Wednesday, October 31, 2018

sentence meaning - What does "a satisfactory conclusion the UN Security Councilˈs consideration of this matter" mean?



There would be additional steps in between the initial measures and the final step, including, among other things, addressing the UN Security Council resolutions, with a view toward bringing to a satisfactory conclusion the UN Security Councilˈs consideration of this matter.



For context: here


1)Is there any redundancy in "including, among other things"?


2)This part seems a bit odd: with a view toward bringing to a satisfactory conclusion the UN Security Councilˈs consideration of this matter. What is the apostrophe s contradiction for?



Answer




The confusion seems to be a result of a heavy NP shift (heavy noun phrase shift).


Consider:



with a view toward bringing it to a conclusion.
with a view toward bringing to a conclusion it.*
* denotes incorrect usage



We wouldn't move it to the end of the sentence because it is too light. However, in our sentence we instead have the UN Security Council's consideration of this matter, which is a heavy NP (noun phrase), so it can be shifted to the end.



with a view toward bringing to [a satisfactory conclusion] [the UN Security Council's consideration of this matter].




It might be easier to understand the phrase by moving the heavy NP back:



with a view toward bringing [the UN Security Council's consideration of this matter] to [a satisfactory conclusion].



With that, it should be easy to see that this heavy NP is simply the "Council's consideration", where "Council" means the UN Security Council, and the "consideration" means the consideration of this matter, and it's the Council's consideration.


The part "addressing the UN Security Council resolutions, with a view toward bringing to a satisfactory conclusion the UN Security Councilˈs consideration of this matter" would refer to such addressing and it means that the addressing would be done with a view toward bringing the Council's consideration to a satisfactory conclusion.




As for whether including, among other things is redundant or not, I would say that it can be considered redundant; however, in my opinion, if we removed the among other things part, the addressing would appear to be less important than it currently is, as it appears in the original sentence.


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