Is this sentence proper? "[people] smarter than [me]"
Jim Rosenberg
I was skewered by a letter writer for the following sentence:
> I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
> spend my New Year's weekend pretending to be smarter than a
> bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
Aside from being awkward, what rule does this sentence
violate. If it is kosher, won't someone with credentials say so so I
can pull you out from behind the curtain like Woody Allen did with
Marshall McLuhan in "Annie Hall." Thanks in advance.
Jim
Laura Johnson
: > I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
: > bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
As a professional technical writer with no credentials whatsoever, I
assure you that your sentence is grammatically correct. It's a bit
hideous, but you knew that already.
--
Laura Johnson | Everything should be made as simple
lau...@fc.hp.com | as possible, but no simpler.
Hewlett Packard NSMD | - Albert Einstein
Ft. Collins, CO |
Truly Donovan
>Jim Rosenberg (abc...@nr.infi.net) wrote:
>: > I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
>: > spend my New Year's weekend pretending to be smarter than a
>: > bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
>As a professional technical writer with no credentials whatsoever, I
>assure you that your sentence is grammatically correct. It's a bit
>hideous, but you knew that already.
As an erstwhile professional technical writer and a publisher and a few other
things, I assure you that your sentence would be changed to read "smarter than
I" before I published it in any context other than a humor column, where I
would simply assume you were trying to be cuter still.
Truly Donovan
Baty
>Jim Rosenberg (abc...@nr.infi.net) wrote:
>: > I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
>: > spend my New Year's weekend pretending to be smarter than a
>: > bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
>
>As a professional technical writer with no credentials whatsoever, I
>assure you that your sentence is grammatically correct. It's a bit
>hideous, but you knew that already.
>
>Laura Johnson
Actually the sentence is grammatically *incorrect* although the usage is
widespread enough to qualify as a colloquialism in my opinion. The
problem is with "people who are pretending to be smarter than me." It
shoud read: "People who are pretending to be smarter than I." The
phrase means: People who are pretending to be smarter than I am. The
verb "am" is understood even though it isn't expressed. We wouldn't say
"people who are pretending to be smarter than me am." The "incorrect"
usage is quite common in speech and often appears in informal,
conversational-style writing, which probably includes most humor columns.
I'm sure someone else will reply and provide you with the technical
jargon about the nominative and objective case.
Linda Reynolds
> Jim Rosenberg (abc...@nr.infi.net) wrote:
>
> > I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
> > spend my New Year's weekend pretending to be smarter than a
> > bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
>
> I like it.
I don't.
> And anyone who wants to change the last word to "I" has, in my
> opinion, a significant defect in their sense of how English works.
"Anyone....their"? Oh my!!
> Dammit, Jim, it's a preposition here, not a conjunction!
Fiddlesticks! It's a conjunction. "...smarter than I am" is what is
meant. Harumph!
.\|/.....................................\|/.
/|\ /|\
| | * | . .o. |
| |_ | |\| (| /-\ / \ |
|'''''''''''''''''''''''''''|_____|'''''|
| v...@rain.org `o |
.\|/.....................................\|/.
/|\'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''/|\
Mark Wainwright
> I write a humor column for a local weekly magazine. Recently,
> I was skewered by a letter writer for the following sentence:
>> I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
>> spend my New Year's weekend pretending to be smarter than a
>> bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
> Aside from being awkward, what rule does this sentence
> violate. If it is kosher, won't someone with credentials say so so I
> can pull you out from behind the curtain like Woody Allen did with
> Marshall McLuhan in "Annie Hall." Thanks in advance.
Besides the fact that it's a bit horrible, it violates no real rules of
grammar. It is a perfectly admissible English sentence.
Ah, yes, now there may be some people who will tell you it should end
`smarter than I'. You are certainly at liberty to use _than_ as a
conjunction in this way; but you are also perfectly entitled to use it
as a preposition, as you do, and this is vastly the more natural usage
in a long sentence like this. Those people who claim their delicate
sensibilities insist on `than' being a conjunction are forced into some
pretty odd sensibilities. For example, to take the sentence above --
no, let's start with something less ghastly. In fact, let's go right
back to basics.
(0) I can't help laughing at people wearing silly hats.
As it happens, this sentence is ambiguous, but I guess you understood it
all right. You envisaged someone laughing at wearers of silly hats,
right? Not someone who couldn't help wearing silly hats and laughing at
people? In short, you recognised the noun-clause
people wearing silly hats
as referring to people who are wearing silly hats, and in fact, if
pressed, would probably explain it as a contraction of
people who are wearing silly hats
where `who are' is understood. Well, speaking of hats, now try this on
for size.
(1a) I dislike people who are taller than me.
`Than' in this sentence is part of a subordinate clause where the left
hand side of the inequality is `who', which is in the subjective. So
here, the than-as-conjunction brigade will bristle righteously, and tell
you that you must say
(1b) I dislike people who are taller than I.
Contrast what appears to be a contraction of the same sentence by a
similar procedure to the one in (0) above:
(2) I dislike people taller than me.
`Taller than I' here would be a blunder, a solecism, a grotesque mistake
-- you might get one of the than-as-conjunction brigade to make it in an
unguarded moment, but `people' is in the objective case (it is the
object of the verb `dislike'), and conjunctions conjoin nouns in the
same case, so whether `than' is conjunction or pronoun here, we must use
the objective 1st person singular pronoun -- namely `me'.
If you feel without any doubt that (1a) and (2) are obviously the same
sentence and that adding `who are' should not make the blindest bit of
difference to what pronoun comes at the end, rejoice! You are in the
large majority for whom `than' (when preceding a noun) is a preposition
pure and simple, and English is not governed by daft and arbitary rules,
and you can use it to make clear and cogent sentences without ever
worrying about it again. I wish I, too, were in that happy majority,
but alas, I am doomed to the misery of judging each case as it comes
along, and sometimes deciding one way, sometimes the other.
Now to return to the point in hand.
(3a)
> I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
> spend my New Year's weekend pretending to be smarter than a
> bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
You spoilt it by putting in `who are', which makes the than-as-
conjunctioners' life too easy. Let's imagine you'd written
(3b)
> I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
> spend my New Year's weekend pretending to be smarter than a bunch
> of other people pretending to be smarter than me.
The than-as-conjunctioners must notice that `a bunch of other people',
which may at first look like some sort of indirect object, is in the
subjective because it is joined by `than' to `I' -- and realise just in
time that they must still prefer `... smarter than I' in this sentence.
On the other hand, if you'd written
(3c)
> I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
> spend my New Year's weekend with a bunch of other people pretending
> to be smarter than me.
That would be a whole different ball game, because here the bunch of
other people are governed by `with', and hence in the objective, and
the than-as-conjunctioners will piously proclaim that `smarter than me'
is the only possible form. Of course, add in `who are' and they will
insist on `smarter than I' again. If that sounds daft, you're beginning
to understand why I told you earlier to rejoice.
Mark Wainwright
--
No. 7. They still believe in God, the family, angels, | ma...@harlequin.co.uk
devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, |
and other such obsolete stuff. | http://www.cl.cam.
--I B Singer, `10 reasons why I write for children'| ac.uk/users/maw13/
Esther Vail
JR> I write a humor column for a local weekly magazine.
JR> Recently, I was skewered by a letter writer for the following
JR> sentence:
JR> > I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week
JR> > than spend my New Year's weekend pretending to be smarter
JR> > than a bunch of other people who are pretending to be
JR> > smarter than me.
JR> Aside from being awkward, what rule does this sentence
JR> violate.
Well, a lot of us hear an implied "am" at the end of the sentence,
which would make us feel the sentence should end "than I am."
Esther H. Vail, Rochester NY USA
(est...@rochgte.fidonet.org)
N.R. Mitchum
ma...@harlqn.co.uk (Mark Wainwright), who wrote:
--------------------
abc...@nr.infi.net (Jim Rosenberg) writes
> I write a humor column for a local weekly magazine. Recently,
> I was skewered by a letter writer for the following sentence:
>> I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
>> spend my New Year's weekend pretending to be smarter than a
>> bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
--------------------
For starters, our wisest advice to Mr. Rosenberg could be that he
take no notice of such letters except as they provide inspiration for
future columns, and that he not take anybody's advice or criticism
(other than mine) too seriously.
I don't find the above sentence so bad. A mite wordy perhaps, but
impossible to judge outside the context and flow of the entire
article. "Other" is the only word I might challenge prima facie.
(Seems to include the narrator among the people pretending to be
smarter than him.)
Anyone insisting on "smarter than I" has missed the point of the
sentence. And such a fusspot is the very sort of person whose
company the writer is anxious to avoid anyway.
---N.R.Mitchum <aj...@lafn.org> : smarter than everybody
Rainer Thonnes
ma...@harlqn.co.uk (Mark Wainwright) writes:
[a treatise on "than" as conjunction or preposition and on whether "me" or "I"
should follow it]
My gut feeling is that "smarter than me" should always be preferred to "smarter
than I", irrespective of what precedes it, unless there is an implied "am"
after the "I". So "He is smarter then me" is fine, and so is "He is smarter
than I", provided that it's short for "He is smarter than I am".
At least there is no ambiguity here, unlike in Fowler's example "You treat her
worse than I", which should mean "you treat her worse than I treat her", vs
"You treat her worse than me", which should mean "you treat her worse than
you treat me".
There's another nice example "I would rather you shot the dog than me".
Is this issue really linked to "than" more than it is to the general I/me
question? Would those who prefer "I" in "He is smarter than X" also prefer
"I am smarter than he" to "I am smarter than him"? Let's be grateful that
the problem does not arise with "you".
Helen
tr...@lunemere.com (Truly Donovan) wrote:
>In article <4fqq5n$k...@fcnews.fc.hp.com> lau...@cnd.hp.com (Laura Johnson)
writes:
>
>>Jim Rosenberg (abc...@nr.infi.net) wrote:
>>: > bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
>
>>assure you that your sentence is grammatically correct. It's a bit
>>hideous, but you knew that already.
>
>things, I assure you that your sentence would be changed to read "smarter
than
>I" before I published it in any context other than a humor column, where I
>would simply assume you were trying to be cuter still.
>
>Truly Donovan
>
Couldn't you use "smarter than myself" or is that "grammatically inncorrect"
Looks like the prescriptive grammariens have been at it again!!!
Helen
Matthew Rabuzzi
Linda Reynolds <v...@coyote.rain.org> writes:
: Mark Brader wrote:
: > Jim Rosenberg (abc...@nr.infi.net) wrote:
: > > I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
: > > spend my New Year's weekend pretending to be smarter than a
: > > bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
: > I like it.
:
: I don't.
:
: > And anyone who wants to change the last word to "I" has, in my
: > opinion, a significant defect in their sense of how English works.
:
: "Anyone....their"? Oh my!!
I think we're all pretty tired of discussing singular 'they/their'
constructions, given the current relevant three threads, which surely
you have seen. Exclamations such as yours don't advance the argument any.
(Not that I think anyone can advance it; it's an unresolvable religious war.)
: > Dammit, Jim, it's a preposition here, not a conjunction!
:
: Fiddlesticks! It's a conjunction. "...smarter than I am" is what is
: meant. Harumph!
But "smarter than me" is what is meant in the given sentence.
Yes, it means the same; yes, both forms of syntax are acceptable;
and yes, "than" can function as a conjunction or as a preposition:
"['than' as a preposition, followed by a direct object pronoun]
is used by ... all educational levels and by many reputable
writers ... it is disapproved by some grammarians except in
the phrase 'than whom' ... [illustrative quote by Trollope]"
-- W3NI
"Tell me, than whom noone is smarter, why I shouldn't visit Singapore?"
............................................................
"Spear change, bwana?" asked the pun handler
Matthew Rabuzzi
Avi Jacobson
>Jim Rosenberg (abc...@nr.infi.net) wrote:
>> I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
>> spend my New Year's weekend pretending to be smarter than a
>> bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
>I like it.
>And anyone who wants to change the last word to "I" has, in my
>opinion, a significant defect in their sense of how English works.
>(I was going to phrase that more strongly, until I saw a particular
>person posting on the Other Side.) Dammit, Jim, it's a preposition
>here, not a conjunction!
Roses are red,
Violets are bluer,
I'm afraid Truly
Is righter than you (are).
^^^^ ^^^
|
Conjunction,_____/
introducing
a clause.
I don't buy this preposition business. Albeit (I just love beginning
sentences with "albeit", it's a typical Hebrew construction!) Random
House claims "than" can be a preposition, but the example it chooses
to prove that point is so ridiculous, it sacrifices the credibility of
the ruling. Listen to this:
"-prep. 4. in relation to; by comparison with (usually fol. by a
pronoun in the objective case): He is a person than whom I can imagine
no one more courteous."
Yuk! I rest my case.
>There is one thing that's wrong as far as I can tell -- "Singaporean"
>is the spelling I know. The OED Supplement lists -ian as well, but
>not -an; the RHU1 omits the word.
You're not a real opera singer until you can Singaporean.
--
Avi Jacobson, Audio Lingual Consultant | When an idea is wanting,
Home Page: | a word can always be
http://www.netvision.net.il/php/avi_jaco | found to take its place.
email: avi_...@netvision.net.il | -- Goethe
Michael Hardy
In article <4g05gv$72c...@salford.ac.uk>,
Helen <MLH...@news.salford.ac.uk> wrote:
>Looks like the prescriptive grammariens have been at it again!!!
I hope so.
Helen was responding to this:
>>>: > bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
[ snip ]
>> As an erstwhile professional technical writer and a publisher and a few
>> other things, I assure you that your sentence would be changed to read
>> "smarter than I" before I published it in any context other than a humor
>> column, where I would simply assume you were trying to be cuter still.
>>
>>Truly Donovan
It is worth mentioning that getting this point grammatically
correct is _useful_. Consider these two sentences:
(1) He loves her more than me.
(2) He loves her more than I.
Both are grammatically correct, but they are _not_ interchangeable since
they mean two different things. The first says he loves her more than he
loves me. The second says he loves her more than I love her. This is how
the distinction between "I" and "me" can be useful.
Mike Hardy
Michael Hardy
School of Statistics
University of Minnesota
ha...@stat.umn.edu
Linda Reynolds
On Tue, 13 Feb 1996, Jim Rosenberg wrote:
> > I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
> > spend my New Year's weekend pretending to be smarter than a
> > bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
>
> Aside from being awkward, what rule does this sentence
> violate. If it is kosher, won't someone with credentials say so so I
> can pull you out from behind the curtain like Woody Allen did with
> Marshall McLuhan in "Annie Hall." Thanks in advance.
I'll take one more crack at it. What I write, of course, will be
refuted. Here goes anyway:
The sentence in question is a comparison between you and those who
pretend to be smarter than you. In this case, it is an unequal comparison
using the conjunction "than". What follows "than" is an eliptical sentence:
that is, implied, not stated. The elipsis in this case is "smarter than
I am smart". That is why "smarter than I" is the grammatically,
prescriptively correct form. "Smarter than me am" doesn't fly. Those on
the other side of the fence declare fervently that "than" is a
preposition followed by the object pronoun "me". I don't buy it.
Neither do the texts I use, nor the writers of the TOEFL exam (Test of
English as a Foreign Language) which I regularly administer, nor does the
school which employs me (not a state-funded one, I might add).
The same holds true in statements of equal comparison which use the
conjunction "as" (NOT "like" which is still a preposition, but that's
another story). "Fifi is as confused as I am" ---> "Fifi is as confused
as I".
Of course there are times when "than me" is perfectly correct. This
occurs when "me" is the object of the verb in the eliptical sentence:
"Herman likes Sophie much more than (he likes) me." But "Herman likes
Sophie much more than I (like Sophie)."
Finis.
Oh, my credentials: I have an M.A. in Linguistics, but I'm not sure that
is either here or there.
| * | .
|_ | |\| (| /-\
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Richard Badger
a preposition followed by a prepositional complement. In English
we use the object form if available in this postion, as in 'he gave it to
me'.
I understand that in Latin 'than' or its equivalent 'quam' is a
conjunction and so requires a clause and a clause needs a subject.
this is nothing to do with English.
If you so desire you can use 'than' as a conjunction' and say 'people
smarter than I am' but I can see no advantage in this. It is not any
clearer and it takes longer to say. If it gives any message at all it is
to do with the fact that you or your ancestors studied Latin, and
found it difficult to tell Latin from English.
The misapplication of Latin grammar to English is one of the reasons
many otherwise sensible people worry about their grammar and leads to
phrases like 'between you and I'.
N.R. Mitchum
-----------------
> >Anyone insisting on "smarter than I" has missed the point of the
> >sentence. And such a fusspot is the very sort of person whose
> >company the writer is anxious to avoid anyway.
>
> sole reason that my mother insisted on it. No Miss Thistlebottom
> involved. [....]
>
> Truly Donovan, having difficulty thinking of herself as a fusspot
------------------
I wrote in a partial vacuum. Just as my note may have arrived at
other servers only recently, so my own newsreader told me nobody had
yet replied to the question; therefore I had no target other than the
fusspots-at-large who will not merely insist on private punctilio but
also grant themselves rovings commissions to press their opinions on
others. If that describes you, Truly, I'll formally charge you with
fusspottery.
But it's a little misleading to isolate my remarks from the original
post. I was speaking to a published writer who was upset because a
reader had criticized him for the phrase "smarter than me." I was
encouraging him to put some iron in his ego and not worry so much
about the Thistlebottoms -- who, no matter what you do, can always
find something to censure. Discussion of usage is very
entertaining, even enlightening, but paid writers shouldn't take it
much to heart where it really counts. They should already know what
works and what doesn't; it's their job.
---N.R.Mitchum <aj...@lafn.org> : antonymous with fusspot, I hope.
Bob Cunningham
>On Wed, 14 Feb 1996, Mark Brader wrote:
>
>> Jim Rosenberg (abc...@nr.infi.net) wrote:
>>
>> > I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
>> > spend my New Year's weekend pretending to be smarter than a
>> > bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
>>
>> I like it.
>
>I don't.
>
>> And anyone who wants to change the last word to "I" has, in my
>> opinion, a significant defect in their sense of how English works.
>
>"Anyone....their"? Oh my!!
>
>> Dammit, Jim, it's a preposition here, not a conjunction!
>
>Fiddlesticks! It's a conjunction. "...smarter than I am" is what is
>meant. Harumph!
>
Here we have another case of people vehemently defending extreme
positions with regard to a question on which expert opinion is
divided. To me tolerant discussion and quiet study rather than
vehemence seem appropriate.
An advocate of the position that "than" is strictly a conjunction
in a statement like "He is smarter than ___" can find full support for
her or his position in Bernstein's _The Careful Writer_ (1965) (TCW)
in the entry "than", and in Fowler's _Modern English Usage_ (1926)
(MEU) in the entry "than".
However a softening of that position is seen in Fowler's _Modern
English Usage_ Second Edition (1967) (MEU2). Where MEU cited the OED
as saying the "preposition use" is now "considered incorrect" and then
refers to "that incorrectness"^, MEU2 leaves Fowler's statement about
OED unchanged but then instead of "that incorrectness" it has "that
_so-called_ incorrectness"^^ (my added underscores).
MEU2 then goes on to add the following to Fowler's 1926 text
(asterisks bracket items that are italicized in the source):
"But the prepositional use of *than* is now so common
colloquially (*He is older than me; they travelled much
faster than us*) that the bare subjective pronoun in
such a position strikes the reader as pedantic, and it
is better to give it a more natural appearance by
supplying it with a verb or to dodge the difficulty by
not using an inflective pronoun at all."
_Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage_ (MWDEU) devotes a
page and a half to the question, in which it states that "than" has
been used as a preposition since the 16th century. Many examples are
given of things like "She suffers hourly more than me" (Jonathan
Swift). The article states the conclusion:
"William Ward had it right in 1765. *Than* is both a
preposition and a conjunction. In spite of much opinion
to the contrary, the preposition has never been wrong."
It goes on to offer a number of qualifying statements that should be
read by all participants in the subject exchange of vehemence.
Instead of trying to bully everyone else into submission, LR and
MB should recognize that "He is taller than I" and "He is taller than
me" are equally acceptable. They should also recognize that a
statement like "I like her better than him" should be avoided entirely
because it is ambiguous: to various readers or listeners it can mean
either "I like her better than he does" or "I like her better than I
like him".
To whom it may concern: Please don't flame me for my foregoing
remarks unless you have read the full discussion of "than" in MWDEU
and are prepared to say why you disagree with what it says.
^ MEU page 629, righthand column, line 27.
^^ MEU2 page 620, lefthand column, line 32.
---
BC | "Short words are best and the old words
LA | when short are best of all."
| -- Winston Churchill
Bob Cunningham
M. Murray
[snip]
: The misapplication of Latin grammar to English is one of the reasons
: many otherwise sensible people worry about their grammar and leads to
: phrases like 'between you and I'.
On the contrary, this is an example of hypercorrection. "Me and you went
to the football match" is common among less educated speakers. Slightly
better educated speakers make the effort to say "You and I", then forget
it is wrong after a preposition.
--
Martin Murray :: School of Chemistry, Bristol University, BS8 1TS, England
Richard Badger
make English fit the pattern of another language.
The question of the way non-standard dialect uses pronouns is a
different question.
I do think any of this variations in pronoun use make things easier
or more difficult to understand but it is worrying that perefectly
competent users of the language worry about whether what they say
is correct or not rather than whether it is clear or easy to understand.
Jeffrey Robertson
Jim Rosenberg <abc...@nr.infi.net> wrote:
>
>> I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
>> spend my New Year's weekend pretending to be smarter than a
>> bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
Should be "I". There are plenty of posts here insulting people
like me who think that this nit is worth picking. I ignore them
all. "Smarter than I" is correct, as has been amply demonstrated.
Incorrect usage may be colloquial (sp?) but should never be
acceptable.
--
-------------------------------------+----------------+-----------------
Jeffrey Robertson | je...@bnr.ca | BNR, Ottawa
"I speak for myself, not BNR" - Me +----------------+ (Meriline)
"Verbing weirds language" - Calvin OC-48 FiberWorld
Jim Rosenberg
> I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
> spend my New Year's weekend pretending to be smarter than a
> bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
je...@bnr.ca (Jeffrey Robertson) wrote:
>> Should be "I". There are plenty of posts here insulting people
>> like me who think that this nit is worth picking. I ignore them
> >all.
If this ever comes up again, I am going to simply run around it like
my limp, useless backhand. Already, I am up nights sobbing over the
international grammar war I started. My wife *tries* to console me:
"honey, you merely *illuminated* the problem; you didn't *create* it."
But, I know better.
I just want everyone to love each other. In fact, I would rather join
a Boston Driving School during Tourist Season thatn spend another
moment fanning the flames of grammarians who are smarter than me.
Ooops!
Spy
> I write a humor column for a local weekly magazine. Recently,
>
> > I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
> > spend my New Year's weekend pretending to be smarter than a
> > bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
>
> violate. If it is kosher, won't someone with credentials say so so I
> can pull you out from behind the curtain like Woody Allen did with
> Marshall McLuhan in "Annie Hall." Thanks in advance.
>
It should be "smarter than I" - meaning smarter than I am.
Smarter than "me" means "me the person Jim Rosenburg". It's the difference between the nominative and the accusative cases.
coops
Truly Donovan
>Regarding my original problem sentence:
>> I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
>> spend my New Year's weekend pretending to be smarter than a
>> bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
>
>je...@bnr.ca (Jeffrey Robertson) wrote:
>>> Should be "I". There are plenty of posts here insulting people
>>> like me who think that this nit is worth picking. I ignore them
>> >all.
>If this ever comes up again, I am going to simply run around it like
>my limp, useless backhand. Already, I am up nights sobbing over the
>international grammar war I started. My wife *tries* to console me:
>"honey, you merely *illuminated* the problem; you didn't *create* it."
>But, I know better.
>I just want everyone to love each other. In fact, I would rather join
>a Boston Driving School during Tourist Season thatn spend another
>moment fanning the flames of grammarians who are smarter than me.
>Ooops!
Yeah, but think of the fodder for future columns! Someone who shall be
nameless got a Pulitzer (not to mention a TV wife and two obnoxious
TV children) for being, among other things, "Mr. Language Person."
Truly Donovan, who is presently thinking that there ought to be some way to
get more mileage than this out of "column fodder."
Mark Brader
> MB should recognize that "He is taller than I" and "He is taller than
> me" are equally acceptable.
The only people I'm trying to bully are the ones who try to bully me
into the view that only one of those is acceptable. The "than I" form
is certainly correct -- it's merely inferior style.
> They should also recognize that a statement like "I like her better
> than him" should be avoided entirely because it is ambiguous: to
> various readers or listeners it can mean either "I like her better
> than he does" or "I like her better than I like him".
In speech, it's likely to be unambiguous due to inflection. In writing,
this is certainly a concern.
--
Mark Brader | "'A matter of opinion'[?] I have to say you are
m...@sq.com | right. There['s] your opinion, which is wrong,
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto | and mine, which is right." -- Gene Ward Smith
My text in this article is in the public domain.
Al Fargnoli
Bob Cunningham <exw...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
:Linda Reynolds <v...@coyote.rain.org> wrote:
:
:>On Wed, 14 Feb 1996, Mark Brader wrote:
:>
:>> Jim Rosenberg (abc...@nr.infi.net) wrote:
:>> > I would rather join a Singaporan frat house during Hell Week than
:>> > bunch of other people who are pretending to be smarter than me.
:>> I like it.
:>
:>I don't.
:>
:>> And anyone who wants to change the last word to "I" has, in my
:>> opinion, a significant defect in their sense of how English works.
:>
:>"Anyone....their"? Oh my!!
:>
:>> Dammit, Jim, it's a preposition here, not a conjunction!
:>
:>Fiddlesticks! It's a conjunction. "...smarter than I am" is what is
:>meant. Harumph!
:>
: Here we have another case of people vehemently defending extreme
:positions with regard to a question on which expert opinion is
:divided. To me tolerant discussion and quiet study rather than
:vehemence seem appropriate.
Hear, hear!
[snipped lots of details citing good sources]
: To whom it may concern: Please don't flame me for my foregoing
:remarks unless you have read the full discussion of "than" in MWDEU
:and are prepared to say why you disagree with what it says.
Although I've had many urges to flame Bob in the past (for his peeing
contests with M.I.), I agree with him completely on this issue.
(Guess I'm guilty of a *Me, too* post :-)
Al Fargnoli
Who doesn't speak for DSC C C
Linda Reynolds
> >Looks like the prescriptive grammariens have been at it again!!!
Let's not leave out the prescriptive grammariennes.
> I hope so.
So do I.
> >> As an erstwhile professional technical writer and a publisher and a few
> >> other things, I assure you that your sentence would be changed to read
> >> "smarter than I" before I published it in any context other than a humor
> >> column, where I would simply assume you were trying to be cuter still.
> >>
> >>Truly Donovan
Bravo!
Michael Hardy
>In speech, it's likely to be unambiguous due to inflection. In writing,
>this is certainly a concern.
This was a reply to the following:
> They should also recognize that a statement like "I like her better
> than him" should be avoided entirely because it is ambiguous: to
> various readers or listeners it can mean either "I like her better
> than he does" or "I like her better than I like him".
_Inflection_ means distinguishing between "he" and "him", between
"I", and "me", etc. Inflection makes sentences like this unambiguous thus:
"I like her more than him." means I like her more than I like him.
"I like her more than he." means I like her more than he likes her.
Perhaps what you meant was _intonation_, which is entirely
different from inflection.
Linda Reynolds
> Instead of trying to bully everyone else into submission, LR and
> MB should recognize that "He is taller than I" and "He is taller than
> me" are equally acceptable.
My dear Woody:
So, your friend LR has progressed from a pedantic, meddling
prescriptivist to a bully? I'm honored.
I am perfectly content to rest in the company of Bernstein and Fowler.
> They should also recognize that a statement like "I like her better
> than him" should be avoided entirely because it is ambiguous:
Well, we certainly DO realize that it is ambiguous if you don't treat "than"
like a conjunction!!! You've just made my point, dear heart. Thank you so
much!
One more time (I know: I too keep hoping it will be the last :) )
"I like her better than (I like) him".
"I like her better than he (likes her)".
See? Nice and clear. What else is language for if not to be precise? I
agree with whoever it was (was it you?) who suggested appending the verb
rather than letting the subject pronoun dangle in space (my wording).
"I like her better than he does".
Who could possibly have a problem with *that*? (Please, I don't really
want to know...)
> To whom it may concern: Please don't flame me for my foregoing
> remarks unless you have read the full discussion of "than" in MWDEU
> and are prepared to say why you disagree with what it says.
Huh? You've called me a bully and *you* don't want to be flamed?
Still your E-friend...
Chris Burd
wrote:
> Richard Badger (rg...@stir.ac.uk) wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> : The misapplication of Latin grammar to English is one of the reasons
> : many otherwise sensible people worry about their grammar and leads to
> : phrases like 'between you and I'.
>
> On the contrary, this is an example of hypercorrection. "Me and you went
> to the football match" is common among less educated speakers. Slightly
> better educated speakers make the effort to say "You and I", then forget
> it is wrong after a preposition.
I feel you're right in general, but I have seen a quotation from
Shakespeare showing
the same mistake. The fact, case markers don't matter very much to English
speakers:
we don;t have a feeling for them in our bones. In German, a language that
takes case
seriously, no native speaker, however ignorant , would ever say "zwischen
dir und ich".
On the other hand, in Quebec, you get so used to hearing "moi" prefixed to
an almost elided "je" (as in
"Moi, j'pense que...") that it almost sounds like the nominative form.
Ralph Mills
that the majority of English speakers would say "smarter than me" and
let it go at that. However, I would use "I" in the context, were at all
concerned about what listeners (or readers) might think about the
quality of my education.
Mark Brader
> different from inflection.
Not entirely. RHU1, "inflection", sense 1: "modulation of the voice;
change in pitch or tone of voice."
Incidentally, when one is both posting and emailing a message, it is
a good idea to say so. It saves the email recipient from having to
respond twice, possibly in different fashions suited to the media.
--
Mark Brader, m...@sq.com "Yet Another Wonderful Novelty -- YAWN!"
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto -- Liam Quin
William Tyler
Would you say "I am smarter than he," or "I am smarter than him?" If
the latter, why would "He is smarter than I," be correct?
Bill
--
Bill Tyler wty...@adobe.com Adobe is not responsible for my opinions.
Matthew Rabuzzi
Michael Hardy <ha...@umnstat.stat.umn.edu> writes:
: Mark Brader <m...@sq.com> wrote:
:
: >In speech, it's likely to be unambiguous due to inflection. In writing,
: >this is certainly a concern.
: _Inflection_ means distinguishing between "he" and "him", between
: "I", and "me", etc. ...
: Perhaps what you meant was _intonation_, which is entirely
: different from inflection.
No, Mark's statement is correct as it stands. One of the meanings of
"inflection" is variation in pitch or loudness, for emphasis or
disambiguation in speech. In this sense it encompasses that of
intonation. The sense of inflection that you're on about, change of
word stems to reflect grammatical function, is a later development
in meaning, according to W3NI.
............................................................
Devadasi: another nautch on my bedpost
Matthew Rabuzzi
Matthew Rabuzzi
Linda Reynolds <v...@coyote.rain.org> writes:
: Bob Cunningham wrote:
:
: > Instead of trying to bully everyone else into submission, LR and
: > MB should recognize that "He is taller than I" and "He is taller than
: > me" are equally acceptable.
: So, your friend LR has progressed from a pedantic, meddling
: prescriptivist to a bully? I'm honored.
: I am perfectly content to rest in the company of Bernstein and Fowler.
:
: > They should also recognize that a statement like "I like her better
: > than him" should be avoided entirely because it is ambiguous:
:
: Well, we certainly DO realize that it is ambiguous if you don't treat "than"
: like a conjunction!!! You've just made my point, dear heart.
However, your point rests upon that "if you don't". One of Bob's points
is that it is acceptable not to subscribe to that condition. Said another
way, many people -- and some dictionaries -- accept "than" as a preposition.
Another of Bob's points is that you should recognize the fact that this
is another acceptable usage. That doesn't mean you have to use it that way,
just not castigate those who do.
: One more time (I know: I too keep hoping it will be the last :) )
: "I like her better than (I like) him".
: "I like her better than he (likes her)".
: See? Nice and clear.
I'm glad you realize you're repeating yourself, but do you truly think
Bob doesn't already know this little homily? If you reread any of his
posts in this thread -- in particular, this one; in particular, the
first paragraph you quote above -- you'll see that this reiteration
is unnecessary.
: > To whom it may concern: Please don't flame me for my foregoing
: > remarks unless you have read the full discussion of "than" in MWDEU
: > and are prepared to say why you disagree with what it says.
:
: Huh? You've called me a bully and *you* don't want to be flamed?
Again you miss an important conditional. Bob said "unless you've read
MWDEU". Have you? (I haven't -- just the snippets by Jonathan Swift
and William Ward that Bob quotes.)
Bob Cunningham
>In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.96022...@coyote.rain.org>, v...@coyote.rain.org (Linda Reynolds) writes:
>
>> One more time (I know: I too keep hoping it will be the last :) )
>> "I like her better than (I like) him".
>> "I like her better than he (likes her)".
>> See? Nice and clear.
>
[...]
> WDEU says: "Lowth 1762 held _than_ to be a conjunction [...].
>Lindley Murray 1795 also followed Lowth, and so have most grammarians
>since." My position (and Linda's position) is what WDEU says is the
>position of "most grammarians".
>
> WDEU says: "It is hard to avoid the conclusion, however, that if
>_than whom_ is indeed standard, _than_ must be a preposition as well
>as a conjunction." The flaw here is that "than whom" is syntactically
>different from "than" + other pronouns. In "None higher sat than he",
>we can add the word "sat" at the end without changing the meaning, so
>it is reasonable to assume that ellipsis is at work. In "Beelzebub,
>than whom none higher sat, rose", there's nowhere that we can insert
>another "sat"!
>
MI has cited just enough from the MWDEU^ article to seem to
reinforce his point of view. He has conveniently neglected to state
or even allude to their conclusion, which is:
To conclude: William Ward had it right in 1765. *Than*
is both a preposition and a conjunction. In spite of
much opinion to the contrary, the preposition has never
been wrong. In current usage *than* is more often a
conjunction than a preposition; *than whom* is pretty
much limited to writing; *me* after the preposition is
more common than the other objective-case pronouns; and
the preposition is more common in speech than in edited
prose. You have the same choice Shakespeare did--you
can use *than* either way. But the closer your writing
is to speech, the more likely you are to use the
preposition.
By "use the preposition" they are referring to usages such as the
following from Shakespeare's *Julius Caesar*:
A man no mightier than thyself or me
In personal action, though prodigious grown
And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.
>In article <31281bbf....@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, exw...@ix.netcom.com (Bob Cunningham) writes:
>
>> Instead of trying to bully everyone else into submission, LR and
>> MB should recognize that "He is taller than I" and "He is taller than
>> me" are equally acceptable. [...]
>>
>> To whom it may concern: Please don't flame me for my foregoing
>> remarks unless you have read the full discussion of "than" in MWDEU
>> and are prepared to say why you disagree with what it says.
>
> Bob uses the word "bully". I would have to regard demanding that
>an opponent read one or more sources that one has ready access to and
>one's opponent doesn't, when what those sources contain is in fact
>easy enough to summarize, as a form of bullying.
>
How many people reading my statement would interpret it as
"demanding" something? To me it reads like a request and nothing
more.
As for "easy enough to summarize", the article in MWDEU is too
long to quote in full and too meaty to summarize easily. I've quoted
their conclusions in the foregoing, but they really shouldn't be read
without first reading the arguments, the history, and the examples
that lead up to them.
As for "ready access", isn't MWDEU available in the reference
section of all good libraries? Shouldn't everyone who is seriously
interested in English usage have his or her own copy of it?
^ MWDEU = _Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage_,
Published by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated,
*Publishers*, Springfield, Massachusetts.
Copyright 1989 by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated.
Previously published as _Webster's Dictionary of
English Usage_.
ISBN 0-87779-132-5
Bob Cunningham
>In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.96022...@coyote.rain.org>, v...@coyote.rain.org (Linda Reynolds) writes:
>
>> One more time (I know: I too keep hoping it will be the last :) )
>> "I like her better than (I like) him".
>> "I like her better than he (likes her)".
>> See? Nice and clear.
>
> Hear, hear!
>
MI applauds an oversimplification of a controversial topic.
One point that hasn't been given the attention that it deserves
in this thread is that statements like "I like her better than he" are
best avoided, no matter which side of the controversy you favor.
Statements like that have been called "pedantic" and "stilted" in
various usage guides, and the consensus seems to be that it is much
better to say the more natural "I like her better than he likes her",
or "I like her better than he does".
Gowers, for example, in MEU2^ says:
But the prepositional use of *than* is now so common
colloquially (*He is older than me; they travelled much
faster than us*) that the bare subjective pronoun in
such a position strikes the reader as pedantic, and it
is better either to give it a more natural appearance by
supplying it with a verb or to dodge the difficulty by
not using an inflective pronoun at all.
^ MEU2 = _A Dictionary of Modern English Usage_, by H. W.
Fowler, Second Edition revised by Sir Ernest
Gowers, Published at The Clarendon Press,
Oxford, Copyright Oxford University Press 1968,
reprinted with corrections 1975.
ISBN 0-19-869115-7
Mark Israel
> MI applauds an oversimplification of a controversial topic.
And yet you called "nauseous"="nauseated" "allegedly disputed".
What makes one genuinely controversial and the other not, IYHO?
> MI has cited just enough from the MWDEU^ article to seem to
> reinforce his point of view.
I cited just enough "to say why you disagree with what it says",
which is what you requested. I'm quite content to leave exposition
of the opposing viewpoint in your capable hands.
> He has conveniently neglected to state or even allude to their
> conclusion, which is: [...]
I'm a prescriptivist, Bob, remember? I'll gladly accept *data*
from Merriam-Webster. But accusing me of not reaching the same
*conclusions* as a permissivist work like WDEU is rather like
accusing the Pope of being a bad Protestant.
> As for "ready access", isn't MWDEU available in the reference
> section of all good libraries?
-- this from the man who, in our discussion of "tsk", said "I don't
have access to" two of the dictionaries I mentioned. Those
dictionaries, too, are in public libraries.
Unlike you, Bob, most of us are not retired, so we haven't time
for as many trips to the library as you have.
> Shouldn't everyone who is seriously interested in English usage
> have his or her own copy of it?
I've found it chiefly useful for supplying data to wage flame
wars such as these. For my own writing, I find that I've been
helped the most by Fowler, followed by Strunk & White, Gowers,
Bernstein, and Follett. I've found very little in WDEU to improve
my own writing.
> ^ MEU2 = _A Dictionary of Modern English Usage_, by H. W.
> Fowler, Second Edition revised by Sir Ernest
> Gowers, Published at The Clarendon Press,
> Oxford, Copyright Oxford University Press 1968,
My copy says copyright 1965. Since Sir Ernest died in 1966,
I really doubt that two years later he was doing anything worth
copyrighting.
--
mis...@scripps.edu Mark Israel
Bob Cunningham
>In articles <313700d4...@nntp.ix.netcom.com> and <3136f3ec...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, exw...@ix.netcom.com (Bob Cunningham) writes:
>
[...]
>
>> ^ MEU2 = _A Dictionary of Modern English Usage_, by H. W.
>> Fowler, Second Edition revised by Sir Ernest
>> Gowers, Published at The Clarendon Press,
>> Oxford, Copyright Oxford University Press 1968,
>
> My copy says copyright 1965. Since Sir Ernest died in 1966,
>I really doubt that two years later he was doing anything worth
>copyrighting.
>
Okay, I looked again. My copy does indeed say "Copyright Oxford
University Press 1968". I know next to nothing about copyrights, but
I guess what we're learning here is that it's possible for the owner
of the rights to a book, in this case Oxford University Press, to
copyright that book whether or not the author is still alive. That
sounds fair enough to me.
A similar situation has to do with Eric Partridge's *A Dictionary
of Slang and Unconventional English*, on which there is a copyright
dated 1984: Since Eric Partridge died in 1979, I really doubt that
five years later he was doing anything worth copyrighting.
Brid ni Fhlathuin
>What makes one genuinely controversial and the other not, IYHO?
Rumour has it that "IMHO" expands to "In My Humble Opinion".
By extrapolation, I deduce that "IYHO" changes the "MY" to a
"YOUR". Now, the insertion of "IMHO" is possibly polite, albeit
dreadfully twee, but to suggest that the opinion of another is
humble, even if this is alleged by the possessor of the opinion,
is surely not on. Please correct me. The "H" stands for
"Honourable"?
bnf
Robert Gurfinkel
Linda Reynolds
> I am, however, keen on the idea that Linda read WDEU. Why?
> Because I'd be delighted to see a prescriptivist with an M.A. in
> linguistics criticize it! Linda, please e-mail me your snail-mail
> address and I'll buy a copy of WDEU and send it to you at my expense.
Thank you. I already have a copy (the 1989 edition). I've just
finished reading the article on "the reason is because..." and you
*don't* want to hear what I thought of that! :( :( :(
I'll get to this assignment as soon as possible.