ambiguity

Dear Sir,
i am having a problem with the following sentance as it is a bit ambiguous.
the sentance is :
They are the designers and builders of the mechanical, thermal and fluid-flow related aspects of all such systems
Does the related word apply to 'mechanical', 'thermal' and 'fluid flow' OR does the related word apply only to the last word 'fluid flow',
looking fortward to your reply,
Thanking You,
Brendan Menezes BEng Chemical Engineering (UK)

Could you write the preceding sentence please? Maybe 'such systems' is related to something mentioned before? If it is so, the word 'related' is applied to all the words.

Anyway, to be the designer and builder of an aspect (but not a system) is nonsense. To me, it sounds weird. Probably, it is a mistake.

WARNING: I'am not a native speaker.

>They are the designers and builders of the mechanical, thermal and fluid-flow related aspects of all such systems.... [Brendanmenezes]

I've never thought about the uses of 'related' before, but it seems to me that in this sentence it refers to 'fluid-flow' and not to 'mechanical' and 'thermal'. 'Mechanical' already means 'related to mechanics', and 'thermal' means 'related to heat'. Apparently the author couldn't think of a comparable technical adjective that meant 'related to fluid-flow' (or one that was easily understandable), so he or she resorted to the longer description.

[I agree with Ant_222 that 'aspects' of the systems doesn't sound quite right. Maybe 'components' would be better.]

A translation from engineer-speak into English? That's not always possible.

>They are the designers and builders of the mechanical,
>thermal and fluid-flow related aspects of all such systems

How about...
They design the mechanical, thermal, and fluid-dynamic aspects of all such systems.

What confuses you in this sentence is one of the most confusing constructions in the English language. It's called a suspended compound attributive adjective. Attributive because it describes an attribute, for example "mechanical". Compound because two or more words are being joined to make a single adjective, for example "mechanical-related". Suspended because (in the original sentence) the second half of the compound has been suspended until all three attributes have been given, something like the distributive property of mathematics but applied to grammar. Just like (x+y+z) * b means the same as xb+yb+zb, the original phrase can be expanded as "mechanical-related, thermal-related, and fluid-flow-related aspects".

This isn't a grammar issue, it's a style issue. What I am about to describe is (to the best of my knowledge) Chicago style. British style guides may be different.

Since 'fluid-flow related aspects' has only one hyphen, the noun being modified by `fluid-flow' is `related aspects'. This is also the noun modified by `mechanical' and 'thermal'. If 'fliud-flow-related' were an adjective modifying 'aspects', there would be two hyphens.

If the other words were meant to be are suspended adjectives, there would be trailing hyphens:

mechanical-, thermal-, and fluid-flow-related aspects.

Totalement d'accord avec D. C'est exactement ce que je pense, à tort ou à raison.

>"builders of the mechanical, thermal and fluid-flow related aspects"

'Mechanical' already means 'mechanics-related', and 'thermal' already means 'heat-related'. It seems to me that 'fluid-flow' isn't conceptually parallel with the adjectives 'mechanical' and 'thermal' but rather with 'mechanics' and 'heat'. If we assume that the 'related' before 'aspects' includes not just 'fluid-flow' but 'mechanical' and 'thermal' too, then conceptually we end up with something rather silly -- "builders of the mechanics-related-related aspects, heat-related-related aspects, and fluid-flow-related aspects". The final item has one level of relationship, while the preceding items have two.

That's possible, but it seems more likely to me that the writer meant to restrict the word 'related' to 'fluid-flow' and just left out a hyphen. (We can't assume that an engineer is as concerned about hyphen use as persons whose main interest is language.) Although 'related' can be used with adjectives such as 'mechanical' and 'thermal', it's more commonly used with nouns. Google results:

"mechanical-related" 943
"mechanics-related" 5,030

"thermal-related" 700
"heat-related" 205,000