houses destroyed

[navi tasan]

1) In front of us there were houses destroyed.


Is sentence 1 ambiguous?
I think it could mean:
a) There were houses that were destroyed in front of us. We saw houses get destroyed.
and
b) In front of us there were destroyed houses.

Is that correct?

I don't think

2) In front of me there was a man killed.

could really mean

c) In front of me there was a killed man.

But maybe it could.

 

[Tarheel]

I am not sure what you are trying to say. I suggest that you put the sentence into some sort of context. Then you will see if it makes sense.

What damaged the houses? Fire? A severe storm? An earthquake?

In front of us there were destroyed houses.

In that sentence "destroyed" acts as an adjective.

What is a killed man? A dead person?

 

[navi tasan]

Thank you very much, Tarheel,

I don't think 'a killed man' is an expression that is commonly used, but I'd imagine it means ' a man who has been killed'.


I'll try to put the other ones in a context:

1) All that I could see was rubble. This was once a beautiful town, But the war turned it into a pile of rubble. In front of me there were only houses destroyed, ( ie. houses that had been destroyed).

2) I witnessed the earthquake from the hilltop. It was a terrible experience. In front of me, there were houses destroyed. (houses that got destroyed). They collapsed like they were made of cards.

3) I was traumatized as a child, because once when I was sitting by the window watching the street, right in front of me there was a man killed. He was shot by a drive-by shooter.

In 1, 'destroyed' is an adjective. In the second one it is verbal and equivalent to 'that got destroyed'. In 3 'killed' is verbal again is equivalent to 'who got killed' In 2 and 3 I witness the action.

Do 1, 2 and 3 make sense and are they grammatical?

 

[tedmc]

I think saying "houses destroyed in front of you" is ambiguous. If the houses were destroyed in front of you, say "the houses were being destroyed". If there were houses which had been destroyed in front of you, say "there were houses which were/had been destroyed.

 

[navi tasan]

Thank you Tedmc,

The question is whether 'In front of us, there were houses destroyed.' is acceptable or not, and what meaning or meanings it has.

 

[tedmc]

Thank you Tedmc,

The question is whether 'In front of us, there were houses destroyed.' is acceptable or not, and what meaning or meanings it has.

The meaning is ambiguous as I said.

 

[Tarheel]

Try:

Everywhere I looked there were houses that had been destroyed.

You don't need "in front of me" there. (People don't have eyes in the backs of their heads.)

Also say:

Once when I was looking out the window I saw a man get killed right in front of me.

This time you use that phrase to emphasize that it happened nearby.

I hope that helps.

 

[Tarheel]

As for the earthquake, you could say:

I watched the earthquake from the hilltop. I saw houses being destroyed.

Of course, that doesn't really happen. Houses don't simply fall apart.

What with earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and severe storms, Mother Nature is always trying to kill us.
;-)

 

[navi tasan]

You forgot pandemics.

 

[emsr2d2]

Ambiguous or not, the word order in all of them is unnatural. We'd use the information about something happening within our range of vision later in the sentence.

The houses were destroyed

in front of us. (The houses started off standing and ended up flattened.)
A man was killed

in front of me. (The man was alive and you saw him being killed.)
There was a man killed right in front of me! (An alternative to the previous sentence.)

The destroyed houses were

in front of us. (The houses were destroyed throughout your experience of looking at them.)
There was a dead body

in front of me. (It was a corpse throughout.)​

 

[jutfrank]

In the same way that your sentence 1 is ambiguous, your sentence 2 is also ambiguous.

Would you mind explaining why you like to ask questions about ambiguity please, Navi? Are you usually asking us to suggest ways of getting rid of ambiguity? Or is it more to do with your intellectual curiosity about how meaning works?