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「與」字可以造成多麼大的差別。每年舉行兩次、以經濟議題爲重點的美中戰略經濟對話(SED),在巴拉克•歐巴馬(Barack Obama)總統上任後,變成了更廣泛的「戰略與經濟對話」(S&ED)。對那些看重語法的人而言,新增一個連詞,就把「戰略」從一個描述經濟對話的形容詞,轉變成可以表述希拉蕊•柯林頓(Hillary Clinton)渴求的任何東西的一個複合形容詞。