Wednesday, November 15, 2017

"The Feeling's Inside"

Last week I listened to Argent and noticed something about the lines "She bought you coffee in a special cup / Which made you warm from deep inside" in "The Feeling's Inside."  A couple years ago, I discovered that they're quite similar to some lines in Ray Charles' "Hallelujah I Love Her So," but now I found something about the lines themselves.

"Which made you warm from deep inside" is a relative clause, but its antecedent is ambiguous.  It could refer to the noun "coffee" or the whole clause "She bought you coffee in a special cup."  Rephrased, it could be either "The coffee that she bought you made you warm" or "That she bought you coffee made you warm."  One focuses on the heating effect of the coffee (the physical), and the other focuses on the warm emotions that result from the gift (the intangible).  The emotional warmth is probably the intended reading, but both are grammatical viable.