Let's say I wrote: The male students had always lusted over her legs, but when it really mattered, they were useless. By "they", I'm referring to "her legs". Would this be grammatically correct? Would readers think the "they" is referencing the male students instead? Thank you for your help.
I admit, I thought that you were referring to the students. I definately think you need to restructure the sentence. How about... What use were legs that were lusted after by the male half of the student body, when they were useless at the very moment she needed them?
It is indeed ambiguous and confusing. You can remove the ambiguity by rearranging the placements of the pronoun and the associated noun, although I still don't think much of the resulting sentence:
his typo aside, cog's rearrangement makes better sense than the original... however, 'lusted over' is poor grammar and lusting over/for/after legs is just plain silly... google 'lust over' and 'lust for'/'lust after' and you'll see 'over' makes no sense...
Is lusting over not allowed? Anyway, thanks for all the replies. Is the original actually grammatically incorrect, or just ambiguous? If it's not grammatically incorrect, what if we added some context before that sentence? Maybe "Fright had shackled her to the ground" or something. If it's grammatically wrong, would you mind explaining the rule for this? Many thanks.
The grammar is formally correct, but the semantics are ambiguous because it's not clear which noun to resolve the pronoun 'they' to. Some 'grammar' rules are intended to disambiguate language, but they are really semantic conventions. A grammar defines the construction of a parse tree that diagrams the structure of a sentence, but that doesn't include secondary links like those that associate a pronoun with a noun in another clause. I apologize for the technical terminology. Formal grammars are a specialized branch of mathematics, and it's not easily summed up in a few sentences.
I also thought "they" was refering to the boys. Even if the context makes it clear at some point, my brain would still make the mistake, and then I would have to correct it and apply "they" to her legs. When she had walked the halls, all the guys stared at her legs. But now, as she ran to the store, her legs were useless. I think being specific might help. That is, what is the "when she needed them." What did she need them for? If she is thinking of more than one example, then share that. Repeating the word "legs" is not big deal. Trying to avoid repeating nouns sometimes, only leads to confusing sentences. I always try to look back at the previous sentence or clause to see if my pronouns can refer to more than one noun. If so, I repeat the noun, or reconstruct the sentence, so that there is only one way to read it.
