02:21 Jan 27, 2010 |
English language (monolingual) [PRO] Other | |||||||
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| Selected response from: John Detre Canada | ||||||
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SUMMARY OF ALL EXPLANATIONS PROVIDED | ||||
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4 +5 | yes and no |
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4 +1 | no |
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4 | not |
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4 | yes but metaphorically, not with her voice |
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is she singing or not? not Explanation: No she's not singing, and you're right the second sentence should read "our hearts would twine." Leaving the "would" out makes it seem more immediate, as if the experience is actually happening rather than being imagined. Or, perhaps she is speaking of the other people with her, and this is the "Our hearts twine in the melody," not the person she is speaking too. |
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is she singing or not? yes but metaphorically, not with her voice Explanation: It helps to think 'new age' here as it's a bit like the way a yoga or meditation teacher speaks (e.g. "now we see the colour of our heart chakra and feel it spinning"). Rosalia is talking about the beat/pulse/song of the earth and nature. She means that the life or energy in herself merges harmoniously (resonates or vibrates) with that of other lives (bees, trees, particles). That feeling of life all around is the 'song'. Definitely not 'would'. And no - she's not singing in a 'la-la-la' way:) |
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is she singing or not? yes and no Explanation: I think the ambiguity of the second sentence of the paragraph has to be understood in terms of the structure of the paragraph as a whole. There is a shift from literal human singing in the first sentence to the figurative song of nature in the last two sentences. First sentence - "If you could hear the melody I would sing to you, for you love singing." This refers to literal singing, but as Deborah says she is not in fact singing. The "if...would" structure indicates a counterfactual condition. Last two sentences - "Everything is in song here. There are choruses everywhere—the bees, the trees, the particles of air, all create their own arias of healing, soothing melodies that rejuvenate our souls." As Maurite says, the musical references here (song, choruses, arias, melodies) are metaphors for the rhythm of nature and the way nature speaks to us. The problematic sentence you are asking about, the second sentence, marks a transition between the first sentence and the last two. It is deliberately ambiguous: it refers both to the literal singing of the previous sentence (at this level of meaning, it could be read as you suggest, "Our hearts would twine in the melody and our souls would merge to its rhythm," but it also serves to introduce the metaphorical meaning of singing that is expanded in the rest of the paragraph, where singing is a trope for communion with nature and happens all the time. So the two types of time that are present in the sentence (when I sing / all the time) parallel the two types of singing (human singing / song of nature) and the sentence mediates between them. |
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