Wednesday, August 28, 2013

grammar - Is this xkcd sentence grammatically correct?



So I saw this xkcd, and when I tried reading it, I always felt like the ending was a bit... unbalanced.



It says:




You're in a box on wheels hurtling along several times faster than evolution could possibly have prepared you to go. (Next 5 miles.)





I can't figure out what's wrong with it, though... it's as if some word (e.g. "at"?) was supposed to follow the word "go".



So I was wondering, is the sentence grammatically correct, or is it indeed missing something?
If so, what?


Answer



It's perfectly fine. Let's rewrite it to see what's going on.



Original:




You're in a box on wheels hurtling along several times faster than evolution could possibly have prepared you to go.





"box on wheels" => "car"
"hurtling along" => "going"



Creates:




You're in a car going several times faster than evolution could possibly have prepared you to go.





Now we can erase this unnecessary part:




You're in a car going several times faster than evolution could possibly have prepared you to go.




Finally creating:




You're in a car going faster than evolution could possibly have prepared you to go.





If you want to go even further, you can simplify all this to:




You're going faster than you are prepared to go.




Seems all fine here!


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