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I wrote a sentence that was considered awkward by fellow translators, on a couple of counts. I'm singling out one particular word they found awkward:

During the tour, you will hear interesting stories about the city, learning about its establishment and history.

Does this "learning" look awkward here?

Would a native speaker use the finite-form "learn" instead? I understand that that would involve adding "and", I just wonder whether the -ing form or the finite form is more felicitous here.

(Another question concerning the same sentence)

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CowperKettle
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  • I remembered something.If you mean learnig to refer to stories, then there is a dangling structure. The subject of your second clause is not the same as the subject of the previous clause. –  May 21 '16 at 08:41
  • A suggestion, change your advervbial to a relative clause. "During the tour, you will hear interesting stories about the city, which help you learn about its establishment and history." –  May 21 '16 at 08:59
  • Pardon me.I forgot in a nondefining relative clause we cannot drop relative pronoun so l changed my previous clause. –  May 21 '16 at 09:00
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    Your question reads more like a request for proof-reading and you know it is off-topic here. I will not use the verb to "learn" unless they (tourists) came to study its history. Choice of the verb is making the sentence sound awkward. –  May 21 '16 at 09:13
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    @Rathony - proofreading is "tell me if something is wrong with the sentence". A ELL question is "tell me if this construction is used wrongly here or leaves an impression of being awkward" – CowperKettle May 21 '16 at 09:55

2 Answers2

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We can use the participle clause as you do there to express an incidental or tangential fact.

We will visit the ruins on our tour, fording the stream to reach the dig site.

The problem with your sentence is not grammatical, but semantic, since learning is not an incidental but a direct outcome of hearing stories.

P.S. The participle smooths a somewhat jarring non-sequitur by marking the added fact as tangential/incidental to the finite clause. Consider the statement with a second (non-sequitur) finite clause:

We will visit the ruins on our tour and ford the stream to reach the dig site.

In the OP, a second finite clause would have been better than the participle learning:

During the tour, you will hear interesting stories about the city and learn about its establishment and history.

because the second finite clause follows directly from the first; it is not tangential to it.

TimR
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  • Hmmm. How about "He punched him in the face, breaking two of his teeth in the process". Sorry for the violent example, but my point was that the punching directly causes the tooth loss here. They don't seem to be incidental, to me. – Araucaria - Not here any more. May 21 '16 at 12:25
  • @Araucaria: The non-finite marks the phrase as incidental. The broken teeth are indeed incidental to the punch. He punched him in the face and kicked him in the groin. The kick is not incidental to the punch; we would not say "He punched him in the face, kicking him in the groin." The bull ran through the china shop, breaking dishes. – TimR May 21 '16 at 12:49
  • Incidental in the sense "collaterally related to or arising from a principle action" – TimR May 21 '16 at 12:56
  • In the OP, I would consider "hear stories" and "learn" to be synonyms rather than principle action and its collateral consequence, though at this level of abstraction it is possible to split hairs; we could consider audition as logically and temporally prior to learning. It just depends on how we define "learn". How did you learn that the deceased was your cousin? --He told me before he left on that fateful trip to the Amazon. – TimR May 21 '16 at 13:11
  • What is your opinion on "During the tour, you will hear interesting stories about the city and they will help you understand its establishment and history." or "During the tour, you will hear interesting stories about the city (,) which will help you understand its establishment and history." I think it all depends on what you want to emphasize in the sentence. –  May 21 '16 at 17:16
  • @Rathony: your question is completely unrelated to the question at hand. You're introducing a new subject ("and they"), or shifting the subject to "stories" with the relative "which". – TimR May 21 '16 at 18:51
  • @TRomano Well, what I am saying is my suggestions would be better than the OP's sentence. I would have translated that way and the OP's sentence doesn't sound right. (personal opinion) –  May 21 '16 at 19:11
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To use learn, it would need to be:

During the tour, you will hear interesting stories about the city and learn about its establishment and history.

The verb forms of "hear" and "learn" are the same here, but a conjunction has to be added.

As for the original:

During the tour, you will hear interesting stories about the city, learning about its establishment and history.

"learning" refers to the "interesting stories". You would be learning from the interesting stories.

user3169
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