I am taller than (she | her)?
peh...@my-dejanews.com
Which is it and why? Sounds wrong either way...
--
Phil Hanna
another ex-Beamer
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
Dave Crane
peh...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>Which is it and why? Sounds wrong either way...
She is taller than I [am]. I am shorter than she [is].
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
>Which is it and why? Sounds wrong either way...
"...taller than she." When I debated this point with my seventh-grade English
teacher, arguing that the pronoun was the object of the preposition "than", she
explained that "than" is actually a conjunction, and that the implied phrase it
conjuncts is "...than she (is tall)."
And that confusion is why, to me as to you, it still sounds wrong either way.
Gary Williams
Evan Kirshenbaum
will...@ahecas.AHEC.EDU (Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting) writes:
> In article <6lfo1r$r5r$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, peh...@my-dejanews.com writes:
>
> >Which is it and why? Sounds wrong either way...
>
>
> "...taller than she." When I debated this point with my
> seventh-grade English teacher, arguing that the pronoun was the
> object of the preposition "than", she explained that "than" is
> actually a conjunction, and that the implied phrase it conjuncts is
> "...than she (is tall)."
It's a floor wax *and* a dessert topping.
MWDEU, p 892, "than":
A dispute of whether _than_ is a preposition or a conjunction has
been going on now for more than two centuries. It is one portion
of the price we pay for the 18th-century assumption that the parts
of speech of Latin and Greek are readily applicable to English,
an assumption that continues to gain uncritical acceptance to this
day.
There were two sides to the question right from the beginning.
Lowth 1762 held _than_ to be a conjunction, and the case of a
following pronoun to be determined by its relation to a verb
understood. ... Priestly [1769] considered _than_ a preposition
and thought the objective case proper. He suspected that others'
preference for the nominative was based not on English, but on a
dubious analogy with Latin. Campbell 1776, however, followed
Lowth, and expressed some surprise at Priestley's views. He
granted Priestly the "colloquial dialect" for which he--Campbell--
had very little use indeed. Lindley Murray 1795 also followed
Lowth, and so have most grammarians since.
[snip]
Leonard 1929 mentions a grammarian named William Ward who in 1765
had the answer to the whole problem. He allowed _than_ to be both
a conjunction and a preposition, explaining that when it is
thought of as a conjunction, clauses or substantives in the
nominative case follow it, and when it is thought of as a
preposition, the objective case is used. Ward's explanation
covered actual usage perfectly, but it was probably too
commonsensical--not sufficiently absolutist--to prevail....
[snip two columns of examples]
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. [snipped text
above actually says that it started to be used as a preposition in
the 16th century--erk] 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 choose the
preposition.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If the human brain were so simple
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |That we could understand it,
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |We would be so simple
|That we couldn't.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Neil Coffey
In article <6lfo1r$r5r$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
<URL:mailto:peh...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
> Which is it and why? Sounds wrong either way...
If you really can't decide between the two (though to me "...than her"
sounds infinitely more natural), then why not just say "...than she is"?
Neil
Charles A. Lee
On Mon, 08 Jun 1998 04:07:23 GMT, peh...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>Which is it and why? Sounds wrong either way...
The sentence is constructed as follows.
Subject: I
Verb: am
Predicate adjective (compound): taller than she (is).
The unequal comparison is separated by the conjunction "than".
The second part of the comparison is a noun clause which itself has a
subject and verb. Dissected like this it becomes clear that the
subject and verb within the little clause at the end should be "she
is" not "her is".
With the final "is" being understood, "she" stands alone.
Charles A. Lee
http://www.concentric.net/~azcal
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+"Marriage is like a hot bath; +
+ once you get used to it, +
+ it ain't so hot." +
+ - Minnie Pearl +
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Steve MacGregor
Neil Coffey <neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote in article
<ant09000...@coffey.stannes.ox.ac.uk>...
<<If you really can't decide between the two (though to me "...than
her" sounds infinitely more natural), then why not just say "...than
she is"?>>
Or "...than her is"? Or "...than her are"? Or "...than her am"?
If you don't want rules, then you have to accept everything.
--
(Reply to SteveMacGregor at InfiCad dot Com)
===================================================================
Hi, I'm the Good Times signature virus. Copy me into your sig file!
===================================================================
M. Ranjit Mathews
Charles A. Lee wrote:
> On Mon, 08 Jun 1998 04:07:23 GMT, peh...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> >Which is it and why? Sounds wrong either way...
>
> The sentence is constructed as follows.
>
> Subject: I
> Verb: am
> Predicate adjective (compound): taller than she (is).
taller than she is tall.
"I am taller than her" would mean "I am taller than I am her".
Neil Coffey
In article <01bd9378$e2149440$5865...@goodnet.goodnet.com>, Steve MacGregor
<URL:mailto:SteveMa...@Inficad.Com> wrote:
> <<If you really can't decide between the two (though to me "...than
> her" sounds infinitely more natural), then why not just say "...than
> she is"?>>
>
> Or "...than her is"? Or "...than her are"? Or "...than her am"?
> If you don't want rules, then you have to accept everything.
???? The most natural-sounding choice between "I'm taller than she/her"
is "her". This is not "accepting everything"; this is accepting the
choice which an educated native speaker of English intuitively
makes. A native speaker would not say "...than her is", or "...than
her are". Neither of these are what I suggested.
The sentence in question is "I'm taller than her". This sentence has
a different structure to that of "I'm taller than she is". The choice
between "she/her" in one is completely irrelevant to the choice in
the other. And as it happens, speakers choose "her" in the first
instance and "she" in the second.
Neil
Richard Badger
az...@concentric.net (Charles A. Lee) wrote:
>The unequal comparison is separated by the conjunction "than".
The question here is whether 'than' is a conjunction and so followed by a
clause or a preposition and so followed by a noun phrase (or nominal
group). Most users of English, I think, treat 'than' as a preposition
here and so it is followed, as prepositions normally are, by an objective
form of the pronoun, 'her'.
Equally it is possible to say 'than she is.
Several other words function as both conjunctions and prepostions
and so can be followed by two kinds of construction. Compare.
Paul is the first boy-friend she has had since Charles. (since as a
preposition)
and
Paul is the first boy-friend she has had since Charles went away. (since
as a conjunction).
Skitt
Neil Coffey wrote in message ...
>In article <6lfo1r$r5r$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
><URL:mailto:peh...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>
>> Which is it and why? Sounds wrong either way...
>
>If you really can't decide between the two (though to me "...than
her"
>sounds infinitely more natural), then why not just say "...than she
is"?
I agree that "... than her" is the common spoken usage, and I, even
though I have spoken out on behalf of the P'ists, use that expression
most of the time, but should it be used in writing other than personal
notes to friends and the like? This is an honest question, Neil.
--
Skitt http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/5537/
Donna Richoux
Steve MacGregor <SteveMa...@Inficad.Com> wrote:
> Neil Coffey <neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote in article
> <ant09000...@coffey.stannes.ox.ac.uk>...
>
> <<If you really can't decide between the two (though to me "...than
> her" sounds infinitely more natural), then why not just say "...than
> she is"?>>
>
> Or "...than her is"? Or "...than her are"? Or "...than her am"?
> If you don't want rules, then you have to accept everything.
Au contraire. Being free to pick what you like doesn't mean you have to
like everything equally. What made you think it did? Or did I
misunderstand?
I am reminded of the central theory of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance."
Best wishes --- Donna Richoux
Richard Badger
"Skitt" <al...@myself.com> wrote:
>
>Neil Coffey wrote in message ...
>>In article <6lfo1r$r5r$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
>><URL:mailto:peh...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Which is it and why? Sounds wrong either way...
>>
>her"
>>sounds infinitely more natural), then why not just say "...than she
>is"?
>
>
>though I have spoken out on behalf of the P'ists, use that expression
>most of the time, but should it be used in writing other than personal
>notes to friends and the like? This is an honest question, Neil.
>--
>Skitt http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/5537/
>
( http://titania.cobuild.collins.co.uk/)
This does a search of some 20 million words from a variet of sources.
Of the 40 instances of 'than' that the corpus gave me
4 were unclassifiable because I could not see the whole of the
sentence.
24 Preposition + noun phrase
2 Preposition (?) + ever
6 Conjunction + finite clause
4 Conjunction + non-finite clause
This suggests that 'than' is more often used as a preposition (than her)
than as a conjunction (than she).
K1912
Neil Coffey wrote:
[...}
>???? The most natural-sounding choice between "I'm taller than she/her"
>is "her". This is not "accepting everything"; this is accepting the
>choice which an educated native speaker of English intuitively
>makes. A native speaker would not say "...than her is", or "...than
>her are". Neither of these are what I suggested.
>
>
Would an "educated native speaker" be more likely to say "Neither of these are
what I suggested" or "Neither of these is what I suggested"? An educated native
speaker of English can't "intuitively" choose both, I wouldn't think.
gk
K1912
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
In article <v9hn2bn...@garrett.hpl.hp.com>, Evan Kirshenbaum
>will...@ahecas.AHEC.EDU (Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting) writes:
>> "...taller than she." When I debated this point with my
>> seventh-grade English teacher, arguing that the pronoun was the
>> object of the preposition "than", she explained that "than" is
>> actually a conjunction, and that the implied phrase it conjuncts is
>> "...than she (is tall)."
>
>
> A dispute of whether _than_ is a preposition or a conjunction has
> been going on now for more than two centuries. ...
> There were two sides to the question right from the beginning.
> ... Priestly [1769] considered _than_ a preposition
> and thought the objective case proper. ...
> Leonard 1929 mentions a grammarian named William Ward who in 1765
> had the answer to the whole problem. He allowed _than_ to be both
> a conjunction and a preposition, explaining that when it is
> thought of as a conjunction, clauses or substantives in the
> nominative case follow it, and when it is thought of as a
> preposition, the objective case is used. Ward's explanation
> covered actual usage perfectly, but it was probably too
> commonsensical--not sufficiently absolutist--to prevail....
Man, I wish I had had access to all this when I was in seventh grade.
Then again, maybe it's just as well I didn't. I value the fact that I was
allowed to progress to the eighth grade fairly highly.
Gary Williams
P&DSchultz
K1912 wrote:
> Would an "educated native speaker" be more likely to say "Neither of these are
> what I suggested" or "Neither of these is what I suggested"? An educated native
> speaker of English can't "intuitively" choose both, I wouldn't think.
But a native speaker could intuitively choose *either*, depending on
who he or she was talking to. That is what I do.
//P. Schultz
Mark Schaefer
And lo "Skitt" spake unto them, saying:
> Neil Coffey wrote in message ...
> >In article <6lfo1r$r5r$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
> ><URL:mailto:peh...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Which is it and why? Sounds wrong either way...
> >
> >If you really can't decide between the two (though to me "...than
> her"
> >sounds infinitely more natural), then why not just say "...than she
> is"?
>
>
> I agree that "... than her" is the common spoken usage, and I, even
> though I have spoken out on behalf of the P'ists, use that expression
> most of the time, but should it be used in writing other than personal
> notes to friends and the like? This is an honest question, Neil.
Given its usage, it is possible that the 'than' in the sentence: "I am
taller than her" is not a conjunction at all, but a preposition which
takes the objective case.
That is, 'than' is used differently, and is a different part of speech, in
the first sentence:
1. I am older than she is (old).
2. I am older than her.
The usage of 'than' as a preposition taking the objective has its
parallels in other languages. In Russian, for example, the comparative is
used thus:
3. Ya starshe chem ona. (lit. "I older than she")
4. Ya starshe yeyo. (lit. "I older of-her")
Both sentences mean the same thing. In one case a conjunction is used
with parallel structure in the nominative case. In another case, no
conjunction is used and the genitive/accusative is used.
In Hebrew, the comparative is accomplished by means of the prefix 'me-' or
'mi-' meaning "from/of" resulting in the following constructions:
5. Ha-otobus yoter gadol me-ha-masa'it. "The bus more big of-the-truck."
Looking at the above examples from Hebrew and Russian (and no doubt from
other languages), it seems clear to me that 'than' as it is used in
sentence 2 above is not being used as a conjunction, but rather as a
comparative preposition, which takes the objective case.
-- Schaef
Mark Schaefer--------------------------------------------------------
Foundry Democracy Project |"The strength of a political system
Foundry United Methodist | depends on the full and willing
1500 16th Street, N.W. | participation of its citizens."
Washington, D.C. 20036 | Social Principles,
(202) 265-8017 | Methodist Book of Discipline
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"Taxation without representation is tyranny."
* * *Support Voting Representation for the District of Columbia* * *
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Skitt
Neil Coffey wrote in message ...
>To dictate a particular usage on the grounds of categories is
therefore a nonesense.
I typed "nonesense" in the query field of MWCD10, and it suggested
that I look up "Minya Konka" which is a variant of "Gongga Shan." I
love it! I suppose, you meant nonsense, but then why the article "a"?
Isn't the common usage without it?
--
Skitt http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/5537/
P&DSchultz
K1912 wrote:
> can it also be a conscious choice? Isn't an intuitive choice oxymoronic?
No. Your intuition can tell you one thing is well-formed in a
certain speaking situation, and a different thing is well-formed
in a different situation. There are several registers that a person
can speak in, and the surface forms that intuitively come out depend
on what register you're in, not what you choose as each word. It's
like being able to speak more than language -- you don't have to make
a decision before each word about which language you're going to say
it in.
In any case, I am talking about intuitive native-speaker grammaticality
judgment, which can be a conscious choice or not. It doesn't matter.
The intuition is there to draw on.
//P. Schultz
Skitt
Neil Coffey wrote in message ...
>In article <6lkk88$ccs$1...@suriname.it.earthlink.net>, Skitt
><URL:mailto:al...@myself.com> wrote:
>
>> love it! I suppose, you meant nonsense, but then why the article
"a"?
>> Isn't the common usage without it?
>
>Possibly. Who knows... But either way, you now have an example of
>a usage with it. I'm pretty sure that utterances such as "It's a
>nonsense to say that..." are reasonably common.
New one on me! Live and learn ...
>What I wish to represent in writing "non(e)sense", by the way, is
>a phonological sequence rather than any particular spelling.
You lost me on that one -- are you saying that you pronounce it that
way?
--
Skitt http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/5537/
Mike Zorn
In <ant09085...@coffey.stannes.ox.ac.uk> Neil Coffey <neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> writes:
>In article <01bd9378$e2149440$5865...@goodnet.goodnet.com>, Steve MacGregor
>is "her". This is not "accepting everything"; this is accepting the
than her what?"
Mike Zorn rigo...@kaiwan.com
Neil Coffey
In article <6lkd8s$5ri$1...@news.cudenver.edu>,
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting <URL:mailto:will...@ahecas.AHEC.EDU> wrote:
> >> "...taller than she." When I debated this point with my
> >> seventh-grade English teacher, arguing that the pronoun was the
> >> object of the preposition "than", she explained that "than" is
> >> actually a conjunction, and that the implied phrase it conjuncts is
> >> "...than she (is tall)."
> > There were two sides to the question right from the beginning.
> > ... Priestly [1769] considered _than_ a preposition
> > and thought the objective case proper. ...
[...]
> Man, I wish I had had access to all this when I was in seventh grade.
Whilst nobody expects you to have thought of this in the seventh
grade, you didn't strictly speaking need access to any information
to demonstrate the blatant lack of logic in what your teacher
was saying. The grammatical categories of words is determined
by their usage, not the other way round. To dictate a particular
usage on the grounds of categories is therefore a nonesense.
Neil
--
Neil Coffey e-mail: neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk
St Anne's College UNIX talk: gro...@coffey.stannes.ox.ac.uk
Oxford World Wide Web: http://ox.compsoc.net/~neil/
OX2 6HS (See my French-English dictionary)
Neil Coffey
> love it! I suppose, you meant nonsense, but then why the article "a"?
> Isn't the common usage without it?
Possibly. Who knows... But either way, you now have an example of
a usage with it. I'm pretty sure that utterances such as "It's a
nonsense to say that..." are reasonably common.
What I wish to represent in writing "non(e)sense", by the way, is
a phonological sequence rather than any particular spelling.
Neil
K1912
P&DSchultz wrote:
>K1912 wrote:
>> Would an "educated native speaker" be more likely to say "Neither of these
>are
>> what I suggested" or "Neither of these is what I suggested"? An educated
>native
>> speaker of English can't "intuitively" choose both, I wouldn't think.
>
>But a native speaker could intuitively choose *either*, depending on
>who he or she was talking to. That is what I do.
But then can it strictly be said to be an intuitive choice? If it is intuitive,
can it also be a conscious choice? Isn't an intuitive choice oxymoronic?
gk
K1912
Neil Coffey
In article <199806100149...@ladder03.news.aol.com>, K1912
<URL:mailto:k1...@aol.com> wrote:
> But then can it strictly be said to be an intuitive choice? If it is intuitive,
> can it also be a conscious choice? Isn't an intuitive choice oxymoronic?
It's not the _choice_ that's intuitive. What's intuitive is whether
a given utterance is grammatical or not.
K1912
Neil Coffey wrote:
>In article <199806100149...@ladder03.news.aol.com>, K1912
><URL:mailto:k1...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> But then can it strictly be said to be an intuitive choice? If it is
>intuitive,
>> can it also be a conscious choice? Isn't an intuitive choice oxymoronic?
>
>It's not the _choice_ that's intuitive. What's intuitive is whether
>a given utterance is grammatical or not.
But aren't both utterances (the examples) grammatical, and perceived to be so
intuitively? Then how does one (did you) "choose" between them? Or are you
saying that, in an instance where both utterances are grammatical, the one that
is chosen is selected randomly--intuitively? (Doesn't this lead to the question
of how thoughts are given expression, how we are able to articulate, by what
process are words selected to make "a given utterence"?)
gk
gk
K1912
Tina C. Liu
I am not sure I understand one of the positions in this issue. Can
someone give me an example of "than" used as a preposition?
In tests I've seen that test grammar (TOEFL and GMAT), "I am taller
than her" would be considered wrong. Would anyone consider "I am
taller than she" absolutely wrong? Is the argument "than her" is
right and "than she" is wrong?
Tina
On Mon, 08 Jun 1998 04:07:23 GMT, peh...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>Which is it and why? Sounds wrong either way...
>--
>Phil Hanna
>another ex-Beamer
>
>-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
>http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
Neil Coffey
In article <199806100530...@ladder01.news.aol.com>, K1912
<URL:mailto:k1...@aol.com> wrote:
> But aren't both utterances (the examples) grammatical, and perceived to be so
> intuitively? Then how does one (did you) "choose" between them?
The same way as always. (However that might be...)
Neil
Neil Coffey
In article <rigoleto.897458715@kaiwan009>, Mike Zorn
<URL:mailto:rigo...@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com> wrote:
> The only reaonable response to "I'm taller than her" is "taller
> than her what?"
????????????
"I'm taller than her what?" might be a reasonable response to
"I'm taller than hers". But I cannot imagine a conversation in which
"I'm taller than her" would be interpreted as "I'm taller than hers".
Neil Coffey
In article <6lkq3j$t4g$1...@chile.it.earthlink.net>, Skitt
<URL:mailto:al...@myself.com> wrote:
> You lost me on that one -- are you saying that you pronounce it that
> way?
I'm saying that objectively speaking it makes little difference whether
I write the word with an 'e' or not. If I write the word with an 'e'
it's not that I'm trying to represent some completely different word,
but rather that I'm choosing (accidentally or otherwise) a different
way of representing the same word. What actually constitutes the 'word'
is not how it's written but how it's stored/pronounced.
Neil Coffey
In article <357e4aea...@netnews.hinet.net>, Tina C. Liu
<URL:mailto:Tina_...@my-dejanews.net> wrote:
> In tests I've seen that test grammar (TOEFL and GMAT), "I am taller
> than her" would be considered wrong.
Then ask yourself what the point of the test is. "I am taller than
her" is a natural-sounding utterance produced by educated native
speakers and considered acceptable in many contexts.
> Would anyone consider "I am taller than she" absolutely wrong?
It sounds strange and pretentious to many speakers, and is from this
point of view wrong in many contexts. Probably the only
reason it's even considered possible at all is because Latin-obsessed
grammarians with a poor understanding of the nature of language had
attempted to introduce it as a hypercorrection.
> Is the argument "than her" is right and "than she" is wrong?
From one point of view, yes. But who really cares about binning things
as either "right" or "wrong" anyway. Why not concentrate on understanding
*why* particular utterances are acceptable/unacceptable in particular
contexts. This will give you a much more fulfilling and pragmatic
understanding of the language and of language.
Skitt
Neil Coffey wrote in message ...
>In article <rigoleto.897458715@kaiwan009>, Mike Zorn
><URL:mailto:rigo...@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com> wrote:
>
>> The only reaonable response to "I'm taller than her" is "taller
>> than her what?"
>
>????????????
>
>"I'm taller than her what?" might be a reasonable response to
>"I'm taller than hers". But I cannot imagine a conversation in which
>"I'm taller than her" would be interpreted as "I'm taller than hers".
Neil, sometimes you make good sense and have valid, albeit not
acceptable to everyone, arguments. This is not one of those times.
--
Skitt http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/5537/
Neil Coffey
In article <6lm5ot$s8...@svlss.lmms.lmco.com>, Skitt
<URL:mailto:al...@myself.com> wrote:
> >> The only reaonable response to "I'm taller than her" is "taller
> >> than her what?"
> >
> >????????????
> >
> >"I'm taller than her what?" might be a reasonable response to
> >"I'm taller than hers". But I cannot imagine a conversation in which
> >"I'm taller than her" would be interpreted as "I'm taller than hers".
>
>
> Neil, sometimes you make good sense and have valid, albeit not
> acceptable to everyone, arguments. This is not one of those times.
Do I take it, then, that you imagine as plausible the following
conversation:
-- I'm taller than her.
-- Taller than her what?
I find this unlikely. What would produce the second speaker's response
as above would be:
-- I'm taller than hers.
-- Taller than her what?
Do you not agree at least that of the two conversations, the second
is much more plausible?
Evan Kirshenbaum
"Skitt" <al...@myself.com> writes:
> Neil Coffey wrote in message ...
> >In article <rigoleto.897458715@kaiwan009>, Mike Zorn
> ><URL:mailto:rigo...@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com> wrote:
> >
> >> The only reaonable response to "I'm taller than her" is "taller
> >> than her what?"
> >
> >????????????
> >
> >"I'm taller than her what?" might be a reasonable response to
> >"I'm taller than hers". But I cannot imagine a conversation in which
> >"I'm taller than her" would be interpreted as "I'm taller than hers".
>
>
> Neil, sometimes you make good sense and have valid, albeit not
> acceptable to everyone, arguments. This is not one of those times.
Gotta go with Neil on this one. I can't get a possessive reading for
"taller than her", but I do for "taller than hers". Similarly, I get
taller than
*my mine
*your yours
*their theirs
*our ours
his
This leads me to conclude that "her" is not genitive, but rather
accusative.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |I believe there are more instances
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |of the abridgment of the freedom of
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |the people by gradual and silent
|encroachments of those in power
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |than by violent and sudden
(650)857-7572 |usurpations.
| James Madison
Neil Coffey
In article <v9hogw1...@garrett.hpl.hp.com>, Evan Kirshenbaum
<URL:mailto:ev...@garrett.hpl.hp.com> wrote:
> This leads me to conclude that "her" is not genitive, but rather
> accusative.
OK. I'd say don't read _too_ much into the idea of cases in English,
though. Sure, there are probably some case universals, but these
aren't really that well understood anyway.
Neil
Skitt
Neil Coffey wrote in message ...
>In article <6lm5ot$s8...@svlss.lmms.lmco.com>, Skitt
><URL:mailto:al...@myself.com> wrote:
>
>> >> The only reaonable response to "I'm taller than her" is
"taller
>> >> than her what?"
>> >
>> >????????????
>> >
>> >"I'm taller than her what?" might be a reasonable response to
>> >"I'm taller than hers". But I cannot imagine a conversation in
which
>> >"I'm taller than her" would be interpreted as "I'm taller than
hers".
>>
>>
>> Neil, sometimes you make good sense and have valid, albeit not
>> acceptable to everyone, arguments. This is not one of those times.
>
>Do I take it, then, that you imagine as plausible the following
>conversation:
>
> -- I'm taller than her.
> -- Taller than her what?
>
>I find this unlikely. What would produce the second speaker's
response
>as above would be:
>
> -- I'm taller than hers.
> -- Taller than her what?
>
>Do you not agree at least that of the two conversations, the second
>is much more plausible?
I would infer from the first expression that there is a missing word.
I would therefore have to ask, "Taller than her what?"
The second expression does not make any sense at all. My answer would
be, "What the heck are you trying to say?"
--
Skitt http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/5537/
Evan Kirshenbaum
Neil Coffey <neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> writes:
Sorry. My HPSG bias showing. We treated English as having three
cases: nominative, accusative, and genitive. Note that these were
purely *syntactic* notions, defined by how they behaved in sentences
and said nothing about any putative thematic roles or other semantic
notions.
Common and proper nouns were nom|acc, possessive pronouns and "'s"
were gen, other pronouns were nom, acc, or nom|acc as appropriate.
"Her" would be [acc, subcat: <>] or [gen, subcat: <NP>]. "His" would
be [gen, subcat: <> or <NP>] (with, of course, more detail about how
the unrealized complement would be extracted from the discourse).
The only alternative would seem to be to call the forms "subjective",
"objective", and "possessive", and that seems to have at least as much
(if not more) connotative baggage.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |_Bauplan_ is just the German word
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |for blueprint. Typically, one
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |switches languages to indicate
|profundity.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Richard Dawkins
(650)857-7572
Neil Coffey
In article <v9hd8ch...@garrett.hpl.hp.com>, Evan Kirshenbaum
<URL:mailto:ev...@garrett.hpl.hp.com> wrote:
> Sorry. My HPSG bias showing. We treated English as having three
> cases: nominative, accusative, and genitive. Note that these were
> purely *syntactic* notions, defined by how they behaved in sentences
> and said nothing about any putative thematic roles or other semantic
> notions.
>
> Common and proper nouns were nom|acc, possessive pronouns and "'s"
> were gen, other pronouns were nom, acc, or nom|acc as appropriate.
> "Her" would be [acc, subcat: <>] or [gen, subcat: <NP>]. "His" would
> be [gen, subcat: <> or <NP>] (with, of course, more detail about how
> the unrealized complement would be extracted from the discourse).
I can see at least three problems with this idea. Two relate to English
specifically; the other to a universal:
(1) The idea of saying that "man's" is the genetive of "man", "boy's"
is the genetive of "boy" etc doesn't work too well when you consider
how the possessive marker 's is actually used in English. How
would this analysis cope, for example, with:
This is the girl I saw yesterday's brother.
(2) There is a problem in saying that "him" is the accusative of "he",
"me" is the accusative of "I" in the lack of phonetic similarity
and phonetic patterning. What seems more likely is that "he/him/his"
are conceptualised as three separate words.
Compare this, for example with Dacca Bengali: ami/amar (I/my);
tumi/tomar [pronounced 'tumar'] (you/your); apni/apnar (you/your),
where there would seem to be a genuine case for saying that the
second of each pair is a derivative of the first via the genitive
ending '-r' (which is also added to nouns).
(3) In languages which have productive case marking, equivalents of
"his", "her", "your" can be seen to be words in their own right,
which themselves have nominative/accusative/genitive etc forms.
There was perhaps a time when one might have talked about pronouns
such as "I", "you" declining. I don't think we can look at the English
of 1998 and suppose that they're conceptualised in this way. People
who suppose that English has case marking have probably been studying
too much Latin.
Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting
In article <357e4aea...@netnews.hinet.net>, Tina_...@my-dejanews.net
(Tina C. Liu) writes:
>In tests I've seen that test grammar (TOEFL and GMAT), "I am taller
>than her" would be considered wrong. Would anyone consider "I am
>taller than she" absolutely wrong? Is the argument "than her" is
>right and "than she" is wrong?
As you know, there are several varieties and levels of English. One variety is
that used in the construction and answering of test questions. With any luck,
this variety of English will be very similar to the variety used in formal
writing. There are few written tests of spoken English.
I don't think anyone is arguing that "than she" is wrong at the formal level.
But native speakers learn the informal, spoken version of English first. For
many people, using "than she" in speech would mark you as "someone who talks
like a book."
Gary Williams
Evan Kirshenbaum
Neil Coffey <neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> writes:
> In article <v9hd8ch...@garrett.hpl.hp.com>, Evan Kirshenbaum
> <URL:mailto:ev...@garrett.hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>
> > Sorry. My HPSG bias showing. We treated English as having three
> > cases: nominative, accusative, and genitive. Note that these were
> > purely *syntactic* notions, defined by how they behaved in sentences
> > and said nothing about any putative thematic roles or other semantic
> > notions.
> >
> > Common and proper nouns were nom|acc, possessive pronouns and "'s"
> > were gen, other pronouns were nom, acc, or nom|acc as appropriate.
> > "Her" would be [acc, subcat: <>] or [gen, subcat: <NP>]. "His" would
> > be [gen, subcat: <> or <NP>] (with, of course, more detail about how
> > the unrealized complement would be extracted from the discourse).
>
> I can see at least three problems with this idea. Two relate to English
> specifically; the other to a universal:
We probably don't want to dive too far down into this in AUE, (and I'm
sure I'll make a mistake or two), but...
> (1) The idea of saying that "man's" is the genetive of "man", "boy's"
> is the genetive of "boy" etc doesn't work too well when you consider
> how the possessive marker 's is actually used in English. How
> would this analysis cope, for example, with:
>
> This is the girl I saw yesterday's brother.
It's a little hard to explain this stuff without being able to easily
draw attribute-value matrices, but I'll give it a shot. First off, I
presume we can dispense with the analysis of "This is X". "The girl I
saw yesterday's brother", as the direct object of the verb, is an
NP[acc]. It's head is the Nbar[acc], "brother". In HPSG, an Nbar is
[cat: noun, subcat<Det>]. A Determiner is [cat: det, subcat<NP>]
where the subcategorized NP is unified with the head of the outer NP
("brother") in this case. "'s" is a determiner which subcategorizes
for two NPs. The general schemata ensure that the grouping happens
correctly as
np[det[np[+np[the girl]
s/np[I saw yesterday]]
+det['s]]
+nbar[brother]]
with "+" marking the head daughter in each phrase.
There are a couple of other fiddly bits that keep "his's" and "I's"
from forming.
>
> (2) There is a problem in saying that "him" is the accusative of "he",
> "me" is the accusative of "I" in the lack of phonetic similarity
> and phonetic patterning. What seems more likely is that "he/him/his"
> are conceptualised as three separate words.
There is absolutely *no* assertion that they are generated from the
same root form. As I said above, the case markings are merely
descriptive of how the words behave in sentences. HPSG is pretty much
neutral about how the lexicon is structured, and pronouns were
generally pretty much assumed to be different lexical entries. There
was still debate (back when I was current in this stuff in the
mid-80s) over whether it was best to treat words like "her" as
multiple lexical entries with the same phonemes or as a single,
disjunctive lexical entry. It wasn't even clear whether there was any
predictive value to making the choice.
In any case, the handwaving answer is that it was pretty much assumed
that at least any form that wasn't produceable by a productive rule
was stored as a separate lexical entry.
> (3) In languages which have productive case marking, equivalents of
> "his", "her", "your" can be seen to be words in their own right,
> which themselves have nominative/accusative/genitive etc forms.
>
> There was perhaps a time when one might have talked about pronouns
> such as "I", "you" declining. I don't think we can look at the English
> of 1998 and suppose that they're conceptualised in this way. People
> who suppose that English has case marking have probably been studying
> too much Latin.
Again, I never said anything about case marking. I just talked about
*case*. One is a morphological phenomenon. The other is (at least)
syntactic. If pressed, though, I'd say that the clitic "'s" looks an
awful lot like a genitive case marker to me, even though it attaches
to NPs rather than nouns.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If all else fails, embarrass the
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |industry into doing the right
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |thing.
| Dean Thompson
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Skitt
Neil Coffey wrote in message ...
<and I snipped a lot which I will not address>
>"I am taller than
>her" is a natural-sounding utterance produced by educated native
>speakers and considered acceptable in many contexts.
>>Would anyone consider "I am taller than she" absolutely wrong?
<Tina said that>
>It sounds strange and pretentious to many speakers, and is from this
>point of view wrong in many contexts.
>Why not concentrate on understanding
>*why* particular utterances are acceptable/unacceptable in particular
>contexts.
You appear to love the expression "in context." I think that the
standard accepted meaning of that term, acceptable in most circles or
on most occasions (not contexts) for the specific views you are
expressing, is not appropriate. I believe, you meant to emphasize the
setting of the conversation, not the actual grouping or choice of the
words (primary meaning of "context"), in which the term under
discussion is acceptable. Am I wrong?
--
Skitt http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/5537/
Donna Richoux
Skitt <al...@myself.com> wrote:
> Neil Coffey wrote in message ...
> >Do I take it, then, that you imagine as plausible the following
> >conversation:
> >
> > -- I'm taller than her.
> > -- Taller than her what?
> >
> >I find this unlikely. What would produce the second speaker's response
> >as above would be:
> >
> > -- I'm taller than hers.
> > -- Taller than her what?
> >
> >Do you not agree at least that of the two conversations, the second
> >is much more plausible?
>
>
> I would infer from the first expression that there is a missing word.
> I would therefore have to ask, "Taller than her what?"
>
> The second expression does not make any sense at all. My answer would
> be, "What the heck are you trying to say?"
Skitt, are you trying to be funny? In real life there would be context.
Use your imagination.
Your child points to a boy and asks you, "Are you taller than his
dad?"
You point to another child, a girl, and say, "No, but I'm taller than
hers."
Isn't that meaningful? Yes. Isn't that correct? Yes.
As for the other situation, suppose your child comes rushing up to you
happily and says,
"Dad! You know cousin Freda? This year, I'm taller than her!"
Don't you know what your child means? Of course you do. Is it correct?
Well, if you think not, and you think this is a good moment, it's fine
by me if you tell your child another way of saying it, a way that you
prefer. Or save your correction for later discussion. Parents have that
sort of authority. But not for a moment will I believe that you were in
doubt as to whether your child really meant to say "her friend" or "her
chair" or something.
Best --- Donna Richoux
Donna Richoux
Neil Coffey <neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> In article <357e4aea...@netnews.hinet.net>, Tina C. Liu
> <URL:mailto:Tina_...@my-dejanews.net> wrote:
>
> > In tests I've seen that test grammar (TOEFL and GMAT), "I am taller
> > than her" would be considered wrong.
>
> Then ask yourself what the point of the test is.
To get into graduate school, isn't it?
[snip]
> > Is the argument "than her" is right and "than she" is wrong?
>
> From one point of view, yes. But who really cares about binning things
> as either "right" or "wrong" anyway.
People who have to pass graduate school admissions tests do.
>Why not concentrate on understanding
> *why* particular utterances are acceptable/unacceptable in particular
> contexts.
Do you mean, you recomend that the students not only know that the
test-makers don't want "taller than her" selected, but the students also
have a plausible, nay, understandable reason to attach to the
test-maker's position? I suppose you might mean that.
>This will give you a much more fulfilling and pragmatic
> understanding of the language and of language.
Like the pragmatic understanding of how TOEFL/GMAT test-makers think?
The way they think is, students who know that "taller than her" is the
wrong answer to mark should be allowed into graduate school. Students
who don't, shouldn't be. That's pragmatic.
What am I missing here?
Best wishes --- Donna Richoux
Skitt
Neil Coffey wrote in message ...
>In article <6ln2eh$f11$1...@chile.it.earthlink.net>, Skitt
><URL:mailto:al...@myself.com> wrote:
>
>> >"I am taller than
>> >her" is a natural-sounding utterance produced by educated native
>> >speakers and considered acceptable in many contexts.
>
>> You appear to love the expression "in context." I think that the
>> standard accepted meaning of that term, acceptable in most circles
or
>> on most occasions (not contexts) for the specific views you are
>> expressing, is not appropriate.
>
>I'm sorry you think that; most linguists use the word 'context' in
>the way and with the meaning that I have.
>
>I'm quite happy to be quizzed about the terminology that I use,
>and will attempt to justify it if deemed necessary. I would
>appreciate it, however, if you would quote what I actually say
>rather than misrepresenting it for effect. The expression I
>actually used was not "in context" but "in many contexts".
I am not a linguist, therefore I have to rely on standard usage among
the masses. You, of all people, should understand that. Your use of
"context" varied from "in particular contexts" to "in many contexts,"
but my representation of its use, to my mind, did not serve it any
injustice. It is the meaning of "context," with or without any other
words, that I was commenting on.
--
Skitt http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/5537/
Skitt
Donna Richoux wrote in message
<1dafngw.x8p...@p051.hlm.euronet.nl>...
>Skitt <al...@myself.com> wrote:
>
>> Neil Coffey wrote in message ...
>
Yes what? It isn't meaningful? It isn't correct? Just teasing, but . .
.
As I try to be precise in what I say, and I expect others to do the
same, particularly when it is important to the discussion. I read what
I saw. There was no context. The context you have provided obviously
validates the expression, but without it, it is nonsense.
>As for the other situation, suppose your child comes rushing up to
you
>happily and says,
>
> "Dad! You know cousin Freda? This year, I'm taller than her!"
>
>Don't you know what your child means? Of course you do. Is it
correct?
>Well, if you think not, and you think this is a good moment, it's
fine
>by me if you tell your child another way of saying it, a way that you
>prefer. Or save your correction for later discussion. Parents have
that
>sort of authority. But not for a moment will I believe that you were
in
>doubt as to whether your child really meant to say "her friend" or
"her
>chair" or something.
I would at an appropriate time explain the options and the possible
associated consequences, then leave it up to my child to decide what
is best.
--
Skitt http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/5537/
John Emery
add avis to ucd
----------
In article <6lmf1p$s8...@svlss.lmms.lmco.com>, "Skitt" <al...@myself.com>
wrote:
>Neil Coffey wrote:
>>
>>Do I take it, then, that you imagine as plausible the following
>>conversation:
>>
>> -- I'm taller than her.
>> -- Taller than her what?
>>
>>I find this unlikely.
snip
>
>
>I would infer from the first expression that there is a missing word.
>I would therefore have to ask, "Taller than her what?"
Really? This is more than I would have thought possible. "Taller than her"
seems perfectly natural, perfectly acceptable at all registers. I am a bit
amazed that anyone considers it 'incorrect'. 'Than' is obviously functioning
as a preposition here. I could easily argue that 'taller than she' is
incorrect, as 'she' requires a verb (and none of that 'verbal elision'
nonsense, that's just an excuse for lazy, sloppy usage!). I'd ask 'taller
than she what?', taller than she is? taller than she can jump?
M. Ranjit Mathews
John Emery wrote:
you're on the right track. the right answer is "taller than she is tall". "I am
taller than her" would mean "I am taller than I am her".
Evan Kirshenbaum
Neil Coffey <neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> writes:
> In article <v9hlnr5...@garrett.hpl.hp.com>, Evan Kirshenbaum
> <URL:mailto:ev...@garrett.hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>
> > Again, I never said anything about case marking. I just talked about
> > *case*. One is a morphological phenomenon. The other is (at least)
> > syntactic.
>
> There's possibly a problem with assuming that syntactic and morphological
> case are completely isolated phenomena -- we find instances in German,
> for example, where the grammaticality of an utterance depends on
> morphological criterea (relating to case). It's probably going a bit
> off-topic for aue, but if nobody minds particularly, I can give one or
> two examples...?
Ok, but I'm not sure where you're going with this. Clearly most (all?)
languages have productive rules by which one lexical form can be
derived from another, and in many languages some of those rules
involve producing forms which are marked for case. From a
syntactician's point of view, though, it really doesn't matter how one
goes about generating or recognizing a sequence of phonemes as a
lexeme for which case is (at least partially) specified. I'm not even
sure quite what you mean by "grammaticality of an utterance
[depending] on morphological criteria (relating to case)" as opposed
to merely depending on the case of the lexemes themselves.
But go ahead with your examples. Unfortunately, my German isn't
practically nonexistent, so I can't make any promises. (And I should
point out, just in case it isn't obvious, in an HPSG analysis case is
far from the only attribute that is used to decide grammaticality or
structure.)
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The great thing about Microsoft
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |dominating the world is that
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |there's no shortage of support
|opportunities.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Sam Alvis
(650)857-7572
P&DSchultz
M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
> you're on the right track. the right answer is "taller than she is tall". "I am
> taller than her" would mean "I am taller than I am her".
But it *doesn't* mean that, does it? All native speakers realize that
it means she is shorter than me. So your analysis must be wrong. The
explanation that "than" is a preposition here makes more sense.
//P. Schultz
M. Ranjit Mathews
P&DSchultz wrote:
According to the grammatical rules laid out in grammar books like Wren & Martin,
that's what it means. People who don't formally learn grammar follow colloquial
usage.
What does "I know him better than her" mean ? Does it have the same meaning as "I
know him better than she" ?
P&DSchultz
M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
>
> P&DSchultz wrote:
>
> > M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
> > > you're on the right track. the right answer is "taller than she is tall". "I am
> > > taller than her" would mean "I am taller than I am her".
> >
> > But it *doesn't* mean that, does it? All native speakers realize that
> > it means she is shorter than me. So your analysis must be wrong. The
> > explanation that "than" is a preposition here makes more sense.
>
> According to the grammatical rules laid out in grammar books like Wren & Martin,
> that's what it means.
Well, it's quite clear that they are mistaken. Maybe they mean that
if they had their way, that would be what it meant.
> People who don't formally learn grammar follow colloquial
> usage.
People who *do* formally learn grammar also follow colloquial usage.
That's how the language changes.
> What does "I know him better than her" mean ? Does it have the same meaning as "I
> know him better than she" ?
It can. It is just as ambiguous as "I know Jim better than Bill."
There's nothing grammatically wrong with it; it's just poorly stated.
That's how English works.
//P. Schultz
Mike Zorn
>In article <rigoleto.897458715@kaiwan009>, Mike Zorn
>> The only reaonable response to "I'm taller than her" is "taller
>> than her what?"
>????????????
>"I'm taller than her what?" might be a reasonable response to
>"I'm taller than hers". But I cannot imagine a conversation in which
>"I'm taller than her" would be interpreted as "I'm taller than hers".
If you drop off the last word, you get the original sentence, which
seems incomplete, so I have to ask, "Taller than her what?
The whole thing could be much simplified if we just put back in the
word that was left out: "I'm taller than she is." Here 'than' seems
obviously to be a conjunction introducing the second member of a
comparison.
One of my trusty grammar books (trusty on this side on the ocean;
perhaps less so on yours) says that 'than' is often a preposition, and
usually in a verbless clause (than he, than I). In informal usage,
it's followed by the accusative: "You're faster than him."
So by a circuitous route, we're back to the beginning. I'll accept
it as stated, but only with a muffled "harrumph" from me.
Mike Zorn rigo...@kaiwan.com
Mike Zorn
>It sounds strange and pretentious to many speakers, and is from this
>point of view wrong in many contexts. Probably the only
>reason it's even considered possible at all is because Latin-obsessed
>grammarians with a poor understanding of the nature of language had
>attempted to introduce it as a hypercorrection.
Now we're in agreement. I think we're starting to leave behind
the injunction to never split an infinitive. ("Star Trek" may be
playing a major part, with it's "to boldly go..." introduction.)
They told us not to do that because in Latin, the infinitive is only
one word (videre, to see), so you couldn't split it if you wanted to.
When you translated into English you were supposed to keep the
infinitive together. But so few of our daily conversations are
translations from the Latin that the rule no longer makes sense.
What rules there are ought to make sense (unlike French, where
there seem to be more exceptions than rules). The one about "verbs
and nouns should agree in number" seems like a good one. (Except that,
over here, companies are singular nouns. It must seem as odd to you
to hear "General Motors has decided to..." as it does to us to hear
"The BBC have decided to..". But I digress.
Mike Zorn rigo...@kaiwan.com
Neil Coffey
> >"I am taller than
> >her" is a natural-sounding utterance produced by educated native
> >speakers and considered acceptable in many contexts.
> You appear to love the expression "in context." I think that the
> standard accepted meaning of that term, acceptable in most circles or
> on most occasions (not contexts) for the specific views you are
> expressing, is not appropriate.
I'm sorry you think that; most linguists use the word 'context' in
the way and with the meaning that I have.
I'm quite happy to be quizzed about the terminology that I use,
and will attempt to justify it if deemed necessary. I would
appreciate it, however, if you would quote what I actually say
rather than misrepresenting it for effect. The expression I
actually used was not "in context" but "in many contexts".
Neil
Neil Coffey
In article <v9hlnr5...@garrett.hpl.hp.com>, Evan Kirshenbaum
<URL:mailto:ev...@garrett.hpl.hp.com> wrote:
> Again, I never said anything about case marking. I just talked about
> *case*. One is a morphological phenomenon. The other is (at least)
> syntactic.
There's possibly a problem with assuming that syntactic and morphological
case are completely isolated phenomena -- we find instances in German,
for example, where the grammaticality of an utterance depends on
morphological criterea (relating to case). It's probably going a bit
off-topic for aue, but if nobody minds particularly, I can give one or
two examples...?
Neil
Truly Donovan
On 08 Jun 1998 15:56:38 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum
<ev...@garrett.hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>It's a floor wax *and* a dessert topping.
I picked up a Lawrence Block reprint in the supermarket this evening
and the opening paragraph contained a sentence that used *BOTH* forms
-- something on the order of "he was taller than me, and heavier than
I was."
I don't think I've ever run into that before. I bought the book
anyway, but I'm not sure how much of that I can handle. I was reared
by someone who did not admit the possibility of the prepositional
form, so I can't write it, although I've sometimes caught myself
saying it. (She can't hear me any more.)
--
Truly Donovan
reply to truly at lunemere dot com
M. Ranjit Mathews
P&DSchultz wrote:
> > What does "I know him better than her" mean ? Does it have the same meaning as "I
> > know him better than she" ?
>
> It can. It is just as ambiguous as "I know Jim better than Bill."
> There's nothing grammatically wrong with it; it's just poorly stated.
> That's how English works.
Grammatically, neither sentences is ambiguous. The first means "I know him better than I
know her". The second means "I know him better than she knows him".
>
>
M. Ranjit Mathews
M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
> Grammatically, neither sentences is ambiguous. The first means "I know him better than
I mean sentence.
Martin Murray
Neil Coffey (neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk) wrote:
: In article <357e4aea...@netnews.hinet.net>, Tina C. Liu
: <URL:mailto:Tina_...@my-dejanews.net> wrote:
:
: > than her" would be considered wrong.
:
: Then ask yourself what the point of the test is. "I am taller than
: her" is a natural-sounding utterance produced by educated native
: speakers and considered acceptable in many contexts.
: > Would anyone consider "I am taller than she" absolutely wrong?
:
: It sounds strange and pretentious to many speakers, and is from this
: point of view wrong in many contexts. Probably the only
: reason it's even considered possible at all is because Latin-obsessed
: grammarians with a poor understanding of the nature of language had
: attempted to introduce it as a hypercorrection.
I am very unhappy with Neil's argument that because a certain group of
people (a subset of those who would say "taller than her") think that
"taller than she" is strange and pretentious those of us who think it is
correct should change our ways of speaking to what we think is wrong.
Consider the reverse argument. "with him and I" sounds wrong, illogical,
and uneducated to me, and, I would hope, to many a.u.e regulars. Is it
therefore "wrong in many contexts"? Or does "strange and pretentious"
disqualify usage but "illogical" does not? What hope for a logical
language then, if fashion is more important than logic, and approval by
the uneducated is more important than approval by the educated?
Martin Murray
Neil Coffey
In article <rigoleto.897540177@kaiwan009>, Mike Zorn
<URL:mailto:rigo...@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com> wrote:
> They told us not to do that because in Latin, the infinitive is only
> one word (videre, to see), so you couldn't split it if you wanted to.
There are several major flaws in this argument, and frankly it's
really not worth worrying about an idea as stupid as this. But just in
case anyone's in any doubt, the most obvious flaw is that Latin and
English and quite different varieties. What's true of one may or may
not be true of another.
Specifically, it appears that Latin did not have what syntacticians
sometimes refer to as "functional categories". Obviously, this is getting
a bit technical, but to cut a long story short: Just as languages
have Verb Phrases and Noun Phrases, some languages also have
Inflectional Phrases and Determiner Phrases. Inflectional Phrases
are most notably manifest in forms such as 'to see', 'to go' in
English, 'de voir', 'de partir' in French, 'zu sehen', 'zu gehen'
in German etc, where the infinitive is preceded by what looks to
all intents and purposes like a preposition (we might call it
an inflectional marker). The Latinists assumed that the 'to' was
part of the infinitive (another flaw in the split infinitive argument)
rather than part of an inflectional phrase.
Modern Latin now has inflectional phrases, and therefore infinitive
markers: French 'DE partir', Italian 'DI partire' etc. Nobody
would try and claim that 'de bien partir' in French represented
a split infinitive.
Neil Coffey
In article <v9hogw0...@garrett.hpl.hp.com>, Evan Kirshenbaum
<URL:mailto:ev...@garrett.hpl.hp.com> wrote:
> > There's possibly a problem with assuming that syntactic and morphological
> > case are completely isolated phenomena -- we find instances in German,
> > for example, where the grammaticality of an utterance depends on
> > morphological criterea (relating to case).
[...]
> Ok, but I'm not sure where you're going with this.
The analysis you offered deemed that morphology was irrelevant to
syntactic case. I'm saying that there are instances where this might
not be so; it's not clear that we can ignore morphological criterea
when examining syntactic case. The notion of "he/him/his" being
conceptualised as three separate words might therefore not be as
irrelevant as you were suggesting.
In German, certain pronouns can serve simultaneously as complements
of a main sentence and a relative. Generally, this is only grammatical
if both main and relative sentences require the complement to be
in the same case:
Ich hoere, wen er hoert.
I hear, who-ACC he hears.
"I can hear whoever he can hear."
Whereas the following is ungrammatical, because the verb of the
main requires 'wen' to be in the nominative, whereas 'hoert'
requires it in the accusative. Neither nominative or accusative
is possible:
Ich bin, *wer/*wen er hoert.
I am, who-*NOM/*ACC he hears.
However, if the pronoun is morphologically identical in both
nominative and accusative forms, the sentence is grammatical.
For example, the pronoun 'was' ("what", "whatever") is ambiguously
nominative and accusative:
Ich bin, was er hoert.
I am, what-NOM/ACC he hears.
"I'm the thing he can hear."
It's probably not worth getting too bogged down in this, as I've
said before. All I would say is that morphological case may be
more of a reflection on syntactic case than you were suggesting.
Neil Coffey
In article <6lnafm$mu$1...@bolivia.it.earthlink.net>, Skitt
<URL:mailto:al...@myself.com> wrote:
> I am not a linguist, therefore I have to rely on standard usage among
> the masses. You, of all people, should understand that. Your use of
> "context" varied from "in particular contexts" to "in many contexts,"
> but my representation of its use, to my mind, did not serve it any
> injustice. It is the meaning of "context," with or without any other
> words, that I was commenting on.
The use of 'context' to mean 'situation' is perfectly common outside
linguistics anyway.
Neil Coffey
In article <rigoleto.897540054@kaiwan009>, Mike Zorn
<URL:mailto:rigo...@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com> wrote:
> I was thinking of something like: "I'm taller than her husband."
> If you drop off the last word, you get the original sentence, which
> seems incomplete, so I have to ask, "Taller than her what?
But people don't actually make this kind of ellipsis. There is no
possibility that a native speaker would say "I'm taller than her"
to mean "I'm taller than her cat/husband/grand piano etc". The
only possible interpretation of "I'm taller than her" is "I'm taller
than she is" (and not "I'm taller than I am her", as you suggested).
> The whole thing could be much simplified if we just put back in the
> word that was left out: "I'm taller than she is." Here 'than' seems
> obviously to be a conjunction introducing the second member of a
> comparison.
But, as has now been pointed out several times, just because a
word is a conjunction in one instance does not make it a conjunction
in another instance. The fact that you can say "...than she is" is
a red herring as far as analysing "...than her" is concerned.
Just as you would not analyse "...since him" on the basis of
"...since he is".
> One of my trusty grammar books (trusty on this side on the ocean;
> perhaps less so on yours) says that 'than' is often a preposition, and
> usually in a verbless clause (than he, than I). In informal usage,
> it's followed by the accusative: "You're faster than him."
Does your grammar book not find it strange that for most prepositions
the form 'he', 'I' is not a possible complement: "with he", "with I"?
As I've said before, I'm highly suspicious of words like 'accusative'
being applied to English. It's not really sensible to apply the
criterea of inflecting languages to ones that don't inflect.
Neil
Neil Coffey
In article <1dafq7a.rc...@p051.hlm.euronet.nl>, Donna Richoux
<URL:mailto:tr...@euronet.nl> wrote:
> > From one point of view, yes. But who really cares about binning things
> > as either "right" or "wrong" anyway.
>
> People who have to pass graduate school admissions tests do.
Well they shouldn't. If the paper asks "which of these sentences
is right or wrong" then the candiate writes "both may be considered
right or wrong, depending on the interlocutor and/or speech
context". But hopefully the examiners will be a bit more
intelligent than to ask such a question; if not, the exam seems
fairly worthless.
If the question says "which of these sentences is acceptable", then
the candidate can write on the paper that "her" is considered
acceptable in most speech contexts, but that in very formal
registers, some speakers have learned to prefer "she". The examiner
is forced to give you the mark.
> Like the pragmatic understanding of how TOEFL/GMAT test-makers think?
> The way they think is, students who know that "taller than her" is the
> wrong answer to mark should be allowed into graduate school. Students
> who don't, shouldn't be. That's pragmatic.
Does anyone know for sure that "taller than her" would actually
be marked wrong? You never know, the examiners might just be a bit more
intelligent and knowledgeable than you're giving them credit for.
We can but hope that this is the case...
Neil Coffey
In article <EuDsu...@fsa.bris.ac.uk>, Martin Murray
<URL:mailto:co...@zeus.bris.ac.uk> wrote:
> I am very unhappy with Neil's argument that because a certain group of
> people (a subset of those who would say "taller than her") think that
> "taller than she" is strange and pretentious those of us who think it is
> correct should change our ways of speaking to what we think is wrong.
I haven't actually said that. How can you say that people "should"
say anything?
I am merely pointing out as a statement of fact that many speakers
consider that "I am taller than she" sounds pretentious.
> Consider the reverse argument. "with him and I" sounds wrong, illogical,
> and uneducated to me, and, I would hope, to many a.u.e regulars.
People "hoping" that others would say X, Y or Z rather than concentrating
on developing analytical skills is probably the main reason why people's
understanding of the way language works remains handicapped when compared
to other fields.
j. lyle
In article <357F3382...@austin.ibm.com>,
M. Ranjit Mathews <ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
>
>John Emery wrote:
>>
>>Really? This is more than I would have thought possible. "Taller than
>>her" seems perfectly natural, perfectly acceptable at all registers. I am
>>a bit amazed that anyone considers it 'incorrect'. 'Than' is obviously
>>she' is incorrect, as 'she' requires a verb (and none of that 'verbal
>>elision' nonsense, that's just an excuse for lazy, sloppy usage!). I'd
>>ask 'taller than she what?', taller than she is? taller than she can
>>jump?
>
>you're on the right track. the right answer is "taller than she is tall".
>"I am taller than her" would mean "I am taller than I am her".
So does "I could walk no farther than the corner before I collapsed" mean
"I could walk no farther than the corner could walk before I collapsed"?
And if "I am taller than she" is the only correct form--if "than" cannot
be followed by an objective pronoun--what is your explanation for the
formally correct "You are taller than whom?"
j. lyle
In article <rigoleto.897540054@kaiwan009>,
Mike Zorn <rigo...@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com> wrote:
>
> One of my trusty grammar books (trusty on this side on the ocean;
>perhaps less so on yours) says that 'than' is often a preposition, and
>usually in a verbless clause (than he, than I).
A grammar book that states that a subjective pronoun can be the object of
a preposition is a grammar book that I would not trust any farther than I
could throw it!
H Gilmer
Martin Murray (co...@zeus.bris.ac.uk) wrote:
: Consider the reverse argument. "with him and I" sounds wrong, illogical,
: and uneducated to me, and, I would hope, to many a.u.e regulars. Is it
: therefore "wrong in many contexts"? Or does "strange and pretentious"
: disqualify usage but "illogical" does not? What hope for a logical
: language then, if fashion is more important than logic, and approval by
: the uneducated is more important than approval by the educated?
"with him and I" sounds wrong and uneducated, but not illogical.
Hg
M. Ranjit Mathews
j. lyle wrote:
> >you're on the right track. the right answer is "taller than she is tall".
> >"I am taller than her" would mean "I am taller than I am her".
>
> So does "I could walk no farther than the corner before I collapsed" mean
> "I could walk no farther than the corner could walk before I collapsed"?
Nope. It would mean "I could walk no farther than the corner is far before I
collapsed"?
> And if "I am taller than she" is the only correct form--if "than" cannot
> be followed by an objective pronoun--what is your explanation for the
> formally correct "You are taller than whom?"
The question is not formally correct.Q. Who are you taller than ?A. I am taller
than she.
Q. Whom did you see ?
A. I saw her.
Donna Richoux
Skitt <al...@myself.com> wrote:
[snip]
>I read what I saw. There was no context. The context you have provided
>obviously validates the expression, but without it, it is nonsense.
Yeah, but did you ever hear that where there's a will, there's a way? It
did not take an act of rare genius to contruct an example where "I'm
taller than hers" was meaningful, it just took a willingness to admit it
might be possible (likely, even) and to turn over the idea a bit. All I
had to say to myself was, "Well, what *would* it mean, if somebody who
knows the language well said it and meant it?" Accenting different
syllables helped.
Nevertheless, your observation is absolutely and amazingly true. The
context validated the expression. It takes context for any language to
be meaningful, doesn't it? The most elegant Latvian radio broadcast
might as well be Greek, or Mandarin, or children's Hobble-Bobble Private
Language, or random static, for all the sense I could make of it. The
pure language gives me no context clues whatsoever. But to call Latvian
nonsense might be taken amiss in some circles.
Best --- Donna Richoux
j. lyle
In article <357FEE03...@austin.ibm.com>,
>
>> >you're on the right track. the right answer is "taller than she is tall".
>> >"I am taller than her" would mean "I am taller than I am her".
>>
>> So does "I could walk no farther than the corner before I collapsed" mean
>> "I could walk no farther than the corner could walk before I collapsed"?
>
>Nope. It would mean "I could walk no farther than the corner is far before I
>collapsed"?
I don't think so!
>> And if "I am taller than she" is the only correct form--if "than" cannot
>> be followed by an objective pronoun--what is your explanation for the
>> formally correct "You are taller than whom?"
>
>The question is not formally correct.Q. Who are you taller than ?A. I am taller
>than she.
Yes, that question certainly is formally correct. "I am taller than
John." "Huh? Taller than *whom*????"
Or try
"Which when Beelzebub perceived--than whom,
Satan except, none higher sat--with grave
Aspect he rose. . . . " (Milton, _Paradise Lost_)
Or Evans and Evans's example "Mary Case, than whom there never was a
wiser woman."
Would you say "than who" here?
Mark Barton
In article <1dafq7a.rc...@p051.hlm.euronet.nl>, tr...@euronet.nl
(Donna Richoux) wrote:
>Neil Coffey <neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>>This will give you a much more fulfilling and pragmatic
>> understanding of the language and of language.
>
>Like the pragmatic understanding of how TOEFL/GMAT test-makers think?
>The way they think is, students who know that "taller than her" is the
>wrong answer to mark should be allowed into graduate school. Students
>who don't, shouldn't be. That's pragmatic.
>
>What am I missing here?
It seems to me the only thing you're missing is that your examples support
Neil rather than confound him. I should jolly well hope that poor
unfortunates studying for the TOEFL would put "than her" into the category
"not to be ticked on this test" but not into the category "wrong".
Similarly "than she" should be in the category "to be ticked on this
test", but not in the category "right" or even the category "for serious
use in real life".
Cheers,
Mark B.
--
Please remove the spam block (both bits) from my address to reply.
If you receive this by email, note that it was posted as well. Please
make your preferences about CCing known. My default is to CC when
answering a serious query or if I severely criticise a post.
M. Ranjit Mathews
j. lyle wrote:
> In article <357FEE03...@austin.ibm.com>,
> M. Ranjit Mathews <ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
> >j. lyle wrote:
> >
> >> >you're on the right track. the right answer is "taller than she is tall".
> >> >"I am taller than her" would mean "I am taller than I am her".
> >>
> >> So does "I could walk no farther than the corner before I collapsed" mean
> >> "I could walk no farther than the corner could walk before I collapsed"?
> >
> >Nope. It would mean "I could walk no farther than the corner is far before I
> >collapsed"?
>
> I don't think so!
The plane can fly no farther than London (is far).
I can walk no farther than the corner (is far).
I can walk as far as the corner (is far).
That is how conjunctions are used.
> >> And if "I am taller than she" is the only correct form--if "than" cannot
> >> be followed by an objective pronoun--what is your explanation for the
> >> formally correct "You are taller than whom?"
> >
> >The question is not formally correct.Q. Who are you taller than ?A. I am taller
> >than she.
>
> Yes, that question certainly is formally correct. "I am taller than
> John." "Huh? Taller than *whom*????"
a common american colloquialisn.
> Or try
>
> "Which when Beelzebub perceived--than whom,
> Satan except, none higher sat--with grave
> Aspect he rose. . . . " (Milton, _Paradise Lost_)
> Or Evans and Evans's example "Mary Case, than whom there never was a
> wiser woman."
>
> Would you say "than who" here?
No. Think about why you would say "She, than whom there never was a wiser woman"
rather than "Her, than whom there never was a wiser woman".
The same applies to "Beelzebub, than whom none higher sat".
Martin Murray
Neil Coffey (neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk) wrote:
: In article <EuDsu...@fsa.bris.ac.uk>, Martin Murray
: <URL:mailto:co...@zeus.bris.ac.uk> wrote:
:
: > I am very unhappy with Neil's argument that because a certain group of
: > "taller than she" is strange and pretentious those of us who think it is
: > correct should change our ways of speaking to what we think is wrong.
:
: I haven't actually said that. How can you say that people "should"
: say anything?
:
: I am merely pointing out as a statement of fact that many speakers
What you actually said was
"It sounds strange and pretentious to many speakers, and is from this
point of view wrong in many contexts. Probably the only
reason it's even considered possible at all is because Latin-obsessed
grammarians with a poor understanding of the nature of language had
attempted to introduce it as a hypercorrection."
That sounds very much to me like saying that I shouldn't say "taller than
she". I believe I am quite entitled to say that people should
construct sentences that are unambiguous in preference to those that are
ambiguous. They will only be able to do that if they obey certain rules.
: > Consider the reverse argument. "with him and I" sounds wrong, illogical,
: > and uneducated to me, and, I would hope, to many a.u.e regulars.
:
: People "hoping" that others would say X, Y or Z rather than concentrating
: on developing analytical skills is probably the main reason why people's
: understanding of the way language works remains handicapped when compared
: to other fields.
I was not "hoping" people would say certain things, I was "hoping" that
others on a.u.e would agree with me that "with him and I" is illogical.
I see nothing wrong with proposing arguments to encourage people to say
"with him and me".
Again, you seem happy to let the people who say "with him and I" carry on
and not develop their analytical skills to the extent that they can see it
is illogical, yet insist that I must abandon the analytical principles
which lead me to believe that "with him and I" is wrong. (Before you jump
at that word, you used it first).
Martin Murray
Evan Kirshenbaum
Neil Coffey <neil....@st-annes.ox.ac.uk> writes:
> However, if the pronoun is morphologically identical in both
> nominative and accusative forms, the sentence is grammatical.
> For example, the pronoun 'was' ("what", "whatever") is ambiguously
> nominative and accusative:
>
> Ich bin, was er hoert.
> I am, what-NOM/ACC he hears.
> "I'm the thing he can hear."
Oh, that is a good one, and it's certainly tricky to handle for any
unification-based theory. I'm not sure what a schema that would allow
such a double-ended relative clause would look like even ignoring the
case problems. (I'm sure it can be done, but I'm pretty rusty, it
would take me a while, and I'm sure I don't know enough German to make
it reasonable.)
It's still not clear to me, though, that this has anything to do with
morphology, rather than simply lexicon. We appear to have a word
("was") which has case nom|acc. The hard part is accounting for the
fact that it appears to be unifying both ways simultaneously (which is
generally considered a no-no).
I've been trying to rack my brain (unsuccessfully) for a sentence in
English that behaves similarly. If the above is possible, it may be
possible to get a situation in which "Neil" or "the teacher" (nom|acc)
are allowed, but "I" and "me" are at least awkward. It would be
interesting to see whether "you" works in such a situation.
> It's probably not worth getting too bogged down in this, as I've
> said before. All I would say is that morphological case may be
> more of a reflection on syntactic case than you were suggesting.
Are you saying that you think that it's likely that "was" has the same
form in nominative and accusative *because* people want to use it in
sentences like the above, while "wer/wen" situations are less common?
That's an interesting theory, and I'm certainly not qualified to have
much of an opinion on its plausibility.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If I am ever forced to make a
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |choice between learning and using
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |win32, or leaving the computer
|industry, let me just say it was
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |nice knowing all of you. :-)
(650)857-7572 | Randal Schwartz
M. Ranjit Mathews
M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
> j. lyle wrote:
>
> > And if "I am taller than she" is the only correct form--if "than" cannot
> > be followed by an objective pronoun--what is your explanation for the
> > formally correct "You are taller than whom?"
As it turns out, than may be followed by an objective pronoun under certain
conditions.
"Who are you taller than ?" is the same as "Taller than whom are you ?"
> The question is not formally correct.Q. Who are you taller than ?A. I am taller
> than she.
>
Richard Badger
co...@zeus.bris.ac.uk (Martin Murray) wrote:
>I am very unhappy with Neil's argument that because a certain group of
>people (a subset of those who would say "taller than her") think that
>"taller than she" is strange and pretentious those of us who think it is
>correct should change our ways of speaking to what we think is wrong.
>
>Consider the reverse argument. "with him and I" sounds wrong, illogical,
>and uneducated to me, and, I would hope, to many a.u.e regulars. Is it
>therefore "wrong in many contexts"? Or does "strange and pretentious"
>disqualify usage but "illogical" does not? What hope for a logical
>language then, if fashion is more important than logic, and approval by
>the uneducated is more important than approval by the educated?
>
>Martin Murray
>
>
I hesitate to put words in other people's mouths but I do not think that
Neil is arguing this. He is saying that the normal construction is to use
'than' as a preposition.
The whole discussion is a bit odd. Why do we discuss the 'problems' of
'than'. What about 'after'?
She left after me
She left after I did.
Both seem fine to me
I would even accept
She left after I with an elliptical 'did'.
English allows a range of constructions. What is special about that?
Neil Coffey
In article <35800E2D...@austin.ibm.com>, M. Ranjit Mathews
<URL:mailto:ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
> As it turns out, than may be followed by an objective pronoun under certain
> conditions.
>
> "Who are you taller than ?" is the same as "Taller than whom are you ?"
Except, of course, that the second is not grammatical.
Neil Coffey
In article <EuEAy...@fsa.bris.ac.uk>, Martin Murray
<URL:mailto:co...@zeus.bris.ac.uk> wrote:
> "It sounds strange and pretentious to many speakers, and is from this
> point of view wrong in many contexts. Probably the only
> reason it's even considered possible at all is because Latin-obsessed
> grammarians with a poor understanding of the nature of language had
> attempted to introduce it as a hypercorrection."
>
> That sounds very much to me like saying that I shouldn't say "taller than
> she".
I'm giving an account as to why the form "taller than she", which
contradicts the intuitions of native speakers, should have retained
the usage that it does. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't say
anything.
> I believe I am quite entitled to say that people should
> construct sentences that are unambiguous in preference to those that are
> ambiguous.
You're entitled to say that the sky is yellow or that Taiwanese
water-melons are a regular cure for cancer of the toe nail for all I
care -- what I'm referring to is not an issue about the freedom of
speech or about people's rights and obligations. I'm engaging in
accounting for linguistic phenomena which can be observed in the
usage of native speakers, not worrying about the should's and ought-to's
of things.
> They will only be able to do that if they obey certain rules.
There are two things I'd say in answer to this. Firstly, ambiguity
is an inherent and necessary part of human language. Suggesting that
speakers should avoid it is like building sandcastles to stop the
tide coming in (apologies to readers of sci.lang who've heard me
use this image before).
Secondly, are you referring to an ambiguity which actually occurs
in native speaker conversations anyway? For example, the interpretation
of "I am taller than her" is not ambiguous.
> I see nothing wrong with proposing arguments to encourage people to say
> "with him and me".
There's nothing inherently wrong or immoral about it, it's just
fairly pointless, that's all. And the pointless arguments that people
should say X can pretty much always be opposed by other pointless
arguments that they should say Y instead.
> Again, you seem happy to let the people who say "with him and I" carry on
> and not develop their analytical skills to the extent that they can see it
> is illogical
If a particular language use which is extremely frequent in the usage
of educated native speakers is illogical to our understanding of
syntax, then that means that it is our understanding of syntax that
is inadequate.
As it happens, current models of syntax can account perfectly well
for "with him and I"; there's therefore no reason to suppose that
it's illogical in the first place.
> yet insist that I must abandon the analytical principles
> which lead me to believe that "with him and I" is wrong.
> (Before you jump at that word, you used it first).
Which word was that, then? 'principles'? 'abandon'?
By being analytical, I mean analysing the linguistic intuitions of
native speakers which actually exist, not justifying why you think
they ought to be something else.
M. Ranjit Mathews
Neil Coffey wrote:
> In article <35800E2D...@austin.ibm.com>, M. Ranjit Mathews
> <URL:mailto:ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> > As it turns out, than may be followed by an objective pronoun under certain
> > conditions.
> >
> > "Who are you taller than ?" is the same as "Taller than whom are you ?"
>
> Except, of course, that the second is not grammatical.
Thank you. Now, can you express the rules that specify when whom is legal after
than ?
a1a5...@bc.sympatico.ca
On 11 Jun 1998 15:40:32 GMT, jl...@ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu (j.
lyle) wrote:
>
>Or try
>
>"Which when Beelzebub perceived--than whom,
>Satan except, none higher sat--with grave
>Aspect he rose. . . . " (Milton, _Paradise Lost_)
>
>Or Evans and Evans's example "Mary Case, than whom there never was a
>wiser woman."
>
>Would you say "than who" here?
>
Not while Satan or a wiser woman are around. That would invite
expectation of even worse.
If IZZY is watching, perhaps he may care to substiture
"expection" for despised expectation, oh so verbally derived by
the most superficial inspection, or not. And be ruled on unruly
English by ruling English.
a1a5...@bc.sympatico.ca
On 11 Jun 1998 15:17:40 GMT, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux)
wrote:
>............... But to call Latvian nonsense might be taken amiss in some circles.
There are some poker games where ethnic drawing four and staying
for the pot goes unchallenged then? A bamboo lat for the
offender?
Neil Coffey
In article <358024C0...@austin.ibm.com>, M. Ranjit Mathews
<URL:mailto:ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
> > Except, of course, that the second is not grammatical.
>
> Thank you. Now, can you express the rules that specify when whom is legal after
> than ?
No.
What makes you think that such rules exist?
What makes you think that a particular usage can be "legal" or
"illegal"?
The fact is that native speakers will generally judge that
"Taller than whom are you?" is not a plausible utterance of English.
Therefore, it's ungrammatical.
M. Ranjit Mathews
Neil Coffey wrote:
> What makes you think that a particular usage can be "legal" or
> "illegal"?
Very well, I mean grammatical.
> The fact is that native speakers will generally judge that
> "Taller than whom are you?" is not a plausible utterance of English.
> Therefore, it's ungrammatical.
Well then, surely "'taller than who are you ?', asked he" is grammatical even though
it's not as common as "'he asked, "who are you taller than ?'" .
John Emery
add avis to ucd
----------
In article <35800E2D...@austin.ibm.com>, "M. Ranjit Mathews"
<ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
>M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
>
>> j. lyle wrote:
>>
>> > And if "I am taller than she" is the only correct form--if "than"
cannot
>> > be followed by an objective pronoun--what is your explanation for the
>> > formally correct "You are taller than whom?"
>
>As it turns out, than may be followed by an objective pronoun under certain
>conditions.
>
>"Who are you taller than ?" is the same as "Taller than whom are you ?"
>
This is what my vintage 1970 Am. Heritage Dictionary says. It baldly states
that 'than' should be considered a conjunction in formal writing, but may be
used as a preposition in informal writing or in speaking, then adds that
'whom' is an exception for formal writing and should be used after 'than' in
preference to 'who'. This is about as far from logical as one can get.
Brian J Goggin
On Thu, 11 Jun 1998 19:09:11 GMT, a1a5...@bc.sympatico.ca wrote:
[...]
>Not while Satan or a wiser woman are around.
[...]
>And be ruled on unruly English by ruling English.
Shorely shome mishtake?
bjg
Aaron J. Dinkin
In article <3580380F...@austin.ibm.com>, "M. Ranjit Mathews"
<ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
> Neil Coffey wrote:
>
> > The fact is that native speakers will generally judge that
> > "Taller than whom are you?" is not a plausible utterance of English.
> > Therefore, it's ungrammatical.
>
> Well then, surely "'taller than who are you ?', asked he" is grammatical even
> though it's not as common as "'he asked, "who are you taller than ?'" .
I don't consider "Taller than who are you?" a plausible utterance of
English. Of course, putting anything in quotes and following it with an
attribution - as "'Taller than who are you?' asked he" - is plausible,
since a direct quite can be anything, but I don't see what we gain from
that observation.
-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom
John Emery
add avis to ucd
----------
In article <3580380F...@austin.ibm.com>, "M. Ranjit Mathews"
<ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
>Neil Coffey wrote:
>
>> What makes you think that a particular usage can be "legal" or
>> "illegal"?
>
>Very well, I mean grammatical.
>
>> The fact is that native speakers will generally judge that
>> "Taller than whom are you?" is not a plausible utterance of English.
>> Therefore, it's ungrammatical.
>
>Well then, surely "'taller than who are you ?', asked he" is grammatical
even though
>it's not as common as "'he asked, "who are you taller than ?'" .
>
It *might* be grammatical (by which I mean 'comprehensible to the average
Anglophone), but it would be very marked (that is, something that would be
produced only in unusual circumstances). Sounds like something out of Dr.
Seuss to me.
M. Ranjit Mathews
Aaron J. Dinkin wrote:
> In article <3580380F...@austin.ibm.com>, "M. Ranjit Mathews"
> <ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> > Neil Coffey wrote:
> >
> > > The fact is that native speakers will generally judge that
> > > "Taller than whom are you?" is not a plausible utterance of English.
> > > Therefore, it's ungrammatical.
> >
> > Well then, surely "'taller than who are you ?', asked he" is grammatical even
> > though it's not as common as "'he asked, "who are you taller than ?'" .
>
> I don't consider "Taller than who are you?" a plausible utterance of
> English. Of course, putting anything in quotes and following it with an
> attribution - as "'Taller than who are you?' asked he" - is plausible,
> since a direct quite can be anything, but I don't see what we gain from
> that observation.
indeed ? would you say that "recommendations for you from many quarters have i
received" is also gramatically incorrect ? grammatical correctness is determined
by rules (productions) except in the case of idiomatic usage, which isn't
necessarily parsable by a machine that is programmed purely with the language's
grammar.
John Emery
add avis to ucd
----------
In article <3580644B...@austin.ibm.com>, "M. Ranjit Mathews"
<ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
>indeed ? would you say that "recommendations for you from many quarters
have i
>received" is also gramatically incorrect ?
Very much so. The predicate (recommendations...) comes before the subject.
The subject-verb phrase is in the interrogative order, but is not at the
start of the sentence, and it appears the sentence is not a question at all.
The only way I can see it as grammatical is if it were sung by a character
in an opera or musical. Otherwise it sounds bizarre. Well it would still
be bizarre if sung, but you expect these thing from time to time, to fit the
music, etc.
>grammatical correctness is determined
>by rules (productions) except in the case of idiomatic usage, which isn't
>necessarily parsable by a machine that is programmed purely with the
language's
>grammar.
And the above sentence breaks all the rules of English grammar. The word
order is completely wrong. After hearing the first phrase I'd expect
'recommendations' to be the subject, so something like, 'recommendations for
you from many quarters have been excellent' should follow. Upon hearing 'I'
I would become confused, then after hearing the rest of the sentence, I
would be all: What?! Was that supposed to be a question? How am I supposed
to respond to that?
P&DSchultz
M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
>
> P&DSchultz wrote:
>
> > > What does "I know him better than her" mean ? Does it have the same meaning as "I
> > > know him better than she" ?
> >
> > It can. It is just as ambiguous as "I know Jim better than Bill."
> > There's nothing grammatically wrong with it; it's just poorly stated.
> > That's how English works.
>
> Grammatically, neither sentence is ambiguous. The first means "I know him better than I
> know her". The second means "I know him better than she knows him".
"I know him better than she" and "The dog of Mary bited me"
share two things in common:
1. They are both unambiguous.
2. They are neither what normal native speakers would normally say.
To say something is unambiguous says nothing about its grammaticality.
On the other hand, "I know him better than Bill" is perfectly
grammatical, and very ambiguous. The ambiguity is a normal part of the
language. We deal with it. It comes in handy.
//P. Schultz
M. Ranjit Mathews
If you don't mind my being didactic, may I suggest a couple of improvements to your
sentences ?
P&DSchultz wrote:
> M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
> >
> > P&DSchultz wrote:
> >
> > > > What does "I know him better than her" mean ? Does it have the same meaning as "I
> > > > know him better than she" ?
> > >
> > > It can. It is just as ambiguous as "I know Jim better than Bill."
> > > There's nothing grammatically wrong with it; it's just poorly stated.
> > > That's how English works.
> >
> > Grammatically, neither sentence is ambiguous. The first means "I know him better than I
> > know her". The second means "I know him better than she knows him".
> "I know him better than she" and "The dog of Mary bited me"
bit me
> share two things in common:
> 1. They are both unambiguous.
> 2. They are neither what normal native speakers would normally say.
Neither is what a normal native speaker would normally say.
Aaron J. Dinkin
In article <358024C0...@austin.ibm.com>, "M. Ranjit Mathews"
<ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
> Neil Coffey wrote:
>
> > In article <35800E2D...@austin.ibm.com>, M. Ranjit Mathews
> > <URL:mailto:ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
> >
> > > As it turns out, than may be followed by an objective pronoun under
> > > certain conditions.
> > >
> > > "Who are you taller than ?" is the same as "Taller than whom are you ?"
> >
> > Except, of course, that the second is not grammatical.
>
> Thank you. Now, can you express the rules that specify when whom is legal
> after than ?
Always. The objection to "Taller than whom are you?" is not against "whom",
but rather against the syntax. You can't have the question word ("whom")
embedded so far from the front of the sentence. It ought to be "Whom are
you taller than?"
Aaron J. Dinkin
In article <3580644B...@austin.ibm.com>, "M. Ranjit Mathews"
<ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
> Aaron J. Dinkin wrote:
>
> > I don't consider "Taller than who are you?" a plausible utterance of
> > English. Of course, putting anything in quotes and following it with an
> > attribution - as "'Taller than who are you?' asked he" - is plausible,
> > since a direct quite can be anything, but I don't see what we gain from
> > that observation.
>
> indeed ? would you say that "recommendations for you from many quarters have
> i received" is also gramatically incorrect ? grammatical correctness is
> determined by rules (productions) except in the case of idiomatic usage,
> which isn't necessarily parsable by a machine that is programmed purely with
> the language's grammar.
First of all, "grammatical correctness is determined by rules" is false;
rules are determined by grammatical correctness.
And as for your sample sentence, it sounds like something a non-native
speaker would come up with. I would call it somewhat ungrammatical; I would
not consider it a likely utterance of a native speaker except in poetry,
and unless there were a compelling reason I would correct it in a text I
was proofreading.
M. Ranjit Mathews
Aaron J. Dinkin wrote:
> In article <358024C0...@austin.ibm.com>, "M. Ranjit Mathews"
> <ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> > Neil Coffey wrote:
> >
> > > In article <35800E2D...@austin.ibm.com>, M. Ranjit Mathews
> > > <URL:mailto:ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > As it turns out, than may be followed by an objective pronoun under
> > > > certain conditions.
> > > >
> > > > "Who are you taller than ?" is the same as "Taller than whom are you ?"
> > >
> > > Except, of course, that the second is not grammatical.
> >
> > Thank you. Now, can you express the rules that specify when whom is legal
> > after than ?
>
> Always. The objection to "Taller than whom are you?" is not against "whom",
> but rather against the syntax. You can't have the question word ("whom")
> embedded so far from the front of the sentence. It ought to be "Whom are
> you taller than?"
It is grammaticaly correct to have whom far to the right although it makes the
sentence more readable to Germans than to Englishmen. Wording it thus can change
its import slightly. Consider "intrepid sailors are we" versus "we are intrepid
sailors".
M. Ranjit Mathews
Aaron J. Dinkin wrote:
> In article <3580644B...@austin.ibm.com>, "M. Ranjit Mathews"
> <ran...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> > Aaron J. Dinkin wrote:
> >
> > > I don't consider "Taller than who are you?" a plausible utterance of
> > > English. Of course, putting anything in quotes and following it with an
> > > attribution - as "'Taller than who are you?' asked he" - is plausible,
> > > since a direct quite can be anything, but I don't see what we gain from
> > > that observation.
> >
> > indeed ? would you say that "recommendations for you from many quarters have
> > i received" is also gramatically incorrect ? grammatical correctness is
> > determined by rules (productions) except in the case of idiomatic usage,
> > which isn't necessarily parsable by a machine that is programmed purely with
> > the language's grammar.
>
> First of all, "grammatical correctness is determined by rules" is false;
> rules are determined by grammatical correctness.
A machine (rather than a human) would follow production rules to determine
whether a given text is grammatically correct. It would most certainly be a human
that designs the rules such that the machine can consume any grammatically
correct text. It is just like compiling a computer program; if the program is
grammatically correct, the compiler produces no syntax errors although there
might be semantic errors. we assume no idiomatic usage.
for example, "i swam through concrete" would be grammatically correct, although
it is a semantically nonsensical statement.
> And as for your sample sentence, it sounds like something a non-native
> speaker would come up with. I would call it somewhat ungrammatical; I would
> not consider it a likely utterance of a native speaker except in poetry,
> and unless there were a compelling reason I would correct it in a text I
> was proofreading.
Yes, its a construction used by a German in a Sherlock Holmes story. It's not
incorrect, but it's not very good form. To retain the exact import of the
sentence one would write, "From many quarters have I received recommendations for
you". This would have a stronger emphasis on "many" than "I have received
recommendations for you from many quarters" although, in speech, stress can be
concentrated on "many" in the latter sentence to give that import.
a1a5...@bc.sympatico.ca
Mr Coffey saysh I may shay that -- or anything elsh you
undershtand.
Justin B Rye
Than her what? Wouldn't that have to be "I am taller than I am she"?
Joking aside, "I am taller than she is tall" sounds unconvincing to
the point of ungrammaticality; the only context I can imagine it in
is an exchange along the lines of "Are you claiming to be taller than
she is wide, or what?" - "I am taller than she is *tall*"!
How would conjunctionalists analyse "I was no taller than *this*"
(plus gesture)? Is it simply ungrammatical? Or is it an elided form
of "I was no taller than this is", even though the gesture is not
itself "tall"?
JBR - not really @SPAMTRAP
Ankh kak! (Ancient Egyptian blessing)
Neil Coffey
In article <6lpi03$6jr$1...@mark.ucdavis.edu>, John Emery
<URL:mailto:jfe...@ucd.edu> wrote:
> This is what my vintage 1970 Am. Heritage Dictionary says. It baldly states
> that 'than' should be considered a conjunction in formal writing, but may be
^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^
> used as a preposition in informal writing or in speaking, then adds that
> 'whom' is an exception for formal writing and should be used after 'than' in
^^^^^^^^^
> preference to 'who'.
And what gives the person writing the dictionary the right to tell
you what you "should" or "may" write?
Neil
Neil Coffey
In article <adinkin-ya0231800...@news.nii.net>, Aaron J. Dinkin
<URL:mailto:adi...@commschool.org> wrote:
> Always. The objection to "Taller than whom are you?" is not against "whom",
> but rather against the syntax. You can't have the question word ("whom")
> embedded so far from the front of the sentence. It ought to be "Whom are
> you taller than?"
Why do you say that it "ought to be" X? What people actually say
is "Who are you taller than?". Surely that's what matters.
Neil