no longer want to be referred to as such - they want to be called "preowned car dealers". Imagine what would happen if you came up to your average used junk dealership demanding to be shown all 'old cars' in stock. The outrage you would be causing... ;))) AFAIK, used or preowned cars have never been really called "old cars".

                  This is settled then.

                  Still, the issue stands and there are much many attribute-related traps around ;)
        • Gość: lufcik Re: Bathtub cheese IP: *.3web.net 05.12.04, 18:36
          "San Diego County health officials warned against buying or eating cheeses
          made in bathtubs that were being sold door to door."

          jan.kulczyk, let's have a closer look at that sentence, and you might see why it
          is not as ambiguous as you think.

          The sentence is made of a series of clauses and phrases, the last clause-phrase
          of which is "[that]were being sold door to door". This last clause cannot simply
          be referring to "bathtubs" alone, because "bathtubs" here is used in general
          sense, and there would have to be the article "the" before "bathtubs" for the
          meaning of that clause to change and imply that bathtubs and not the cheeses
          made in them were being sold. And this was my point, which you say you did not
          grasp. Coming to your claim that there is no article before the word "cheeses",
          I reply that "cheeses" in this example is general, as it tells of a class of
          things, in this case any cheeses made in bathtubs and sold in San Diego. And,
          since there are no such things as bathtubs [being] sold door to door, the
          sentence is passable, though some might feel confused by the interplay between
          the general and specific in it and by having to stretch more their mental
          processing while reading it. And so, this complex sentence turns on that
          conjunction "that", and that signals that what follows it is another clause
          building on the previous one, not on the last phrase alone.

          But what do you mean by "zero"?
          rgs,
          lufcik.
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