zompist bboard

...with cracks splitting open at seemingly complete random.

The phrase "at random" is pretty much a single unit for me, but this author reanalysed it as any other preposition + noun combination and inserted adverbs and adjectives accordingly. It sounds horrible to my ears, but I can't find anything grammatically wrong with it. Am I crazy?

I think "random" is rarely if ever used as a noun outside of the phrase "at random". When you see "random" without "at" you probably expect it to be an adjective, so you probably can't help interpreting "complete random" as an adjective modifying another adjective. However, "completely random" also sounds wrong here because then there is no noun for the preposition "at" to be modifying.

I'd generally agree with clawgrip in that I wouldn't expect "random" to appear as a noun except when, say, referring to random people, e.g. "those randoms over there". I'd say the following would make more sense:

1) ...with cracks splitting open at seemingly completeIy random times/places (although "places" would probably suit "in" rather than "at")
2) ...with cracks splitting open, seemingly, completely at random (I might be wrong on the commas there)
3) ...with cracks splitting open, seemingly, completely randomly (a bit clunky but still grammatical for me)

No comma between 'seemingly' and 'completely' in 2 and 3.

Hydroeccentricity wrote:

...with cracks splitting open at seemingly complete random.

The phrase "at random" is pretty much a single unit for me, but this author reanalysed it as any other preposition + noun combination and inserted adverbs and adjectives accordingly. It sounds horrible to my ears, but I can't find anything grammatically wrong with it. Am I crazy?

No, this is an abomination upon our language and must be purged with cleansing flame.

Would probably have placed "seemingly" in a position between "cracks splitting". However, I'm an l2 so my opinion might not count.

sangi39 wrote:2) ...with cracks splitting open, seemingly completely at random (I might be wrong on the commas there)

This is the only one that really sounds natural to me, though it's still a bit of a modifier overload. "Completely" could probably be dropped without any ill effect on meaning and would sound a lot smoother.

It almost sounds like someone was going to say "at random" and then decided to put the qualifiers in at the last second. "...at—seemingly, just... complete random" or something like that. So, I'd say it's grammatical but I'd only expect it to crop up in unrehearsed conversation. In writing I'd revise it to something like "splitting open, seemingly in completely random ways." "Ways" could be replaced with lots of more specific nouns depending on context: places, patterns, times, etc.

Well met!

Also, I agree with Zaarin.

Jess wrote:It almost sounds like someone was going to say "at random" and then decided to put the qualifiers in at the last second. "...at—seemingly, just... complete random" or something like that. So, I'd say it's grammatical but I'd only expect it to crop up in unrehearsed conversation. In writing I'd revise it to something like "splitting open, seemingly in completely random ways." "Ways" could be replaced with lots of more specific nouns depending on context: places, patterns, times, etc.

Yes. Except I might even write it.
At first, reading it straight, it seemed ungrammatical. But if I imagine brackets, commas or dashes around 'seemingly complete', it becomes fine.
"with cracks splitting open at (seemingly complete) random!"

Yeah. This is a matter of it being unidiomatic, not ungrammatical. The phrasing is well-formed but awful.

How about this: Can you tell me what’s the difference between…and…?

Hydroeccentricity wrote:

...with cracks splitting open at seemingly complete random.

The phrase "at random" is pretty much a single unit for me, but this author reanalysed it as any other preposition + noun combination and inserted adverbs and adjectives accordingly. It sounds horrible to my ears, but I can't find anything grammatically wrong with it. Am I crazy?

Totally grammatical for me, though I probably wouldn't write it; I didn't even blink.

linguoboy wrote:How about this: Can you tell me what’s the difference between…and…?

That's so natural to me it took ages to figure out how there could possibly be anything wrong with it.

As the posters above noted, this is probably highly variable in acceptability. These work for me:

1. ?"with cracks splitting open at seemingly complete random."
2. *"with cracks splitting open at seemingly complete randomly."
3. ?"with cracks splitting open at seemingly completely random."
4. *"with cracks splitting open at seemingly completely randomly."

5. "with cracks splitting open seemingly at complete random."
6. *"with cracks splitting open seemingly at complete randomly."
7. *"with cracks splitting open seemingly at completely random."
8. *"with cracks splitting open seemingly at completely randomly."

9. *"with cracks splitting open seemingly complete at random."
10. *"with cracks splitting open seemingly complete at randomly."
11. "with cracks splitting open seemingly completely at random."
12. *"with cracks splitting open seemingly completely at randomly."

13. *"with cracks splitting open seemingly complete random."
14. *"with cracks splitting open seemingly complete randomly."
15. *"with cracks splitting open seemingly completely random."
16. "with cracks splitting open seemingly completely randomly."

Neon Fox wrote:

Hydroeccentricity wrote:

...with cracks splitting open at seemingly complete random.

The phrase "at random" is pretty much a single unit for me, but this author reanalysed it as any other preposition + noun combination and inserted adverbs and adjectives accordingly. It sounds horrible to my ears, but I can't find anything grammatically wrong with it. Am I crazy?

Totally grammatical for me, though I probably wouldn't write it; I didn't even blink.

Same here. Rereading a couple times it might be a bit unidiomatic. May have something to do with the brain auto-adjusting things, I think the first time I auto-adjusted it to "seemingly at complete random" without realizing something was off, so if I heard it spoken instead of read I may have more strongly felt it was poorly worded.

Astraios wrote:

linguoboy wrote:How about this: Can you tell me what’s the difference between…and…?

That's so natural to me it took ages to figure out how there could possibly be anything wrong with it.

Yea. Didn't click until a couple minutes of staring and rewording.

I saw that one right away. Written it's just wrong, but spoken, depending on the intonation and pauses, it could be no problem at all.

Astraios wrote:

linguoboy wrote:How about this: Can you tell me what’s the difference between…and…?

That's so natural to me it took ages to figure out how there could possibly be anything wrong with it.

That was my reaction, too. Yet another native speaker told me it looked completely wrong to them.

Theta wrote:I('ve) been having to do lots of different things for my job.

I think this is fine? The only thing I can see as being a problem is the stylistic double-have that might be a little awkward, like saying "that [conjunction] that [demonstrative]".

FWIW, I find action nominals (especially of the type "my building [of] the treehouse is exhausting me", "the scientists' discovering [of] the Higgs boson was a major endeavor", etc) to be far less idiomatic than any of the example sentences people have given so far, despite being also grammatically correct.

linguoboy wrote:

Astraios wrote:

linguoboy wrote:How about this: Can you tell me what’s the difference between…and…?

That's so natural to me it took ages to figure out how there could possibly be anything wrong with it.

That was my reaction, too. Yet another native speaker told me it looked completely wrong to them.

To me, what's wrong with it is that the verb should come after 'difference', not after 'what', or else there should be a colon after 'me'. But since it's hard to judge the placing of colons in fluent speech...

Salmoneus wrote:

linguoboy wrote:How about this: Can you tell me what’s the difference between…and…?

To me, what's wrong with it is that the verb should come after 'difference', not after 'what', or else there should be a colon after 'me'. But since it's hard to judge the placing of colons in fluent speech...

I'm with Sal in that it works if there is a larger than usual clausal break between me and what's in the prosody, but otherwise I'd put the copula after difference.

CaesarVincens wrote:

Salmoneus wrote:

linguoboy wrote:How about this: Can you tell me what’s the difference between…and…?

To me, what's wrong with it is that the verb should come after 'difference', not after 'what', or else there should be a colon after 'me'. But since it's hard to judge the placing of colons in fluent speech...

I'm with Sal in that it works if there is a larger than usual clausal break between me and what's in the prosody, but otherwise I'd put the copula after difference.

It's kinda funny that linguoboy's example sounds perfectly okay to me (it's super common in spoken language), but other question words used as conjunctions don't really allow the same order at all:

* I don't know how has he done that.
* Can you tell me how far is the train station from here?
* Do you know where's he gone?
* I don't know who's that guy.
* I just can't understand why's he done that!

Even the same sentence in the past tense sounds weird:
? Did he tell you what was the difference between A and B?

In written language I as a non-native would find linguoboy's sentence wrong from a prescriptivist kind of view (it's wrong even though it sounds okay, that kind of thing), but right intuitively. In spoken language it's completely fine.

I agree with din's conclusions regarding similar sentences which all are wrong to me, and i think this would be a very interesting topic to dive into syntactically.

No, I broadly agree, although I would sometimes say the ones that I think are not exactly right. Now what I think is happening is that the contracted form "what's" can't be split up like the others, and I also think there's precedent for this in English with certain syntactic constructions – although I can't remember them offhand. I think it's that there are certain cases where adverbs or something come between auxiliary verbs and "not" but they obviously can't split up the contracted form because it's become a single word.