My reading, mostly online, recently turned up some revealing, often highly amusing examples of the dictum that truth is often found buried in details, that little things reveal a lot.
1. In today's New York Times, the Opinion writer Gail Collins, who is gifted at finding an amusing perspective on the daily news, writes about guns and gun control. At one point, she wonders why people "leave [guns] laying around the house." The use of laying instead of lying here seems to reflect either the fact that the editor of the Times was careless, or, more likely, that the accepted standard for this often confused word has shifted: "to lay" used to mean "to put something down" (it was followed by an object) whereas to lie meant to recline, to rest (oneself). Standards are set mainly by writers and editors of major publications like the Times, not by grammarians.
I often used to say to my doctor when he told me to "lay down" to be examined, that I will "lie down, thank you," and thereby lighten the mood with a distracting bit of English professorism. I've now abandoned noting this distinction; even the most educated people seem to ignore the difference between lie and lay; I often find people laying down on the sofa in books and articles, especially when the tone is conversational, indicating a grammatical change akin to the shift from shall (still used in England) to will or to the rare use of whom, which now sounds very formal. All of this shows, of course, that language is constantly in flux, that there are no fixed rules, only conventional standards.
2. Who knew that George Washington, father of our country, was an early cultivator of hemp (cannabis) who advised farmers in 1794 (long before it was outlawed), "make the most you can of the hemp and sow it everywhere." This comes courtesy of Jeff Kacirk's "Forgotten English," a daily compilation of arcane historical lore. His source is an 1844 Farmer's Encyclopedia, which recommends that the "fine oil" from hemp seeds is effective in expelling vermin from cabbage patches and discouraging caterpillars. I'm glad that cannabis is now legal, more or less, and that its uses are so many and varied.
Showing posts with label usage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label usage. Show all posts
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Language Matters
A few related items from my in-box:
1. "I lied, but only briefly," Manti T'eo reportedly said, according to a cable news headline I recently saw. Reminds me of being sort of pregnant. He was referring to a dead girl who never existed. Notre Dame should mandate a course in ethics and one in logic for this guy.
2. Speaking of logic reminds me that I keep hearing the phrase "begging the question" in the media when the speaker really means, "that raises the question" (of whether Hillary Clinton will run...or whatever). To beg the question has a specific meaning in logic as a fallacy in reasoning, in this case assuming something to be true that needs to be demonstrated. For example, "Why do we let the city cheat us this way?" First, the speaker/writer has to prove that the city is in fact cheating the people.
The broadened use of such a phrase, with no awareness of its essential meaning, often happens in language when phrases floating in the community soup get picked up and become trendy. "Begging the question," for some reason, has become trendy.
3. A government economist quoted in the NYTimes recently declared that the budget bill passed by Congress is "no existential threat to the overall U.S. economy." Did he need that word "existential"? Does it add any meaning? Did he or she mean, "real"? Everyone who writes for the media or speaks to the press should read George Orwell's essay, "Politics and the English Language" once a year to remind themselves about meaningless phrases and the abuse to clear thinking caused by jargon.
4. I am tutoring a high school boy, who is now studying, week by week, a list of words for the future SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) required by colleges. Without going into the usefulness of this test as a means of determining intelligence or academic skill, I can only say that the list of 20 words, which he commits to memory each week as if they were in a foreign language, are taken out of any context. He does not see how they are used in sentences, and so they mean little to him. I notice most recently the following words: assiduous, penurious, recondite, and puissant--all very bookish, the last of which I associate with Milton's Paradise Lost (1667). I can't recall seeing any contemporary writer using this recondite word (or that one either, very often). Why is the teaching of English in secondary schools not more enlightened?
Brute memorizing, like cramming, can be done, but the learning value of such studying is limited. Why not relate the words to texts the students are reading? Sound obvious? It is!
1. "I lied, but only briefly," Manti T'eo reportedly said, according to a cable news headline I recently saw. Reminds me of being sort of pregnant. He was referring to a dead girl who never existed. Notre Dame should mandate a course in ethics and one in logic for this guy.
2. Speaking of logic reminds me that I keep hearing the phrase "begging the question" in the media when the speaker really means, "that raises the question" (of whether Hillary Clinton will run...or whatever). To beg the question has a specific meaning in logic as a fallacy in reasoning, in this case assuming something to be true that needs to be demonstrated. For example, "Why do we let the city cheat us this way?" First, the speaker/writer has to prove that the city is in fact cheating the people.
The broadened use of such a phrase, with no awareness of its essential meaning, often happens in language when phrases floating in the community soup get picked up and become trendy. "Begging the question," for some reason, has become trendy.
3. A government economist quoted in the NYTimes recently declared that the budget bill passed by Congress is "no existential threat to the overall U.S. economy." Did he need that word "existential"? Does it add any meaning? Did he or she mean, "real"? Everyone who writes for the media or speaks to the press should read George Orwell's essay, "Politics and the English Language" once a year to remind themselves about meaningless phrases and the abuse to clear thinking caused by jargon.
4. I am tutoring a high school boy, who is now studying, week by week, a list of words for the future SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) required by colleges. Without going into the usefulness of this test as a means of determining intelligence or academic skill, I can only say that the list of 20 words, which he commits to memory each week as if they were in a foreign language, are taken out of any context. He does not see how they are used in sentences, and so they mean little to him. I notice most recently the following words: assiduous, penurious, recondite, and puissant--all very bookish, the last of which I associate with Milton's Paradise Lost (1667). I can't recall seeing any contemporary writer using this recondite word (or that one either, very often). Why is the teaching of English in secondary schools not more enlightened?
Brute memorizing, like cramming, can be done, but the learning value of such studying is limited. Why not relate the words to texts the students are reading? Sound obvious? It is!
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Who(m) do you trust?
To keep my mind off last night's sprightly debate, and the coming election, I am focusing on grammar today. Or rather usage.
"Whom is not a real word," a 4-year-old told her mother when she had used "whom" correctly in a sentence. Kids are sharp; they know that language has to sound idiomatic. (This comes from a piece in The Economist.)
Years ago, when Johnny Carson was getting started on TV, he hosted a show called, "Who Do You Trust?" There was a mild uproar in the media, with grammarians complaining shrilly that who should be whom (the direct object of the verb), as most of us over 35 were taught. Just recently, when VP Joe Biden asked, in his debate with Mr. Ryan, "Who do you trust?" nobody, as far as I know, paid any attention to the normal/informal usage.
WHOM has mostly disappeared, except in formal usage. Most users of English, says Geoffrey Pullum, using Normal English, steer clear of WHOM. Kids are rarely exposed to Formal English (found in books and highbrow journals) and so have never heard the word. "Whom did you invite?" sounds stuffy; so today WHO is a standard way to start certain sentences, as in "Who are you talking about?" (or to introduce a relative clause: "Marge is the neighbor who rings my doorbell each afternoon").
The former example involving WHO is an interesting example of language change, of the way usage alters grammar. It takes place slowly.
We live in a culture that prizes spontaneity and ordinary, everyday talk, over the polished and old-fashioned. Who can blame them? The problem is that, when people write, they carry over the highly informal style of speech they are accustomed to into their academic work, making it sound awkward, immature, or trivial. "History is not much of a turn on," one of my students wrote.
Many would say that the use of WHOM over WHO makes people uneasy, and so they avoid the standard form. Some misuse it when striking a formal prose, as in "He's the candidate WHOM I hope will win the election." Here the "I hope" does not make WHOM an object; the clause (modifying "candidate") is "who will win the election." The "I hope" is merely inserted, an interpolation.
WHOM will probably remain with us in print, not in speech, where it has been slowly dying. No great loss. More problematic, as in the above election example, is the over-correctness of some people, leading them to make the non-standard grammatical choice.
A friend often says, "Mom gave Judy and I a Caribbean cruise," when he means "me" (the indirect object of gave: she gave to Judy and me). Even worse are the college students who develop the habit, uncorrected at home or school, of saying (and even writing), "Me and Judy are going on a cruise."
First, as I tell them, be polite and put yourself second; then think about the subject of the sentence: I, not Me is used in the subject spot: It's "Judy and I."
Why, as Henry Higgins famously asked, don't the English learn to speak? Why are we so careless about our valuable inheritance, the rich English language? If we are to communicate effectively, we must listen carefully to the way words are used both in educated speech and in writing.
Tomorrow I am giving a talk, "Fractured English," on the many ways people can stumble in our complex language: the results are often unintentionally humorous, even hilarious.
"Whom is not a real word," a 4-year-old told her mother when she had used "whom" correctly in a sentence. Kids are sharp; they know that language has to sound idiomatic. (This comes from a piece in The Economist.)
Years ago, when Johnny Carson was getting started on TV, he hosted a show called, "Who Do You Trust?" There was a mild uproar in the media, with grammarians complaining shrilly that who should be whom (the direct object of the verb), as most of us over 35 were taught. Just recently, when VP Joe Biden asked, in his debate with Mr. Ryan, "Who do you trust?" nobody, as far as I know, paid any attention to the normal/informal usage.
WHOM has mostly disappeared, except in formal usage. Most users of English, says Geoffrey Pullum, using Normal English, steer clear of WHOM. Kids are rarely exposed to Formal English (found in books and highbrow journals) and so have never heard the word. "Whom did you invite?" sounds stuffy; so today WHO is a standard way to start certain sentences, as in "Who are you talking about?" (or to introduce a relative clause: "Marge is the neighbor who rings my doorbell each afternoon").
The former example involving WHO is an interesting example of language change, of the way usage alters grammar. It takes place slowly.
We live in a culture that prizes spontaneity and ordinary, everyday talk, over the polished and old-fashioned. Who can blame them? The problem is that, when people write, they carry over the highly informal style of speech they are accustomed to into their academic work, making it sound awkward, immature, or trivial. "History is not much of a turn on," one of my students wrote.
Many would say that the use of WHOM over WHO makes people uneasy, and so they avoid the standard form. Some misuse it when striking a formal prose, as in "He's the candidate WHOM I hope will win the election." Here the "I hope" does not make WHOM an object; the clause (modifying "candidate") is "who will win the election." The "I hope" is merely inserted, an interpolation.
WHOM will probably remain with us in print, not in speech, where it has been slowly dying. No great loss. More problematic, as in the above election example, is the over-correctness of some people, leading them to make the non-standard grammatical choice.
A friend often says, "Mom gave Judy and I a Caribbean cruise," when he means "me" (the indirect object of gave: she gave to Judy and me). Even worse are the college students who develop the habit, uncorrected at home or school, of saying (and even writing), "Me and Judy are going on a cruise."
First, as I tell them, be polite and put yourself second; then think about the subject of the sentence: I, not Me is used in the subject spot: It's "Judy and I."
Why, as Henry Higgins famously asked, don't the English learn to speak? Why are we so careless about our valuable inheritance, the rich English language? If we are to communicate effectively, we must listen carefully to the way words are used both in educated speech and in writing.
Tomorrow I am giving a talk, "Fractured English," on the many ways people can stumble in our complex language: the results are often unintentionally humorous, even hilarious.
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