Language Quiz

Here's the new quiz - and always remember, maybe nothing is wrong!

From the Biography Channel's ad for Sherlock Holmes:

He thrives on the dizzying, delights in the bizarre, and relishes in the puzzling.

And here's the previous one:

From the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve site:

So, although the oak moths can periodically wreak havoc on certain trees, oaks and oak moths have been coevolving for a long time and can be viewed as one of the many conspicuous insects of the Reserve

The answer here is:

There's a problem with the coordinated subject of the matrix clause (or the main clause, if you prefer that term) and its predicate in the second part. The sentence, as it stands, tells us that "oaks and oak moths" (subject) "have been coevolving" (first part of coordinated predicate) and are "one of the insects of the Reserve" (second part).

Oaks are an insect? Not when last I looked.

For comparison, look at this:

The Johnson brothers and the Smith sisters have been playing tennis for a long time and are among the best players on the women's team.

It doesn't work.

English permits - almost demands - deletion of repeated parts of sentences. But here, the deleted subject of the second part of the matrix clause is only part of the subject which was overtly stated in the first part.

That subject, if deleted, must be assumed to be the subject of the second predicate in its entirety. In other words, the only way to have two predicate verb phrases with only one expressed subject is to have the exact same subject for both verb phrases.

If the predicate verb phrases have different subjects (as here, where one is "oaks and oak moths" and the other is only "oak moths"), then the subjects must both be stated.

Something along the lines of:

So, although the oak moths can periodically wreak havoc on certain trees, oaks and oak moths have been coevolving for a long time, and the moths can be viewed as one of the many conspicuous insects of the Reserve.

Or, to eliminate the repetition of "oak moths" (three times in the above version!), this:

So, although the oak moths can periodically wreak havoc on certain trees, they have been coevolving with oaks for a long time and can be viewed as one of the many conspicuous insects of the Reserve.

And previous quizzes can be found here.