Do cats playing volleyball from afar make syntactical sense? - briefly
No, the sentence "Do cats playing volleyball from afar make syntactical sense?" does not make grammatical sense. The verb "playing" should be in the gerund form ("playing") and the phrase "from afar" is unnecessary and disrupts the flow of the sentence.
Do cats playing volleyball from afar make syntactical sense? - in detail
The phrase "cats playing volleyball from afar" presents an intriguing and humorous image, but it does not make syntactic sense in standard English grammar. Let's break down why this is the case:
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Subject-Verb Agreement: In the sentence "Do cats playing volleyball from afar make syntactical sense?", there is a mismatch between the subject and the verb. The subject "cats" is plural, but the verb "make" is singular. To correct this, the verb should be pluralized to "make," resulting in "Do cats playing volleyball from afar make syntactic sense?"
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Preposition Usage: The preposition "from" is typically used with verbs of motion or separation, such as "come from," "go from," or "separate from." However, the verb "playing" does not fit this pattern. A more appropriate preposition for indicating distance might be "at a distance" or simply omitting it altogether, depending on the intended meaning.
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Semantic Coherence: The phrase "cats playing volleyball" is semantically coherent because cats can be imagined to engage in some form of playful activity resembling volleyball. However, adding "from afar" introduces a sense of distance that does not naturally fit with the action of playing volleyball. Volleyball inherently requires close proximity and interaction between players.
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Idiomatic Expressions: The combination of elements in this phrase is not idiomatic in English. Idioms are fixed expressions whose meaning cannot be understood from the literal definition of the words, such as "kick the bucket" or "break a leg." The phrase "cats playing volleyball from afar" does not conform to any known idiomatic expression in the language.
In summary, while the phrase "cats playing volleyball from afar" is creatively imaginative and could be used for poetic or humorous effect, it lacks syntactic coherence according to standard English grammar rules. Correcting the subject-verb agreement and reconsidering the use of prepositions would improve its syntactical sense.