with the long, dark hair

[navi]

Which are correct:

1-He was talking to his girlfriend with the long, dark hair.
2-He was talking to his girlfriend with her long, dark hair.
3-He was talking to his girlfriend with long dark hair.

They are supposed to mean:
He was talking to his girlfriend who had long dark hair.

It seems to me that 1 and 2 work although that 'structure' is not that common.

Gratefully,
Navi.

[Erik_Kowal]

They are all understandable, but they are also all subject to the perverse interpretation "He was talking to his girlfriend by means of an object which consisted of [her/the] long dark hair".

[Phil White]

And 1 and 3 both suggest that he had multiple girlfriends. He was talking to the one with the long, dark hair.

Number 2 sounds very odd, and Erik's perverse interpretation was the first that crossed my perverse mind.

[Erik_Kowal]

The standard way to write this would be:

"He was talking to his girlfriend, who had long dark hair".

If her hair is described by only one attribute rather than two, another option is possible:

"He was talking to his long-haired girlfriend"

or

"He was talking to his dark-haired girlfriend".

But you cannot say:

"He was talking to his long, dark-haired girlfriend"

because of the possible confusion about whether 'long' describes the girlfriend or her hair.

[Phil White]

If her hair is described by only one attribute rather than two, another option is possible:

"He was talking to his long-haired girlfriend"

or

"He was talking to his dark-haired girlfriend".

These both suffer from the ambiguity in respect of the number of girlfriends he has.

In a discourse context in which people are expected to have only one girlfriend, the suggestions are adequate. The syntax in itself, however is not unambiguous:

He was talking to his German aunt.
Which explains why he was speaking German. If he had been speaking to his Australian aunt, he would have been speaking some other language.

I am beginning to think that navi is writing a thesis on the adequacy of English syntax for distinguishing between defining and non-defining meaning, and the answer is the same as the last half-dozen times: context, context, context. Syntax and punctuation alone are rarely sufficient.

[Edwin F Ashworth]

Yes. One can imagine Groucho going from his no-nonsense mode with

"He was talking to his girlfriend ..."

to his 'strange-interlude' eyebrows-raised talk-to-the-moon mode for

"with her lo-o-o-o-ong da-a-a-a-ark hai-ai-air".

Even Erik's standard version "He was talking to his girlfriend, who had long dark hair" is really forcing two disparate notions into a single sentence. "The man in the hospital bed suddenly noticed the stranger, whose hobbies included archaeology and keeping newts" is perhaps a clearer example of a sentence that is grammatically correct but better avoided.

[Wizard of Oz]

Phil said:

Which explains why he was speaking German. If he had been speaking to his Australian aunt, he would have been speaking some other language.

.. gee Phil that's a bit harsh .. just some other language ?? .. we do give english a fair suck of the sav ..

WoZ grinning

[Erik_Kowal]

These both suffer from the ambiguity in respect of the number of girlfriends he has.

I think Navi ought to clarify just how many girlfriends this fellow actually possesses. It would make my life a lot simpler.

[Phil White]

navi originally wrote:

They are supposed to mean:
He was talking to his girlfriend who had long dark hair.

By the strict rules of punctuation that he often queries, this is a defining relative clause, so he has multiple girlfriends. But in a recent reply I pointed out that punctuation alone is unreliable. Without putting too fine a point on it and at the risk of repeating myself: IT'S ALL ABOUT CONTEXT.

[JerrySmile]

1-He was talking to his girlfriend with the long, dark hair.
2-He was talking to his girlfriend with her long, dark hair.
3-He was talking to his girlfriend with long dark hair.

To explicitly assign features to a character, and eventually pile and pile on them, by using "with" is old-fashioned writing.

[navi]

Thank you all so very much for your kind replies.

All your comments were truly helpful.

I had to look up 'fair suck of the sav'. Sometimes one also finds things one did not come looking for. And that possibility makes the search all the more fun.

I can't believe I, of all people, missed the comma in 'his girlfriend, who had long, dark hair'. I meant to put in a comma. My apologies.

I am not writing a thesis, although I can see why you might suspect that I am. It would not necessarily be a bad thing, at least for me.

Gratefully and respectfully,
Navi.