I used to be more easy-going about our editors' remarks. However, having had some great discussions here about grammar mavens, I now realize how completely ridiculous many of our editors' changes are. Yesterday was a fine example...besides, I was not in a good mood anyway because our computers had been down since Monday! Anyway, our editor added commas galore to my writing, turned whichs to thats, refused to use the word "variation" (even though the sentence was completely clear) without the use of an "among" or "between" (because "that's what the books say").

I was so pleased to read Nathan Bierma's column today in the Chicago Tribune (registration is free). He, as we've done here, criticized many of Strunk and White's hard and fast rules, citing Language Log and Geoffrey Pullum. I am ready to kiss Nathan (I have sent him an e-mail lauding him!)...and I put a copy of Bierma's article our editor's desk. Some days it really does pay to get up (and...my computer is fixed!)!

BTW, I learned something new from Bierma's article. The "White" in "White and Strunk" is E.B. White of Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, 2 of my very favorite children's books. Bierma (citing Pullum from Language Log) writes this of E.B. White:

To see how unnatural the rules of "Elements" can be, Pullum says, look at White's own fiction (which Pullum praises for its elegance). White goes only two paragraphs of "Stuart Little" before breaking his rule that only the word "that," not "which," can introduce a clause not enclosed by commas ("the sight that I saw"). White writes, "Every morning, before Stuart dressed, Mrs. Little went into his room and weighed him on a small scale which was really meant for weighing letters." (To avoid breaking his own rule, White should have made the phrase "that was really meant for weighing letters.") As White himself shows, Pullum says, "that" and "which" have been used interchangeably in English for centuries.

Now, that is funny!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,

I am completely on your side: say no to grammatical fascism.

So...is this grammatical fascism? I found this quote today in the NY Times Science Times: "It seems comical that us scientists had to prove something everyone seems to know."

The speaker is a professor in the school of biological sciences at the University of Auckland. Maybe in Auckland that is correct grammar.

I know what he meant so I shouldn't care, but I have to admit that it bugs me. Perhaps it's because he's a scientist and should know how to speak, at least when he is quoted.

It isn't grammatical Kalleh, and it just sounds wrong. Of course, those Aussies talk funny sometimes, so you never know what it is like over there.

I meant to look up last night what Huddleston and Pullum say about this in the Cambridge Grammar. I might remember tonight.

It's certainly common, along with its reverse: "It's something for we scientists to prove." The cases of pronouns in modern standard English are hard to pin down to simple rules. Partly there's hypercorrection going on, but there's also (partly because of that) a genuine shift in case marking strategies. And different people have different grammars.

The only hard and fast rule is that a single pronoun subject (of a finite verb) is always nominative and a single pronoun object is always accusative: I saw it; it saw me. But the presence of "and" can change the marking, as is well known; presence of other qualifiers can also change it: "we proved it" but not necessarily "we scientists proved it" (though only "we each proved it").

1. John and I went to the same school.
2. Me and John went to the same school.
3. *Me went to the same school.
4. It's I.
5. It's me.
6. Between Mary and me, there are no secrets.
7. ?Between Mary and I, there are no secrets.
8. *Between us, there are no secrets.

For me, 3 and 7 sound ungrammatical. (This is what aput was saying in part above about single vs compound subjects and objects.) 2 is an informal version of 1. 4 sounds pedantic, I find myself speaking it always with a hint a pompous pedanticity. 7 sounds wrongish to me, I do not use it, but I do hear it all the time. Not prescribing things, just describing 'em (in my dialect).

[Addendum: added Bob Hale's example for orthogonality.]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

I agree that 3 is ungrammatical, but 7 is grammatical. I might not use it, but I see nothing wrong with it. Partly, this is because you are trained from childhood that it is "Mary and I", not "me and Mary", and so instead of saying "Between me and Mary", it feels like the rule should make this, "Between Mary and I". It isn't right, but that's prescriptivism for you.

I don't think #4 sounds pedantic at all; it sounds right to me, though I can live with "it's me" too. #7 also sounds "wrongish" to me, though I do hear it. I always assume it is said by someone who is trying to be grammatically correct, but who is mixed up! I hate #2, and I always used to correct my kids when they said, "Me and my friend...." #3 is worse, of course, and I don't think I have ever heard that. If you accept #5, I am surprised you don't accept #7. They seem similar to me.

The problem, for me, with grammatically incorrect sentences (like #2) isn't necessarily that you don't understand it. It's just that you make judgments about the person's educational background. If you went to interview for a middle-management job and said, "Me and my colleague would love to work here," I could imagine the interviewer making a negative decision based on that. It would be similar, in my mind, to coming to the interview wearing white socks with a navy suit or eating your meat with your fingers at lunch.

So for those who accept seven as grammatical I assume you would also accept

Between we there are no secrets.

rather than

Between us there are no secrets.

Why? A completely unwarranted assumption. The grammatical difference is clear: one contains an 'and', which may be considered as governing a different case, just as its near-synonym 'with' always does.

The facts of English grammar are that no-one uses nominatives for single pronoun objects, and many people use them as pronoun objects on one or another side of 'and'.

Structurally, a conjoined object has a level above it. If a preposition such as 'between' assigns case by transmitting some sort of marker to the "next word", then there isn't a "next word" in 'between [you and I]', because an abstract structure intervenes, which is absent in 'between us'.

There's no reason at all, on general grammatical grounds, for 'between us' to be a solid analogy for 'between you and me/I'. It happens that in Latin and several other languages with similar case-marking systems the 'and' doesn't affect the situation and so marking percolates through the structure. In fact it happens in my dialect of English too. But it certainly doesn't in (I estimate) the majority of dialects of English.

quote:

Between we there are no secrets.

No, what aput says; it's as ungrammatical for me as sentence number 3 in my posting above. In fact, I have never heard anybody say something like this except for non-native English speakers. One mistake prescriptivist grammarians make about non-standard dialects is that they lack rules and are grammatically chaotic. Try speaking in AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) or Cockney English—assuming you are not native speakers of either—to folks who speak one of these non-standard dialects, and see how far you get before you make a solecism. Language is rule based. The difference between RP and Cockney is merely that they have rules which differ in minor and major ways.

I was deliberately being slightly facetious.

However I did have a point to make. Yes, I'll grant you that spoken grammar varies enormously with regional dialects, but I think it's important that we make a distinction between spoken and written English and that we do not go too far in allowing the way that we speak to dictate the way that we write.

Sure, people say "between you and I" but in this particular case I think its the opposite of a dialect construction. I think it's a deliberate back formation from phrases like "my husband and I" and is adopted by people who would normally use "between you and me" in the mistaken belief that "I" sounds more educated and cultured.

That example aside though my point is this. I would routinely in conversation with my friends say "Her's coming next week." which is clearly grammatically wrong. It is however a common dialect use in the Midlands. I would NEVER write it because I know it's wrong. My spoken grammar differs from my written grammar significantly.

The "rules" which the dedicated descriptivists all too often disparage are meant for written grammar and not spoken grammar and while I'm certainly not a complete prescriptivist myself I do think that we should consider carefully before we consign them to the dustbin.

(As an aside, what about "Between we two there are no secrets."?)

quote:

I think it's a deliberate back formation from phrases like "my husband and I" and is adopted by people who would normally use "between you and me" in the mistaken belief that "I" sounds more educated and cultured.

I agree, Bob, and I believe I said that previously. I also agree with you on the difference between written and spoken English. We have a lot of weird sayings in Chicago, but "Her's coming..." is not one of them! Interesting.

First of all, I have made my living for about 15 years as a technical writer, and as such I follow the rules. I have no problem with following prescriptivist rules because it is my livelihood. It also never really stops me from being a linguist and noticing interesting things about language as it is actually used day in and day out.

I did try to make a distinction, in my posting above, between formal (written, but also spoken or read out loud) and informal (spoken, but sometimes written as in email).

You say that in the Midlands, "Her's coming next week" is commonly used. How can you say it's "clearly grammatically wrong". It isn't. It is correct for those people speaking those dialects in which it occurs, because it is grammatically correct. Now, it may be socially incorrect to use dialect when we expect standard British English. It's like saying "non-Euclidian geometry is wrong" or "the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees". It just doesn't make sense to me. Other geometries have different sets of axioms, just as different languages, dialects, or ideolects have different sets of grammatical rules. Call it inappropriate, that I can understand, call it grammatically wrong, if it breaks with the rules of that particular dialect, but don't use the rules of one grammar, say Latin, to prescribe the rules of another language, say standard English.

You also say "My spoken grammar differs from my written grammar significantly.". Yes, because you are really using two different dialects.

9. *Between we two there are no secrets.

For me it's ungrammatical, even informally, but I do hear this construction, whereas, in these parts, you never hear "me's going to town" / "me am going to town". Just as I never hear somebody say "She's in hospital" unless they're from the UK. What you hear over here is: "she's in the hospital". Should I correct the person who utters the first, admonishing them that their construction is wrong? No, it's right for the language they're speaking. and it doesn't really hinder communication.

In some Italian dialects, all personal pronouns have gone the same route as nouns in that their current forms used as the subject of a sentence as from the original Latin accusative forms, e.g., Standard Italian io parlo italiano vs Ligurian mi parlu tuscan 'I speak Italian'.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

quote:

Originally posted by zmjezhd:
You say that in the Midlands, "Her's coming next week" is commonly used. How can you say it's "clearly grammatically wrong".

Easily.
It's clearly considered grammatically wrong even by those who use it because if they didn't consider it to be wrong then they would also write it that way. Although I know many, many people who say it I don't believe that any one of them would ever write it.
There are also constructions which I have only ever heard used by my Dad. They exist, as far as I know, solely within his spoken grammar. If we use grammar to mean "the set of constructions used by any particular group (including a group of one)" then yes, I'd have to agree that nothing can possibly be grammatically wrong. However this technical definition is not a terribly useful one.

So when I say "it's clearly grammatically wrong" it should be equally clear that I am referring to the rules of formal language.

My own dialect could be considered to be a different language but if so then it is one that has no written form. The various attempts (including a couple of my own limericks) at writing it simply put down an arbitrary "phonetic" transcription with no two scribes being likely to produce the same result.

It's clearly considered grammatically wrong even by those who use it because if they didn't consider it to be wrong then they would also write it that way.

Not necessarily, the two dialects I have the most experience with are Ligurian (Genoese) Italian / Zeneise and Cologne (Ripuarian) German / Kölsch. Both of these dialects have had orthographies since the 19th century and yet very few of the people I met who spoke either dialect daily could write in their dialect. They usually knew that the writing systems existed, but they never learned them (mainly because they are not taught in school).

Linguists write about languages, dialects, sociolects, jargons, cants, argots, ideolects, or ethnolects, because the groups who use different kinds of language are fluid.

My own dialect could be considered to be a different language but if so then it is one that has no written form. The various attempts (including a couple of my own limericks) at writing it simply put down an arbitrary "phonetic" transcription with no two scribes being likely to produce the same result.

Most of the world's languages have no written forms. Writing is only about 6K years old. Being written has never been a criterion for languagehood.

Again, I have no problem with speaking and writing different kinds of English. Speaking standard American English in certain social settings is clearly not the appropriate or right thing to do. Just as writing your resume/CV in non-standard dialect is inappropriate when looking for a job.

Reviving a Nathan Bierma thread...

Barack Obama, the Senator from Illinois, was quoted as saying, "Most of the folks really are trying to represent their constituencies as best as they know how." The "as best as" was analyzed in Bierma's recent column on language. Since "best" is the superlative of "well," the phrase should have been "as well as" were it to be grammatically accurate. If he wanted to use "best," Bierma says, most English speakers seem comfortable with "the best that."

Bierma says that the phrase "as best as I can" may have developed because of a mix up with "as well as I can" and "the best that I can." He also says that "as best as" is "either a grammatical error or an exception to a firm rule of English syntax."

So which is it? The experts whom Bierma spoke to seem to disagree:

~ Geoffrey Pullum: "'As best I can recollect, I don't say or write this,'" Geoffrey Pullum, co-author of "'The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'" wrote, with obvious irony. "But neither do I notice it or feel that it strikes me as wrong. It certainly slips by the grammar radar."

~ Geoffrey Nunberg, Chair of the AHD Usage Panel: "The syntax is idiomatic," but he adds, "it's [a] normal way of saying this."

~ David Mulroy, author of "The War Against Grammar: "I've always considered this an inoffensive though ungrammatical colloquialism."

~ Bill Walsh, copy chief of the national desk at The Washington Post and author of "The Elephants of Style: A Trunkload of Tips on the Big Issues and Gray Areas of Contemporary American English," says, "I hadn't thought about it before, but, yes, that has to be considered substandard."

What are your thoughts?

Well it is certainly not grammatically correct, but I do believe it is idiomatic, which means it is acceptable use. The Grammar police don't really pick up on this, even thought they're doing as best as they can, so I think we're safe for now.

I agree; it's idiom, so doesn't necessarily have to follow the grammar police's rules.

For me the idiom is 'as best they can'; I would say that, but I can't say 'as best as they can', which does strike me as non-standard. (As always taking my own speech as an exemplar of standard, oh go on then why not.) The 'logic' of it is irrelevant to grammaticality, as largely is the recentness of the construction, except that the more recently arisen something is the less time it's had to diffuse into all varieties, so there may be people for whom it's ungrammatical. (This is a matter of whether they actually say it or not, not of whether it fits their ideas of logic.)

quote:

Bierma says that the phrase "as best as I can" may have developed because of a mix up with "as well as I can" and "the best that I can."

I thought the theory on how it developed interesting.

Has anyone heard of or read the book Bierma mentions by David Mulroy, "The War Against Grammar?" It sounds right up Wordcraft's alley!

About the original case, a rule that's given for differentiating between that and which, is that "that" introduces something essential to the main point of the sentence, and "which" introduces something inessential, a sidepoint if you will. Commas are a good rule of thumb, but the case quoted seems to be an example of something which is inessential, yet doesn't require commas.

I think that as long as there is good sense for a rule, it should be prescribed. After all, not everyone who uses language has an equal grasp of the nuances. When the choice is between differentiation of two words, or blurring them together into two exactly equal things, the former is surely the way to go. Saying that because many people don't appreciate the difference it should be expunged, surely results in a quite unnecessary loss to the language.

Sorry if this is off topic by now.

Reviving a thread...

I found this use of "sic" humorous; this was precisely how it appeared in a published nursing article:

quote:

You tell her to go into a patient’s room to discontinue this IV, then they [sic] always go to the wrong patient. . . every time you give them [sic] instruction it seems like they [sic] will do it wrong. Those I think were the hardest.

The author was reporting, verbatim, from interviews of preceptors.

Had I been reporting that then I reckon I would have used "sic". I surely wouldn't want anyone to think that I had been the author of such a tortured piece of reportage!

It might have been easier to have written You tell her (sic) to go ... That way there is only one editorial intrusion required.

This was a verbatim report of a qualitative study. Just as we've said here, people don't speak with the same formality as they write.

The grammar policeman at my place of work, who gets red in the face and whose veins stick out when you end a sentence with a preposition, uses the word "amenable" a lot. And yet...he pronounces it "amendable." I've thought of mentioning it, but instead I just sit back, chuckle, and know my day of epicaricacy will come.

quote:

at my place of work,

Workplace?

Yes. I suppose "office" would be better.

I've noticed that during interviews on TV and radio people use that form: "place of work" or "place of business." I think "workplace" or just "business" is perfectly adequate but those stilted (to me) expressions seem to predominate for some reason.

I think "workplace" or just "business" is perfectly adequate but those stilted (to me) expressions seem to predominate for some reason.

Might be to elevate the register or for matters of prosody of the sentence. (Sometimes folks need to lengthen out the utterance syllable-wise.)