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Post by Somak Meitei on Oct 27, 2014 22:03:05 GMT 5.5
At the request of some of my juniors, I read A Magical Animal, an abriged story of The Aye Aye And I by Gerald Durrell, but as I don't have the world knowledge, and my knowledge of internet is very poor, I did not find the relevant facts, though conducted google search, of a line. I am utterly exhausted to think what the line means. Here the line is: It(aye-aye) looks like Walt Disney witch's black cat with a touch of ET thrown in for good measure. So many thoughts whirls around in my mind.
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Post by Thoithoi O'Cottage on Oct 28, 2014 17:25:01 GMT 5.5
ET, I think, here means the extra-terrestrial. I am not sure of it without reading the sentence in the book's context. If my suspucion is right, then the sentence says the creature looks like the black cat of a witch in some Walt Disney movie with some special effect added to lend some alien looks to the creature.
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Post by Somak Meitei on Oct 28, 2014 18:53:44 GMT 5.5
Yes, ET is an extra terrestrial.I am not certain that 'with a touch of ET thrown in for good measure' is for the aye-aye or for the black cat.
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Post by Thoithoi O'Cottage on Oct 28, 2014 20:52:24 GMT 5.5
Well, that's for both on two levels. Let's analyze the grammar to establish the ground for this reading. We have this sentence: It looks like Walt Disney witch's black cat with a touch of ET thrown in for good measure. In this we have the prepositional phrase (PP) in question, "with a touch of ET thrown in for good measure." What does this PP do? It postmodifies "(Walt Disney witch's) black cat." As a result, that black cat assumes an ET quality now. Thus, now let's say there is some ET like quality about that witch's black cat. This is the first level of understanding the sentence. Now, if the aye-aye looks like the witch's black cat which has some ET quality about it, then the aye-aye, by extension, has some ET quality about it. This is a semantic reading of the sentence which follows the grammatical analysis of the prepositional phrase in the sentence. The second-level understanding. This reading follows this logical model: A = B B = C Then, A = C meaning that A = B = C That is to say, if something looks like a pyramid of cotton dyed green, then A = something B = pyramid C = (of) cotton dyed green Thus, something = pyramid = (of) cotton dyed green. |
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