Spelling mistakes and typos

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Rhys wrote:

Thanks for the reports, guys!

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Tempada wrote:

There's a conjugation error in the Ethereal Knives description:

"Fires an arc of knives in front of the caster which deal physical damage."

An arc deals physical damage. The subject is arc, not knives, so deal should be changed to deals.

No, it is the knives dealing the damage, not the arc. The grammar of the main sentence leaves the subject of the subordinate clause ambiguous - it could be either - but the conjugation of "deal" tells you it is the knives.

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You forum user is correct. An "arc" is dealing damage. A specific kind of arc -- an arc of knifes. The "of knifes" is a genitive, which is a restriction placed on the noun. It isn't the subject of the verb, it is a restriction on the subject.

The exact meaning of the genitive is open to interpretation, it is sometimes ambiguous, and sometimes even carries more than one meaning. In English we use it for designating many different relationships between the two words. However, in all cases the genitive places a restriction on the noun, which is to say it reduces the things the noun can refer too. In this case "arc" is restricted to one composed of knifes, an "arc" composed of fire or acid would not qualify, hence it is restricted to knifes only.

You could say "Knifes firing in an arc deal damage." In which case the plural "knifes" would be the subject.

HTH.

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Rhys wrote:

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vmrob wrote:

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/200696/an-arc-of-knives-deal-damage-or-an-arc-of-knives-deals-damage

I posted in that StackExchange thread.

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Both ways are grammatically correct, but there is a different emphasis placed on the source of the damage. If the arc is dealing damage, then there is one source dealing one amount of damage, but if the knives are dealing the damage, then since there are multiple knives, then there are multiple sources of damage applying separately.

This is an important distinction for this particular skill.

A similar example:

"Fires an arc of knives which explode on contact."

There is a significant difference here if the knives explode individually, instead of the entire arc of knives exploding in unison.

There are also other answers in the StackExchange thread that agree that the grammar leaves it ambiguous, i.e. that both ways are grammatically correct.

[Edit] Though since that skill doesn't shotgun, it would be better to say the "arc deals damage" rather than the knives individually. But I maintain that both ways are correct, grammatically.

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Fires a large number of arrows into the air, to land at the target after a short delay.