A sentence from Longman Dictionary
That smell of oil and candles and that light from a distant window and him on his knees, mumbling.
I can't make out the meaning of the sentence and thesubject.
Is it from literature?
Thanks in advance.
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1This is not a grammatical sentence. Longman Dictionary uses a not-so-reliable algorithm to cull their example sentences from various online sources with no human double-checking, so you often see sentences by non-native speakers, ungrammatical sentences, and non-sentences like this one. – Eddie Kal♦ Sep 19 '19 at 3:23
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Poetic or writer's style, maybe? I'd read it like - That smell (of oil and candles) and that light (from a distant window) and him (on his knees, mumbling). Three subjects? :) – Maulik V♦ Sep 19 '19 at 5:15
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Yes, it is very literary. And it must fit into a broader context where the lack of SVP is fine. Imagine someone complaining. It's almost like listing stuff: "That horrible movie and all the noise in the theater and my boyfriend with his arm around me, sleeping. That's what it was like." Descriptive speech. – Lambie Feb 28 '20 at 20:22
This is not actually a full sentence, because there is no verb. The whole thing could be used as a compound object phrase. For instance
That smell of oil and candles and that light from a distant window and him on his knees, mumbling, are the only things I remember from that night.
Or, it could be used as a compound subject by changing the case of the pronoun as follows.
That smell of oil and candles and that light from a distant window and he on his knees, mumbling, created a lasting memory in my mind.
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Yes, you're correct. The way I wrote it that clause is the object of 'remember'. I remember him. I'll change it. Thanks! – dwilli Sep 20 '19 at 3:21
