Comparison again

by H Wed Aug 13, 2008 11:18 pm

More people are killed each year by hogs in Indiana than by sharks.

Does the sentence above have more than 1 possible meaning - in other words, ambiguous?

If the sentence has more than 2 meaning, how come the following has only one?

More cars are built in Canada than in Mexico.

Source: American Heritage Book of English Usage.

Thanks in advance.

by RA Mon Aug 18, 2008 8:05 am

"killed by hogs in Indiana than by sharks"

In the first sentence there is ambiguity whether the shark deaths are in Indiana.

by **Guest** Mon Aug 25, 2008 2:22 pm

apple to orange

by hogs in Indiana vs by sharks ??

apple to apple

in Canada vs In Mexico

by **glory** Wed Aug 27, 2008 1:40 am

I feel that sentence shall be written as:
In Indiana, More people are killed each year by hogs than by sharks.

by **Anil** Sat Aug 30, 2008 1:01 am

H, consider this as a better sentence than your second one for comaprison,

More cars are sold by GM in Canada than by Mazda.

Is that ambiguous or wat?

I think this would solve it:

GM sells more cars in Canada than Mazda does around the world.

As for the first sentence:

Hogs in Indiana kill more people than sharks do.

Active voice is always preferable.

by **esledge** Tue Oct 07, 2008 1:16 pm

Excellent discussion, and I agree with the suggested fixes for the ambiguous meaning.

There's a larger issue here: strings of modifiers (typically prepositional phrases) can get confusing. You often can't put them right next to the modified noun, because another modifier is in the way. Compounding the confusion is the fact that prepositional phrases can be either noun modifiers or adverbial modifiers, so placement is not the clearest indicator of intended meaning.

Take-away: If you see a question with stacked prepositional phrases, scan the splits for "clarity of meaning" problems. Usually you will see choices in which the prepositional phrases have been shuffled around, typically necessary to fix the problem.