Two interpretations

Question

Hi there,l'm a Japanese student studying English grammar.There was an example sentence in the article about cognate onjects which I couldn't get the meaning:The resting girl dreamed a secret dream.According to my teacher's hint, it is possible to interpret this sentence in two different contexts(manner reading and result reading). What contexts do you think of? I would appreciate if you could give some advice.

Meteorquake · Accepted Answer

I can only read it in one way.
The girl is resting. She had a dream. The dream was secret.
Obviously "dream" can be a sleeping dream, or a hope whilst awake, which will need to go with whether "resting" means sleeping or just relaxing but awake.
Otherwise perhaps you could explain a bit more what your question involves, as not all of us know the terminology taught to students

d

Anonymous · Answer

Thank you very much for your kind comment in spite of my insufficient explanation.

A cognate objects is a verb's object that is etymologically related to the verb.

And there is another example sentence on the article which might help you understand what I would like to know:

The woman lived a happy life.

The article explains that this means either that the woman lived in a happy way(=manner reading) or that her life( though it may have had its ups and downs) resulted in her being happy(=result reading).

That's why the teacher said that we can interpret the sentence (The resting girl dreamed a secret dream) in two different ways.

Anonymous · Answer

I'm a native English speaker in the US, and I don't see this grammatical distinction; that is, the sentence, "The woman lived a happy life.", doesn't really have more than one interpretation, as I see it: "The woman lived a life in which she was happy." To make more than one interpretation out of this would be splitting hairs in the hair-splittingest possible way: she lived her life in such a way that the result was that she was happy, or she lived in a happy manner - but I personally see no real difference between these two.

Similarly, the other sentence, "The resting girl dreamed a secret dream.", has only one real interpretation: she dreamed a dream that only she understood. To try to split it into two interpretations: she dreamed so that her dreams were secret (only she understood them), or she dreamed and what she dreamed of was secret (only she understood it), is not valid, since there is no real difference between the two.

I suspect your teacher is not a native English speaker, and the book is not written by a native English speaker. Maybe in the Japanese language a distinction is made between these two, but not in US English.

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