What a difference an “and” makes. The US-China Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED), a twice-yearly bilateral encounter centred on economic issues, has morphed under President Barack Obama into the broader Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED). For those with a grammatical bent, the addition of a conjunction transforms the word “strategic” from an adjective describing the economic dialogue into a portmanteau adjective describing anything Hillary Clinton damn well wants.
一個(gè)“與”字可以造成多么大的差別。每年舉行兩次、以經(jīng)濟(jì)議題為重點(diǎn)的美中戰(zhàn)略經(jīng)濟(jì)對話(SED)，在巴拉克?奧巴馬(Barack Obama)總統(tǒng)上任后，變成了更廣泛的“戰(zhàn)略與經(jīng)濟(jì)對話”(S&ED)。對那些看重語法的人而言，添加一個(gè)連詞，就把“戰(zhàn)略”從一個(gè)描述經(jīng)濟(jì)對話的形容詞，轉(zhuǎn)變成可以表述希拉里?克林頓(Hillary Clinton)渴求的任何東西的一個(gè)復(fù)合形容詞。