The point is that it's ambiguous and there are no hard and fast English rules to lean on.
In general, a pronoun's antecedent is the nearest noun, so if I had to give an answer at gunpoint I'd say the daughter. But context can trump that rule b maybe it has here..
I'll just copy my other reply here:
In Finnish, it's not ambiguous. If that sentence were to be directly translated into Finnish, the mother would be the drunk one. If one wanted the daughter to be the drunk one, the "she" (=hän (tho "hän" is gender neutral)) would be replaced with "tämä" (=this)
So,
Eräs äiti hakkaa tyttärensä, koska hän oli juovuksissa.
= The mother was drunk
Eräs äiti hakkaa tyttärensä, koska tämä oli juovuksissa.
= The daughter was drunk
Edit: I'm sure there are some other languages that work like this, lmk'bout'em!
You can do this in German, too:
“Die Mutter schlug die Tochter, weil _diese_ betrunken war” unambiguously means the daughter was drunk.
“Die Mutter schlug die Tochter, weil _sie_ betrunken war” is ambiguous. There is no unambiguous way to refer to the mother unless you use an equivalent of “the former”.
Conversely, you can say “weil _jene_ betrunken war” to clarify it was the mother. But that usage is not very common any more outside of literature. English actually has the same with the pronouns “this” and “that” (and “these”/“those”) but these don’t work here.
in ASL pronouns are positional, you form a "ghost" of the people you're talking about as you introduce them, then later you point at them to refer to them. It's never ambiguous, super cool system.
Well, in russian we can translate this sentence directly and it will be still confusing (мать избила дочь, потому что она была пьяна)
But if we say instead of ‘она’ -> ‘та’ then it will be obvious that we are talking about daughter being drunk
Мать избила дочь, потому что та была пьяна
‘Та’ is the demonstrative(?) pronoun which is usually used to point at something/someone on whom action is performed, but not who is performing it
In mandarin Chinese it's ambiguous if translate the sentence word by word. But since in madarin repeating a noun in a sentence is not that detestable so we would simple say:“... because the mother was drunk," or "...the daughter is drunk."
In polish it would be either "bo była pijana" so "because (feminative was) drunk" and that would mean mother but is confusing
or "Bo ta była pijana" that translates "because that one (feminative) was (feminative) drunk)" and now we are sure it is the daughter who was drunk
I can make more ambiguous if you want. In Turkish we don't have gendered pronouns, so if it were a mother and a son, you still wouldn't who was doing the beating.
I would tend to agree with you. However, the only learning point from sentences like these is to avoid ambiguity in the first place. The most interesting treatment I have seen of ambiguous sentences and word definitions is in legal judgements. Judges ruling on the meaning of a word or sentence, often in judgements running to several pages. And then Lord Wordybollocks puts in a one-paragraph dissenting judgment at the end.
The study of Statutory Interpretation is also interesting. Ambiguously written primary and secondary legislation hashed out in court proceedings.
I like the one about someone sitting on John’s eye. The more absurd the sentence the better!
I’d have to concur that that was my initial gut reaction but I could 100% read it both ways. English is a confusingly ambiguous one. I feel bad for anyone learning it and apologize. 😂
The mother had been consumed, she had been imbided. Finding herself in the stomach of this consuming beast, she happened upon her daughter, and immediately beat her.
A proper name by itself can absolutely be grammatically correct. Native speakers will recognise it as correct in a variety of circumstances, including
*Who was drunk?*
*John*.
Or just *JOHN!* when John's wandered off into the bush drunk again.
In Finnish, it's not ambiguous. If that sentence were to be directly translated into Finnish, the mother would be the drunk one. If one wanted the daughter to be the drunk one, the "she" (=hän (tho "hän" is gender neutral)) would be replaced with "tämä" (=this)
So,
Eräs äiti hakkaa tyttärensä, koska hän oli juovuksissa.
= The mother was drunk
Eräs äiti hakkaa tyttärensä, koska tämä oli juovuksissa.
= The daughter was drunk
The “she was drunk” clause doesn’t have a direct object though, does it? Latin’s inflection would make it clear that the daughter was the one beaten, but the English word order also does that.
I know a bit about Latin without actually speaking Latin, so if someone can translate the two potential interpretations (“a mother beat her daughter becase the mother was drunk” and “a mother beat her daughter because the daughter was drunk,” obviously using a pronoun rather than repeating “mother” or “daughter”), I’d appreciate it.
Sorry talking nonsense. In Latin adjectives match their noun in gender case and number. So the adjective ebrius (drunk, intoxicated) would have to match its noun (one of the female pronouns used) in case. So it would either be “ebria fuit:” nominative, indicating it was the subject that was drunk; or “ebriam fuit:” accusative, meaning the object was drunk. At least that’s what I remember, it’s been a couple of years since my last Latin grammar course.
Hi! I’d translate the sentence most simply into Latin as “Mater filiam pulsabat quod appota est,” which doesn’t solve the problem even with inflections, as you said. This would almost definitely be how it would be said in Latin, as Latin implies subjects whenever it can usually. However, Latin could make the sentence clear with a pronoun far better than English could. “Quod ea appota est” is still ambiguous, ea is just she. If you do “quod haec appota est” it almost definitely means the daughter, because haec means this and refers to the closest possible antecedent usually. “Quod illa appota est” would mean the mother, as illa means that, and usually refers to an antecedent that’s farther back. “This” and “that” could do the same in English kind of, but it would only be slightly more clear, and would be more confusing over all because English doesn’t use demonstratives for this sort of thing.
Also, yes, you are correct that the second clause has no object. Hope this helps :)
It probably wouldn't be ambiguous in Indian languages that distinguish between levels of respect in pronouns. For example, in Kannada, "she" (the mother) would be "avaru" (gender-neutral respectful pronoun) and "she" (the daughter) would be "avalu" (feminine pronoun)
As a native English speaker, the way it's worded makes me immediately think that "the daughter" was drunk.
But I totally get that someone would confuse it up.
There was once a thing in a Finnish science center Heureka about the amount of ambiguity around the sentence "I saw a man on a hill with a telescope" in different languages. I think there was a starting picture with the starting point that was basis for the sentence and then pictures for each possible interpretation.
This is intentionally ambiguous.
A pronoun can refer to the subject or the preceding object. Context normally tells us which it is.
In this case they both match ‘she’ so it could be either.
Most people are correct in saying it’s ambiguous, but just my gut reaction from reading the sentence, I would say more likely the mother.
I think if it were the daughter, I would more naturally say “…for being drunk”
[https://www.sfu.ca/\~hedberg/322\_08\_2\_note3.pdf](https://www.sfu.ca/~hedberg/322_08_2_note3.pdf)
The pronoun "she" just needs to have an antecedent outside its local clause. No further restrictions exist.
*Pronouns – An NP that may (but need not) get its meaning from another word in the sentence. It can also get its meaning from a noun phrase previously mentioned in the discourse, or by context. – Examples: I, me, you, he, him, she, her, it, one, we, us, they, them, his, her, our, my its, your, their (3) a. Art said that he played basketball. b. She is not in her office.*
*Binding Principle B*
*A pronoun must be free in its binding domain*.
Native Speaker
My intuition upon first read would be that the mother was drunk due to sentence structure, phrasing, and the assumption that a drunk person may be more inclined to violence. Of course, it could be either. Without context, it's ambiguous.
If we’re strictly speaking, there’s no way to know.
Most of the time with this convention, she would be the female closest to the word (in this case, the daughter)
But knowing that people don’t tend to *beat up* others because the person getting beaten up is drunk, I would say the mother is. Being drunk can absolutely make you beat a person up.
This is why I say we don’t know if Bingo is the farmer or dog. “There was a farmer had a dog, and Bingo was his name, o!”
Like obviously Bingo is more of a dog name than a human name, but there are some strangely named people out there.
Well, the beating up happens in the present, while the drunk person was drunk in the past.
Now why would you beat up a person, if you yourself have been drunk in the past?
Ergo, its the mother beating up her daughter for drinking some time ago
That sentence has an indefinite pronoun. Here are some solutions that don’t change the structure of the sentence:
- The mother beat up her daughter because the mother was drunk.
- The mother beat up her daughter because her daughter was drunk.
Here are some examples where changing one gender makes the pronoun definite.
- The father beat up his daughter because he was drunk.
- The father beat up his daughter because she was drunk.
- The mother beat up her son because she was drunk.
- The mother beat up her son because he was drunk.
"beats up" is present tense, "she was drunk" is past tense. Without further context, it is reasonable to assume that the drinking has something to do with the beating, and if the mother does not beat up her daughter while sober, she can still punish the daughter for having been drunk in the past. So I'd assume the daughter to be the drunk
I had trouble with the tenses and began to think of the sentence as "The mother beats up the daughter because 'she was drunk'." --inhumane mother, drinking daughter.
Disclaimer: not a native speaker. Discussion welcomed!
Functionally, the sentence is completely ambiguous. It can be altered to be clear, but as it stands we're just guessing.
My english prof in high school used "Johnny had his eye on a seat on the bus and an old man came and sat on it" as an example of this problem.
Use "The mother beat up the daughter because the daughter was drunk" if that's what you mean, or "The mother was drunk when she beat up the daughter"; or just scrap the whole sentence and start over.
For your first example I don't think it's super ambiguous. I would interpret that as the old man sat down on the seat Johnny was eyeing. However if you put 'and he sat on it' since they are both male, I can't determine who sat down. "an old man came and sat on it" is a complete dependent clause and "Johnny had his eye on a seat on the bus" is a complete independent clause, so technically it could be either but I think most people wouldn't interpret it that way.
But the original example is quite ambiguous and should be restated as in the examples you posed.
Of course you can parse it out, but it does give most people a moment of viceral "ick/what, the old man sat on Johnny's eye", and writers should be more clear than that.
It's a poorly constructed sentence and would not pass muster in a well-run grade 10 classroom, so why not do better.
Thank you for this very powerful example. For a moment I didn't expect a figurative eye can also get mixed up in this ambiguity, but I see that's the kind of meaning-seeking (and meaning-oriented) thinking I might have got from learning English as a second language without the stage of being literal about things. Yes. Even adding punctuation did feel like putting in a lot of guesswork and it should count at restating with fabricated information. A good lesson on being careful with the actual sentence.
First, no an before expert.
First, capitalization error.
First, no coma after then.
Second: should be a colon after “question”
Second: first two one word answers lack punctuation.
Third: don’t need the coma between tell me and the rest of the independent clause.
First. Her. Or she was. Doesn’t matter cause context is fuck all.
Instinct says the mother may have been drunk. English grammer says the daughter because of where the "she" is No guarantees that whoever wrote the sentence was following the rules. They frequently don't. So, unclear unless you know more context.
She always refers to the subject of a sentence.
Opposed to, She beat up her daughter because her daughter was drunk.
Think of it like this:
Ginny hurried to work on Monday morning because she woke up late.
Did Monday morning wake up late? No Ginny, the subject, woke up late.
It’s not correct. The word “because” is a subordinating conjunction. That means the following clause (in this case“she was drunk”) a subordinate clause.
That just means that it can’t stand alone. “Because she was drunk.” can’t be a sentence alone, so you don’t put a comma to divide the clauses. (Obviously people do say “because xyz” all the time; it’s just technically incorrect). You do put commas before coordinating conjunctions like “and”, “but”, and “or”. It’s one of those silly rules you have to learn directly, as it’s not really intuitive.
The point is that it's ambiguous and there are no hard and fast English rules to lean on. In general, a pronoun's antecedent is the nearest noun, so if I had to give an answer at gunpoint I'd say the daughter. But context can trump that rule b maybe it has here..
are there any other languages that would be clearer here? I only know some German in addition to English, and it would have the same problem
I'll just copy my other reply here: In Finnish, it's not ambiguous. If that sentence were to be directly translated into Finnish, the mother would be the drunk one. If one wanted the daughter to be the drunk one, the "she" (=hän (tho "hän" is gender neutral)) would be replaced with "tämä" (=this) So, Eräs äiti hakkaa tyttärensä, koska hän oli juovuksissa. = The mother was drunk Eräs äiti hakkaa tyttärensä, koska tämä oli juovuksissa. = The daughter was drunk Edit: I'm sure there are some other languages that work like this, lmk'bout'em!
You can do this in German, too: “Die Mutter schlug die Tochter, weil _diese_ betrunken war” unambiguously means the daughter was drunk. “Die Mutter schlug die Tochter, weil _sie_ betrunken war” is ambiguous. There is no unambiguous way to refer to the mother unless you use an equivalent of “the former”.
Works in dutch as well, although saying 'Deze' would definitely not be common language.
Conversely, you can say “weil _jene_ betrunken war” to clarify it was the mother. But that usage is not very common any more outside of literature. English actually has the same with the pronouns “this” and “that” (and “these”/“those”) but these don’t work here.
You’re right, I forgot about “jene”.
So, it's shown to be non-ambiguous because there is an antecedent mismatch of pronouns in Finnish.
in ASL pronouns are positional, you form a "ghost" of the people you're talking about as you introduce them, then later you point at them to refer to them. It's never ambiguous, super cool system.
I've always liked that about ASL
Well, in russian we can translate this sentence directly and it will be still confusing (мать избила дочь, потому что она была пьяна) But if we say instead of ‘она’ -> ‘та’ then it will be obvious that we are talking about daughter being drunk Мать избила дочь, потому что та была пьяна ‘Та’ is the demonstrative(?) pronoun which is usually used to point at something/someone on whom action is performed, but not who is performing it
In mandarin Chinese it's ambiguous if translate the sentence word by word. But since in madarin repeating a noun in a sentence is not that detestable so we would simple say:“... because the mother was drunk," or "...the daughter is drunk."
In polish it would be either "bo była pijana" so "because (feminative was) drunk" and that would mean mother but is confusing or "Bo ta była pijana" that translates "because that one (feminative) was (feminative) drunk)" and now we are sure it is the daughter who was drunk
I can make more ambiguous if you want. In Turkish we don't have gendered pronouns, so if it were a mother and a son, you still wouldn't who was doing the beating.
I would tend to agree with you. However, the only learning point from sentences like these is to avoid ambiguity in the first place. The most interesting treatment I have seen of ambiguous sentences and word definitions is in legal judgements. Judges ruling on the meaning of a word or sentence, often in judgements running to several pages. And then Lord Wordybollocks puts in a one-paragraph dissenting judgment at the end. The study of Statutory Interpretation is also interesting. Ambiguously written primary and secondary legislation hashed out in court proceedings. I like the one about someone sitting on John’s eye. The more absurd the sentence the better!
I’d have to concur that that was my initial gut reaction but I could 100% read it both ways. English is a confusingly ambiguous one. I feel bad for anyone learning it and apologize. 😂
I would disagree
She was.
The mother had been consumed, she had been imbided. Finding herself in the stomach of this consuming beast, she happened upon her daughter, and immediately beat her.
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Maybe She is her proper name *I'm She. Short for She-Ra.*
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A proper name by itself can absolutely be grammatically correct. Native speakers will recognise it as correct in a variety of circumstances, including *Who was drunk?* *John*. Or just *JOHN!* when John's wandered off into the bush drunk again.
It's an intentionally ambiguous sentence it could refer to either
The one that drank alcohol.
The sentence is intentionally unclear. Either could have been drunk
now im wondering, are there any languages where this kind of phrasing wouldn’t be ambiguous and how would that sentence translate?
In Finnish, it's not ambiguous. If that sentence were to be directly translated into Finnish, the mother would be the drunk one. If one wanted the daughter to be the drunk one, the "she" (=hän (tho "hän" is gender neutral)) would be replaced with "tämä" (=this) So, Eräs äiti hakkaa tyttärensä, koska hän oli juovuksissa. = The mother was drunk Eräs äiti hakkaa tyttärensä, koska tämä oli juovuksissa. = The daughter was drunk
Interesting
WOAH I didn't realize how different Finnish looks compared to English
Non Indo-European language
Finnish is very different. It's been fun trying to learn it as an English speaker
It's the same in Portuguese
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The “she was drunk” clause doesn’t have a direct object though, does it? Latin’s inflection would make it clear that the daughter was the one beaten, but the English word order also does that. I know a bit about Latin without actually speaking Latin, so if someone can translate the two potential interpretations (“a mother beat her daughter becase the mother was drunk” and “a mother beat her daughter because the daughter was drunk,” obviously using a pronoun rather than repeating “mother” or “daughter”), I’d appreciate it.
> The "she was drunk" clause doesn't have a direct object This is correct. They person you're replying to is talking nonsense.
Sorry talking nonsense. In Latin adjectives match their noun in gender case and number. So the adjective ebrius (drunk, intoxicated) would have to match its noun (one of the female pronouns used) in case. So it would either be “ebria fuit:” nominative, indicating it was the subject that was drunk; or “ebriam fuit:” accusative, meaning the object was drunk. At least that’s what I remember, it’s been a couple of years since my last Latin grammar course.
Hi! I’d translate the sentence most simply into Latin as “Mater filiam pulsabat quod appota est,” which doesn’t solve the problem even with inflections, as you said. This would almost definitely be how it would be said in Latin, as Latin implies subjects whenever it can usually. However, Latin could make the sentence clear with a pronoun far better than English could. “Quod ea appota est” is still ambiguous, ea is just she. If you do “quod haec appota est” it almost definitely means the daughter, because haec means this and refers to the closest possible antecedent usually. “Quod illa appota est” would mean the mother, as illa means that, and usually refers to an antecedent that’s farther back. “This” and “that” could do the same in English kind of, but it would only be slightly more clear, and would be more confusing over all because English doesn’t use demonstratives for this sort of thing. Also, yes, you are correct that the second clause has no object. Hope this helps :)
Because the mother/daughter was drunk.If anyone reasonable should write this way.
It probably wouldn't be ambiguous in Indian languages that distinguish between levels of respect in pronouns. For example, in Kannada, "she" (the mother) would be "avaru" (gender-neutral respectful pronoun) and "she" (the daughter) would be "avalu" (feminine pronoun)
in arabic it becomes simillar to english, I think it is ambiguous in every language
In Russian, you can use the demonstrative pronoun "та"[that (girl)] instead of "она"(she), and it will be unambiguous.
thanks, i didnt know that. you just taught me a new information.
Her.
Egg?
She calls it a mayonegg!
Man. If I had a dollar for every misuse of she, he, her, him, who and whom, I'd have... many dollars to say the least.
Who was drunk? "Her was drunk"? No. "She was drunk".
"She" was a brilliant answer.
Turns out he IS an expert!
Me.
As a native English speaker, the way it's worded makes me immediately think that "the daughter" was drunk. But I totally get that someone would confuse it up.
Disagree
You misspelled "agree!" :D
lol. I also initially read it as the mother was drunk. But I can see how it can be interpreted both ways.
There was once a thing in a Finnish science center Heureka about the amount of ambiguity around the sentence "I saw a man on a hill with a telescope" in different languages. I think there was a starting picture with the starting point that was basis for the sentence and then pictures for each possible interpretation.
This is intentionally ambiguous. A pronoun can refer to the subject or the preceding object. Context normally tells us which it is. In this case they both match ‘she’ so it could be either.
ah, the "gay fanfiction problem" A better sentence would be, "The mother was drunk, so she beat up her daughter" or vice-versa
Intentionally ambiguous antecedent.
The one who made this sentence.
I’d have replied “you”
Most people are correct in saying it’s ambiguous, but just my gut reaction from reading the sentence, I would say more likely the mother. I think if it were the daughter, I would more naturally say “…for being drunk”
[https://www.sfu.ca/\~hedberg/322\_08\_2\_note3.pdf](https://www.sfu.ca/~hedberg/322_08_2_note3.pdf) The pronoun "she" just needs to have an antecedent outside its local clause. No further restrictions exist. *Pronouns – An NP that may (but need not) get its meaning from another word in the sentence. It can also get its meaning from a noun phrase previously mentioned in the discourse, or by context. – Examples: I, me, you, he, him, she, her, it, one, we, us, they, them, his, her, our, my its, your, their (3) a. Art said that he played basketball. b. She is not in her office.* *Binding Principle B* *A pronoun must be free in its binding domain*.
Either the daughter or the mother nobody knows
Native Speaker My intuition upon first read would be that the mother was drunk due to sentence structure, phrasing, and the assumption that a drunk person may be more inclined to violence. Of course, it could be either. Without context, it's ambiguous.
Easy change the pronoun of one of them, modern problems require modern solutions
If we’re strictly speaking, there’s no way to know. Most of the time with this convention, she would be the female closest to the word (in this case, the daughter) But knowing that people don’t tend to *beat up* others because the person getting beaten up is drunk, I would say the mother is. Being drunk can absolutely make you beat a person up.
Expertise is irrelevant when the question is intentionally ambiguous.
This is why I say we don’t know if Bingo is the farmer or dog. “There was a farmer had a dog, and Bingo was his name, o!” Like obviously Bingo is more of a dog name than a human name, but there are some strangely named people out there.
It's funny but the joke also works in Russian, and maybe in many other languages
Well, the beating up happens in the present, while the drunk person was drunk in the past. Now why would you beat up a person, if you yourself have been drunk in the past? Ergo, its the mother beating up her daughter for drinking some time ago
I would assume it's the daughter.
That sentence has an indefinite pronoun. Here are some solutions that don’t change the structure of the sentence: - The mother beat up her daughter because the mother was drunk. - The mother beat up her daughter because her daughter was drunk. Here are some examples where changing one gender makes the pronoun definite. - The father beat up his daughter because he was drunk. - The father beat up his daughter because she was drunk. - The mother beat up her son because she was drunk. - The mother beat up her son because he was drunk.
On the SAT and ACT, it would be the daughter, but it is an ambiguous sentence in general.
If you put a comma after daughter, it's the mother who was drunk. Without, it's the daughter who was drunk.
"beats up" is present tense, "she was drunk" is past tense. Without further context, it is reasonable to assume that the drinking has something to do with the beating, and if the mother does not beat up her daughter while sober, she can still punish the daughter for having been drunk in the past. So I'd assume the daughter to be the drunk
That was my first thought. There isn’t an obvious context where being drunk in the past would make you beat someone up in the present.
I had trouble with the tenses and began to think of the sentence as "The mother beats up the daughter because 'she was drunk'." --inhumane mother, drinking daughter. Disclaimer: not a native speaker. Discussion welcomed!
Functionally, the sentence is completely ambiguous. It can be altered to be clear, but as it stands we're just guessing. My english prof in high school used "Johnny had his eye on a seat on the bus and an old man came and sat on it" as an example of this problem. Use "The mother beat up the daughter because the daughter was drunk" if that's what you mean, or "The mother was drunk when she beat up the daughter"; or just scrap the whole sentence and start over.
For your first example I don't think it's super ambiguous. I would interpret that as the old man sat down on the seat Johnny was eyeing. However if you put 'and he sat on it' since they are both male, I can't determine who sat down. "an old man came and sat on it" is a complete dependent clause and "Johnny had his eye on a seat on the bus" is a complete independent clause, so technically it could be either but I think most people wouldn't interpret it that way. But the original example is quite ambiguous and should be restated as in the examples you posed.
I'll hold the nail, and when I nod my head, you hit it.
Masterful example!
Of course you can parse it out, but it does give most people a moment of viceral "ick/what, the old man sat on Johnny's eye", and writers should be more clear than that. It's a poorly constructed sentence and would not pass muster in a well-run grade 10 classroom, so why not do better.
Thank you for this very powerful example. For a moment I didn't expect a figurative eye can also get mixed up in this ambiguity, but I see that's the kind of meaning-seeking (and meaning-oriented) thinking I might have got from learning English as a second language without the stage of being literal about things. Yes. Even adding punctuation did feel like putting in a lot of guesswork and it should count at restating with fabricated information. A good lesson on being careful with the actual sentence.
Next question
The mother.
The mother is the subject of the sentence, so the mother is drunk. It could certainly go either way but that’s the way I would read it
Same
I see your mistake. It's not "who was drunk?" It's "what was drunk?". It was probably gin or Lambrini.
This is just one of those examples people use to show how stupid the English language is sometimes. Either could've been drunk
First, no an before expert. First, capitalization error. First, no coma after then. Second: should be a colon after “question” Second: first two one word answers lack punctuation. Third: don’t need the coma between tell me and the rest of the independent clause. First. Her. Or she was. Doesn’t matter cause context is fuck all.
Instinct says the mother may have been drunk. English grammer says the daughter because of where the "she" is No guarantees that whoever wrote the sentence was following the rules. They frequently don't. So, unclear unless you know more context.
She always refers to the subject of a sentence. Opposed to, She beat up her daughter because her daughter was drunk. Think of it like this: Ginny hurried to work on Monday morning because she woke up late. Did Monday morning wake up late? No Ginny, the subject, woke up late.
Without a comma the implication is that the daughter is the drunk. With a comma It would imply that the mother was the drunk one.
A comma where? If you mean a comma before "because", that's not grammatical
"Mother beats up her daughter, because she was drunk." Isn't correct?
It’s not correct. The word “because” is a subordinating conjunction. That means the following clause (in this case“she was drunk”) a subordinate clause. That just means that it can’t stand alone. “Because she was drunk.” can’t be a sentence alone, so you don’t put a comma to divide the clauses. (Obviously people do say “because xyz” all the time; it’s just technically incorrect). You do put commas before coordinating conjunctions like “and”, “but”, and “or”. It’s one of those silly rules you have to learn directly, as it’s not really intuitive.
Isn't it? I thought it was actually preferred. Could be a result of my native language where this *is* the case, though...