Which does ‘there’ refer to, in the bazaar or in the nearest village?

[Adrianslont]

I would never have asked myself this question if I had seen the sentence, no more than I wonder when 'now' is in a sentence like this:
Now, I know it was a bad idea, but did it anyway. (I think I've seen a topic on this as well some time ago.)

Me neither. Poor students of Myanmar actually lose marks over this.

[Adrianslont]

Posts: 1
Joined: 10 May 2018 18:59
Last active: 10 May 2018 19:28

There we go again now.

Haha. When I first answered this questioned I fully expected never to see OP again.

[Serpent]

Perhaps the OP has been checking the replies without logging in

[Random Review]

It is genuinely ambiguous (as others have pointed out) and (as has also been pointed out) we may never know for sure the author's intention and perhaps they even intended the ambiguity; but given the lack of commas, my money is on the bazaar. A careful writer would probably add commas if they meant the village.

It's not at all. It makes complete and perfect sense. The only thing that is ambiguous is why anyone would ask such a silly question in the first place. See jeff_lindqvist's example. There is nothing ambiguous about the position of poor Mr Smith.

I agree that it makes perfect sense either way and the difference in meaning is very small; but I don't agree that it isn't at least slightly ambiguous TBH. I can certainly take two different meanings from it and I don't seem to be the only one.

I genuinely thought it was an interesting question.