pronouns following preposition
Marc Buchalter
form? "him" or "me" instead of "he" and "I"?
Schainbaum, Robert
> When a pronown follows a preposition, should it always be in the Objective
> form? "him" or "me" instead of "he" and "I"?
Yup, that is a roger. Don't ever find yourself sayin' to someone, between you
and I. It might be bad to say me when you should say I, but it's worse to say
I when you should say me.
/r
R J Valentine
] When a pronown follows a preposition, should it always be in the Objective
] form? "him" or "me" instead of "he" and "I"?
After I read that twice over, I got to thinking that the preposition
before "I" might only look like a preposition or the "I" might have a
comma before it or quotes around it. And immediately after that I
realized that it also depends on the strictness the word "follows" is
attached to. I mean, if "follows" suggests to you the very next word
(with, I should add, no intervening punctuation), then are you considering
the possibility of a compound object where the second pronoun is insulated
from the preposition by a conjunction, as with the PDNTC "I" (q.v.)? But
then I noticed the e-mail address and realized that you couldn't get all
the way to a fancy college without knowing all that for I guess at least
ten years, unless it's homework for a remedial class, in which case the
answer you're looking for I suppose is "no". But cruel and uncalled for I
try to avoid, so that wouldn't be my first guess.
--
R. J. Valentine <mailto:r...@clark.net?subject=%3Cnews:alt.usage.english%3E%20>
Robert Lieblich
>
> When a pronown follows a preposition, should it always be in the Objective
> form? "him" or "me" instead of "he" and "I"?
Here'a a grammatically correct sentence with a pronoun in the nominative
that immediately follows a preposition: "Give it to whoever first asks
for it."
If you can explain why that sentence is correct, you'll have most of the
answer to your question.
anker...@my-deja.com
"Marc Buchalter" <marc...@uclink4.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> When a pronown follows a preposition, should it always be in the
> Objective form? "him" or "me" instead of "he" and "I"?
Well, no. 1) If the preposition is "of" then use the genitive,
the possessive case. "Any book of mine must be returned."
2) It is possible that a whole clause is the object of the
preposition: "I will speak to whoever is there." Compare
with "I will speak to him." The requirement of a subject in
the clause forces the nominative.
But in general, yes. Objects of almost all prepositions are
dative/accusative, which have the same spellings in English.
Word order and sentence meaning aids in separating the dative
and accusative.
All of these factors go into the decision of wise parents to
have their children take Latin in school.
GFH
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Robert Lieblich
>
> Robert Lieblich wrote:
>
> > Marc Buchalter wrote:
> > >
> > > When a pronown follows a preposition, should it always be in the Objective
> > > form? "him" or "me" instead of "he" and "I"?
> >
> > that immediately follows a preposition: "Give it to whoever first asks
> > for it."
> >
> > If you can explain why that sentence is correct, you'll have most of the
> > answer to your question.
>
> preposition and in the main clause?
No. I merely constructed a grammatically correct sentence in which the
word that immediately follows the preposition is a pronoun in the
nominative case. Perhaps if the original inquirer treats your question
as rhetorical, he will have taken the first step toward knowing what he
is about.
Carmen L. Abruzzi
----------
In article <8r0gqq$shu$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, anker...@my-deja.com
wrote:
>In article <8r0ag4$4e7$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>,
> "Marc Buchalter" <marc...@uclink4.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
>> When a pronown follows a preposition, should it always be in the
>> Objective form? "him" or "me" instead of "he" and "I"?
>
>Well, no. 1) If the preposition is "of" then use the genitive,
>the possessive case. "Any book of mine must be returned."
>2) It is possible that a whole clause is the object of the
>preposition: "I will speak to whoever is there." Compare
>with "I will speak to him." The requirement of a subject in
>the clause forces the nominative.
>
>But in general, yes. Objects of almost all prepositions are
>dative/accusative, which have the same spellings in English.
For nouns, they have the same spelling as the nominative as well.
But what makes you say that objects of prepositions are in the
dative/accusative rather than say, the ablative, or the
instrumental, or the partitive, or any of a number of other
cases, all of which happen to have the same spelling?
>Word order and sentence meaning aids in separating the dative
>and accusative.
>
>All of these factors go into the decision of wise parents to
>have their children take Latin in school.
>
Latin? That incomplete language? It has only the last vestiges
of the locative, has no instrumental, illogically using the
ablative to cover that as well as the illative, inessive,
adessive, elative, etc. etc. etc. No, if you really want to
learn grammar forget Latin and study a language that actually has
some real grammar, like Finnish, or Hungarian, or at least
Sanskrit.
Michael Cargal
<Robert.S...@Berlin.DE> wrote:
>Robert Lieblich wrote:
>
>> Marc Buchalter wrote:
>> >
>> > When a pronown follows a preposition, should it always be in the Objective
>> > form? "him" or "me" instead of "he" and "I"?
>>
>> Here'a a grammatically correct sentence with a pronoun in the nominative
>> that immediately follows a preposition: "Give it to whoever first asks
>> for it."
>>
>> If you can explain why that sentence is correct, you'll have most of the
>> answer to your question.
>
>"Scuse please. Are you making the claim that whoever is object of the
>preposition and in the main clause?
"Whoever" is the subject of "whoever first asks for it."
--
Michael Cargal mhca...@home.com
P&D Schultz
>
> Robert Lieblich wrote:
>
> > Marc Buchalter wrote:
> > >
> > > When a pronown follows a preposition, should it always be in the Objective
> > > form? "him" or "me" instead of "he" and "I"?
> >
> > Here'a a grammatically correct sentence with a pronoun in the nominative
> > that immediately follows a preposition: "Give it to whoever first asks
> > for it."
> >
> > If you can explain why that sentence is correct, you'll have most of the
> > answer to your question.
>
> "Scuse please. Are you making the claim that whoever is object of the
> preposition and in the main clause?
That has nothing to do with the question, which was "When a pronoun
follows a preposition, should it always be in the Objective form?"
Lieblich's example provides the answer, which is "No."
\\P. Schultz
P&D Schultz
> subordinate clauses.
No, that's if you share Lieblich's ability to address the question which
was asked. That question did not involve "main and subordinate clauses";
that's your own hobbyhorse, and you seem determined for some reason to
ride around on it in front of everyone.
\\P. Schultz
P&D Schultz
>
> Finnish and Hungarian are not Indo-European. Essentially not worthy of
> attention.
If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for
Shainbaum.
\\P. Schultz
P&D Schultz
> into main clauses and other types of phrasal clauses. <...>
I suspect both Mr. Lieblich and I know quite a sight more about that
than you do, youngblood. But Lieblich's aim seemed to be to answer the
question, whereas you seem to be into answering questions that nobody
asked, for the purpose of parading a pedestrian familiarity with the
commonplace and humdrum features of language, a pedestrian familiarity
you apparently hold in high esteem. Ya got the wrong audience, bub. We
know all that stuff.
\\P. Schultz
P&D Schultz
> Do
> you and Leiblich know "quite a sight more"? I doubt it. There's more to
> things than just knowing. You need to have some feeling for the thing
> to apply your putative knowledge. <...>
"You need to have some feeling..." That's GREAT! Your over-the-top naive
posing and jejune presumptuousness are hilarious and refreshing to the
soul. In fact, they're endearing and cute. I LOVE the way you keep
parading your cluelessness. Thanks for rising to the bait. MORE!
\\P. Schultz
Robert Lieblich
>
> Robert Lieblich wrote:
>
> > Schainbaum, Robert wrote:
> > >
> > > Robert Lieblich wrote:
> > >
> > > > Marc Buchalter wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > When a pronown follows a preposition, should it always be in the Objective
> > > > > form? "him" or "me" instead of "he" and "I"?
> > > >
> > > > Here'a a grammatically correct sentence with a pronoun in the nominative
> > > > that immediately follows a preposition: "Give it to whoever first asks
> > > > for it."
> > > >
> > > > If you can explain why that sentence is correct, you'll have most of the
> > > > answer to your question.
> > >
> > > "Scuse please. Are you making the claim that whoever is object of the
> > > preposition and in the main clause?
> >
> > word that immediately follows the preposition is a pronoun in the
> > nominative case. Perhaps if the original inquirer treats your question
> > as rhetorical, he will have taken the first step toward knowing what he
> > is about.
>
I know what I'm talking about -- at least this time -- and I'm doing you
the favor of taking all your comments on this thread about my ignorance
as rhetorical flourishes. As P. Schultz pointed out, there was a
question and I answered it. I even suggested that the inquiry might
extend beyond the immediate question and answer. I don't see-- at least
in this instance, why this is grounds for an accusation of ignorance.
I think Ankerstein knows what he's talking about, albeit the posting you
likely mean is but an esprit. I often don't know what *you* are talking
about, but we all have our limits.
I have no relatives in Florida. Many coreligionists, however, if that's
what you mean. I plan to live out my life no further south than I now
am.
Or is it everything you post intended either rhetorically or ironically?
Schainbaum, Robert
> Marc Buchalter wrote:
> >
> > When a pronown follows a preposition, should it always be in the Objective
> > form? "him" or "me" instead of "he" and "I"?
>
> Here'a a grammatically correct sentence with a pronoun in the nominative
> that immediately follows a preposition: "Give it to whoever first asks
> for it."
>
> If you can explain why that sentence is correct, you'll have most of the
> answer to your question.
"Scuse please. Are you making the claim that whoever is object of the
preposition and in the main clause?
/r
Schainbaum, Robert
> ["Schainbaum, Robert" <Robert.S...@Berlin.DE> wrote:]
>
> > Marc Buchalter wrote:
> >
> >> When a pronown follows a preposition, should it always be in the Objective
> >> form? "him" or "me" instead of "he" and "I"?
> >
> > Yup, that is a roger. Don't ever find yourself sayin' to someone, between you
> > and I. It might be bad to say me when you should say I, but it's worse to say
> > I when you should say me.
>
> Out here in Califonia we've, like, pretty much swapped "I" and "me".
Richter!
/r
Schainbaum, Robert
> No. I merely constructed a grammatically correct sentence in which the
> word that immediately follows the preposition is a pronoun in the
> nominative case. Perhaps if the original inquirer treats your question
> as rhetorical, he will have taken the first step toward knowing what he
> is about.
See Ankerstein's post. Follow your family to Florida.
/r
Schainbaum, Robert
> Latin? That incomplete language? It has only the last vestiges
> of the locative, has no instrumental, illogically using the
> ablative to cover that as well as the illative, inessive,
> adessive, elative, etc. etc. etc. No, if you really want to
> learn grammar forget Latin and study a language that actually has
> some real grammar, like Finnish, or Hungarian, or at least
> Sanskrit.
Finnish and Hungarian are not Indo-European. Essentially not worthy of
attention.
/r
Schainbaum, Robert
> On Fri, 29 Sep 2000 00:15:20 +0200, "Schainbaum, Robert"
> <Robert.S...@Berlin.DE> wrote:
>
> "Whoever" is the subject of "whoever first asks for it."
That's what I meant. Rhetorical question.
/r
Schainbaum, Robert
> That has nothing to do with the question, which was "When a pronoun
> follows a preposition, should it always be in the Objective form?"
> Lieblich's example provides the answer, which is "No."
That's if you share Leiblich's inability to distinguish between main and
subordinate clauses.
/r
Schainbaum, Robert
P&D Schultz wrote:
> No, that's if you share Lieblich's ability to address the question which
> was asked. That question did not involve "main and subordinate clauses";
> that's your own hobbyhorse, and you seem determined for some reason to
> ride around on it in front of everyone.
>
> \\P. Schultz
You and Leiblich may prefer to remain ignrant of how complex sentences are carved up
into main clauses and other types of phrasal clauses. You don't seem to care. No
matter how salient the distinction. Not my problem. Take a look at Mr. Ankerstein's
posting on this subject. Then shut your fookin' gob.
/r
Schainbaum, Robert
> "Schainbaum, Robert" wrote:
> >
> > Finnish and Hungarian are not Indo-European. Essentially not worthy of
> > attention.
>
> If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for
> Shainbaum.
>
> \\P. Schultz
You're all wound up, dudesky. Why don't you just climb into your crib and
chill.
/r
Schainbaum, Robert
> than you do, youngblood. But Lieblich's aim seemed to be to answer the
> question, whereas you seem to be into answering questions that nobody
> asked, for the purpose of parading a pedestrian familiarity with the
> commonplace and humdrum features of language, a pedestrian familiarity
> you apparently hold in high esteem. Ya got the wrong audience, bub. We
> know all that stuff.
I know it's pedestrian enough. For a sensible analysis, read Ankerstein's
posting and reply to that. Ankerstein says exactly what I would say. Do
you and Leiblich know "quite a sight more"? I doubt it. There's more to
things than just knowing. You need to have some feeling for the thing
to apply your putative knowledge.
/r
anker...@my-deja.com
P&D Schultz <schu...@erols.com> wrote:
> If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for
> Shainbaum.
Was that not why Joan d'Arc was burned? Because God spoke to her
in French instead of English? I can quote Shaw as a reference.
anker...@my-deja.com
"Carmen L. Abruzzi" <n...@mit.edu> wrote:
> But what makes you say that objects of prepositions are in the
> dative/accusative rather than say, the ablative, or the
> instrumental, or the partitive, or any of a number of other
> cases, all of which happen to have the same spelling?
Because English grammar does not recognize the ablative, though
I learned about it in Latin. English grammar has a four part
declension: nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. Finnish
has 17 forms in its declension. So what? This is not a Finnish
newsgroup.
> Latin? That incomplete language? It has only the last vestiges
> of the locative, has no instrumental, illogically using the
> ablative to cover that as well as the illative, inessive,
> adessive, elative, etc. etc. etc. No, if you really want to
> learn grammar forget Latin and study a language that actually has
> some real grammar, like Finnish, or Hungarian, or at least
> Sanskrit.
German. Useful and a good grammar base.
But Latin is a good grounding for the study of most modern
western European languages. I am sorry, but the Finns, Hungarians,
and Chinese will just have to learn English. And, you know what,
they agree with me.
Schainbaum, Robert
> "Schainbaum, Robert" wrote:
> > Do
> > you and Leiblich know "quite a sight more"? I doubt it. There's more to
> > things than just knowing. You need to have some feeling for the thing
> > to apply your putative knowledge. <...>
>
> "You need to have some feeling..." That's GREAT! Your over-the-top naive
> posing and jejune presumptuousness are hilarious and refreshing to the
> soul. In fact, they're endearing and cute. I LOVE the way you keep
> parading your cluelessness. Thanks for rising to the bait. MORE!
>
> \\P. Schultz
OK, give some examples. Otherwise, shut up.
/r
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
[snips]
> Latin? That incomplete language? It has only the last vestiges
> of the locative, has no instrumental, illogically using the
> ablative to cover that as well as the illative, inessive,
> adessive, elative, etc. etc. etc. No, if you really want to
> learn grammar forget Latin and study a language that actually has
> some real grammar, like Finnish, or Hungarian, or at least
> Sanskrit.
Finnish, Hungarian, Sanskrit? Pshaw. A child's play.
For grammatically really "complete" languages try:
-- Tabasaran (Dagestan), which has 48 noun cases; or
-- Kabardian, with 28 persons; or
-- Chippewa, with about 6,000 verbal forms.
And for fun try Diirbalu (Australia) with its four genders: masculine,
feminine, neuter, and edible.
Our "cot/caught" fans should stay away from Ubykh, though, which has 80
to 85 consonant phonemes but only one vowel phoneme: /a/.
--
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
Schainbaum, Robert
> Carmen L. Abruzzi wrote:
>
> Finnish, Hungarian, Sanskrit? Pshaw. A child's play.
> For grammatically really "complete" languages try:
>
> -- Tabasaran (Dagestan), which has 48 noun cases; or
> -- Kabardian, with 28 persons; or
> -- Chippewa, with about 6,000 verbal forms.
>
> And for fun try Diirbalu (Australia) with its four genders: masculine,
> feminine, neuter, and edible.
>
> Our "cot/caught" fans should stay away from Ubykh, though, which has 80
> to 85 consonant phonemes but only one vowel phoneme: /a/.
And Goethe considered it our good fortune that the ancient library at
Alexandria was burnt by Caesar. Otherwise, we'd be underwater in hundred
of plays by Aescheylus,
Sophocles and Euripides.
/r
Schainbaum, Robert
> I know what I'm talking about -- at least this time -- and I'm doing you
> the favor of taking all your comments on this thread about my ignorance
> as rhetorical flourishes. As P. Schultz pointed out, there was a
> question and I answered it. I even suggested that the inquiry might
> extend beyond the immediate question and answer. I don't see-- at least
> in this instance, why this is grounds for an accusation of ignorance.
>
> I think Ankerstein knows what he's talking about, albeit the posting you
> likely mean is but an esprit. I often don't know what *you* are talking
> about, but we all have our limits.
>
> I have no relatives in Florida. Many coreligionists, however, if that's
> what you mean. I plan to live out my life no further south than I now
> am.
>
> Or is it everything you post intended either rhetorically or ironically?
I'm tired. Just forget about it.
/r
R J Valentine
...
] And Goethe considered it our good fortune that the ancient library at
] Alexandria was burnt by Caesar. Otherwise, we'd be underwater in hundred
] of plays by Aescheylus,
] Sophocles and Euripides.
Guy walks into the dry cleaners and plops a pair of pants on the counter.
Proprietor: "Euripides?"
Guy: "Eumenides?"
Proprietor nods, guy leaves.
--------------------------------
I was looking around Goethe's house in Frankfurt (a.M.) with my Uncle
Fred. After the guide/guard (there must be a word) explained a few
things, Uncle Fred said, "Wow, he was some guy!"
The old god got about four inches taller and pronounced, "Goethe was no
'guy'!"
--------------------------------
So I'm guessing that "guy" is a malediction of some sort, somewhere.
--
R. J. Valentine <mailto:r...@clark.net?subject=%3Cnews:alt.usage.english%3E%20>
Olivers
>
>
> No. I merely constructed a grammatically correct sentence in which the
> word that immediately follows the preposition is a pronoun in the
> nominative case. Perhaps if the original inquirer treats your question
> as rhetorical, he will have taken the first step toward knowing what he
> is about.
Your belief that the sentence is grammatically correct is but belief, a
contention with which purists might argue, preferring "whomever" to
achieve case agreement, considering the "might ask for it" as a
dependent modifier. Clearly the "who..." in question is the recipient
of action in one barrel of the shotgun, the actor in the other, and
either who or whom is "correct". A common sense adherence to
traditional English grammar would likely prefer the "whomever" construct
on the famous grounds of "first is foremost", or were we
cavalry-oriented, "Firstest with the mostest," to steal a quote.
Rainer Thonnes
Olivers <ol...@calpha.com> writes:
>Robert Lieblich wrote:
>>
>> No. I merely constructed a grammatically correct sentence in which the
>> nominative case.
>
>Your belief that the sentence is grammatically correct is but belief, a
>contention with which purists might argue, preferring "whomever" to
>achieve case agreement,
I don't think Bob holds the "whomever" version to be incorrect, but
offers "whoever" as an additional example which is *also* correct,
albeit with a different construction.
I guess he's talking about elision.
In "Give it to the person who asks", "the person" is in the dative
case, though it's not obvious until you change it to "Give it to
him who asks". In both these examples, "who" is nominative because
it has to be, "whom" would be incorrect.
The noun phrase which is the object of "to" is "him who asks", which
is the dative of "he who asks". If for brevity we elide, or omit, the
principal pronoun, we have two options.
Either we treat "who(ever) asks" as the corresponding nominative noun
phrase of which "who" is the principal pronoun, in which case it has
to become "whom(ever) asks" when we put it into the dative,
or else we omit "him" from the dative, in which case "who" remains, as
it was before, the subject of the subphrase which more clearly defines
the (now absent) "him". The subphrase subject does not track the case
of its antecedent.
Bob, if you think I've got it wrong, please put me right.
The thought occurs that Dr Whom should live up to his name and sort
this out. :-)
Olivers
>
>
(snipped, good discourse - and sensible)
Living in Texas, where the local Spanish fails to address the problem at
all, "elideing" whole chunks, the lazy caseless approach may be
preferable.
For the life of me, 43 years having passed since my last day of it, four
years in a latin classroom provide me with no clue as to how Caesar or
Cicero might have addressed the problem (but then Latin omits both
prepositions and pronouns at the drop of a hat).
Richard Fontana
> I was looking around Goethe's house in Frankfurt (a.M.) with my Uncle
> Fred. After the guide/guard (there must be a word) explained a few
> things, Uncle Fred said, "Wow, he was some guy!"
>
> The old god got about four inches taller and pronounced, "Goethe was no
> 'guy'!"
>
> --------------------------------
>
> So I'm guessing that "guy" is a malediction of some sort, somewhere.
M-W:
1 Often capitalized : a grotesque effigy of Guy Fawkes traditionally
displayed and burned in England on Guy Fawkes Day
2 chiefly British : a person of grotesque appearance
--
Richard
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
> Schainbaum, Robert <Robert.S...@berlin.de> wrote:
> ...
> ] And Goethe considered it our good fortune that the ancient library
> ] at Alexandria was burnt by Caesar. Otherwise, we'd be underwater
> ] in hundred of plays by Aescheylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
> Guy walks into the dry cleaners and plops a pair of pants on the counter.
>
> Proprietor: "Euripides?"
>
> Guy: "Eumenides?"
>
> Proprietor nods, guy leaves.
Better setup: "Italian tailor" instead of "dry cleaners." First, dry
cleaners are often run by Chinese, who don't talk like Italian
immigrants. Second, the joke is about ripped pants (a job for a tailor,
not a dry-cleaning shop, even though the latter establishments do mend
ripped clothing). Am I being too logical again?
> --------------------------------
> I was looking around Goethe's house in Frankfurt (a.M.) with my Uncle
> Fred. After the guide/guard (there must be a word)
Führer.
> explained a few things, Uncle Fred said, "Wow, he was some guy!"
>
> The old god got about four inches taller and pronounced,
> "Goethe was no 'guy'!"
The Goethehausführer thought Onkel Fred meant "gay." Goethe was hetero
and had a love affair with a young chick when he was an old man. My
kinda guy.
--
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
Carmen L. Abruzzi
----------
In article <8r0ul6$6cn$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, anker...@my-deja.com
wrote:
>In article <8r0i8c$cf1$1...@mark.ucdavis.edu>,
> "Carmen L. Abruzzi" <n...@mit.edu> wrote:
>
>> But what makes you say that objects of prepositions are in the
>> dative/accusative rather than say, the ablative, or the
>> instrumental, or the partitive, or any of a number of other
>> cases, all of which happen to have the same spelling?
>
>Because English grammar does not recognize the ablative, though
>I learned about it in Latin. English grammar has a four part
>declension: nominative, genitive, dative and accusative.
So, English has 4 cases, but doesn't bother to distinguish among
3 of them. So how do you tell it's only four? How do you know
English doesn't recognize the ablative? How do you know that
"the house" in "I came from the house" is not in the ablative
case? What case is it in, and how would one tell?
>Finnish
>has 17 forms in its declension. So what? This is not a Finnish
>newsgroup.
It's not a Latin newsgroup either. It's a newsgroup about
English, a language that has only the last vestiges of case in a
few pronouns. Even the so-called genitive case isn't really a
case, it's a possessive marker, <-'s>, that attaches to the end
of an entire noun phrase, not to the head noun, as a proper case
marker would do.
>
>> Latin? That incomplete language? It has only the last vestiges
>> of the locative, has no instrumental, illogically using the
>> ablative to cover that as well as the illative, inessive,
>> adessive, elative, etc. etc. etc. No, if you really want to
>> learn grammar forget Latin and study a language that actually has
>> some real grammar, like Finnish, or Hungarian, or at least
>> Sanskrit.
>
>German. Useful and a good grammar base.
>
>But Latin is a good grounding for the study of most modern
>western European languages. I am sorry, but the Finns, Hungarians,
>and Chinese will just have to learn English. And, you know what,
>they agree with me.
>
Sure they do. But they don't feel that they have to learn Latin
or German first.
Steve MacGregor
"Marc Buchalter" <marc...@uclink4.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> When a pronown follows a preposition, should it always be in the
> objective form? "him" or "me" instead of "he" and "I"?
Let me answer the question you have in mind, rather than the one you
asked:
Q) Is the object of a preposition always in the objective (or
accusative) case?
A) Yes.
Now then, the pronoun following the preposition, even if it immediately
follows it, is not always in the objective case, because sometimes it
is not the object of the preposition.
Example: Give that flyer to whoever comes in the door next.
The word "whoever" is a pronoun (just not a =personal= pronoun), in the
subjective (nominative) case.
It's nominative, because it's the =subject= of the subordinate clause,
which itself is the object of the preposition. Only individual words
show case; not entire clauses.
Further example: Give that flyer to whomever you see.
The word "whomever" is in the objective case, but not because it's the
object of the prepostion (it is not the object). It's the direct
object of the verb "see". The entire subordinate clause is the direct
object of the preposition.
--
How many prepositions to a metric buttload?
Steve MacGregor
> English grammar has a four part declension: nominative, genitive,
> dative and accusative.
I don't think so. Old English had the four cases, but somewhere along
the line we lost the accusative, with the dative taking its place, and
sometimes being called "objective", and sometimes "accusative" because
of its new functions.
I think the best set of case-names for English is subjective,
possessive, and objective, as it is descriptive, and less confusing.
The subjective and objective are always identical for nouns, so other
than claiming that a noun is in a particular case because a pronoun in
the same place would have such-a-case, there's not much point to it.
The notation of "dative" is only useful for indirect objects, but
calling all objects just "objects", and not designating separate cases
is a good-enough description of the grammar.
"I gave it to him". One subjective, two objective. No indirect
object; "him" is an object-of-pronoun.
"I gave him the book." Here, "him" is the indirect object, and in the
objective, and "book" is the direct object, and in the objective (as if
anyone cared). When there are two objects, the first is the indirect
object.
The complication to this is that the sentence can be reformulated in
the passive, with either original object as the subject:
"He was given the book by me," or "He was given the book." This form
is possible and grammatical, but confusing, and seldom used.
"The book was given to him," or "The book was given him." Both are
possible, but the second can be confusing, and is hardly ever used.
--
How many indirect objects to a metric buttload?
Michael Cargal
<am...@sonic.net> wrote:
>R J Valentine wrote:
>
>> Schainbaum, Robert <Robert.S...@berlin.de> wrote:
>> ...
>> ] And Goethe considered it our good fortune that the ancient library
>> ] at Alexandria was burnt by Caesar. Otherwise, we'd be underwater
>> ] in hundred of plays by Aescheylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
>
>> Guy walks into the dry cleaners and plops a pair of pants on the counter.
>>
>> Proprietor: "Euripides?"
>>
>> Guy: "Eumenides?"
>>
>> Proprietor nods, guy leaves.
>
>Better setup: "Italian tailor" instead of "dry cleaners." First, dry
>cleaners are often run by Chinese, who don't talk like Italian
>immigrants. Second, the joke is about ripped pants (a job for a tailor,
>not a dry-cleaning shop, even though the latter establishments do mend
>ripped clothing). Am I being too logical again?
Still better setup, Greek tailor, since Euripides was Greek, and
Euminides a Greek play.
--
Michael Cargal mhca...@home.com
Schainbaum, Robert
> On Fri, 29 Sep 2000 19:57:03 GMT, "Reinhold (Rey) Aman"
> <am...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
> >R J Valentine wrote:
> >
> >> Schainbaum, Robert <Robert.S...@berlin.de> wrote:
> >> ...
> >> ] And Goethe considered it our good fortune that the ancient library
> >> ] at Alexandria was burnt by Caesar. Otherwise, we'd be underwater
> >> ] in hundred of plays by Aescheylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
> >
> >> Guy walks into the dry cleaners and plops a pair of pants on the counter.
> >>
> >> Proprietor: "Euripides?"
> >>
> >> Guy: "Eumenides?"
> >>
> >> Proprietor nods, guy leaves.
> >
> >Better setup: "Italian tailor" instead of "dry cleaners." First, dry
> >cleaners are often run by Chinese, who don't talk like Italian
> >immigrants. Second, the joke is about ripped pants (a job for a tailor,
> >not a dry-cleaning shop, even though the latter establishments do mend
> >ripped clothing). Am I being too logical again?
>
> Still better setup, Greek tailor, since Euripides was Greek, and
> Euminides a Greek play.
The Eumenides. Either the Furies of Greek myth or a play in the trilogy by
Aescheylus known to us as the Oresteia. Orestes had killed his mother and
her lover. (With good reason, anyone would think.) Nevertheless, much of
literature is about the theme of revenge taken for wrongful deeds. The
Furies either took a rightful revenge themselves or animated the spirit
of revenge in the human heart.
Interesting because Eumenides translates from the Greek as, I'll use Anthony
Powell's translation, the Kindly Ones. Classic euphemism, as it were.
The revenge dynamic is very interesting. Achilles' anger in the Illiad
(meinin aeide, thea) drives him to sulk in his tent (famous phrase)
and watch as his fellow Greeks are slaughtered in his absence by
the Trojan's on the battlefield in slaughtered in his absence on the
battlefield. A first literary instance of the passive-aggressive.
Why was Achilles so angry? Well, Agammemnon, leader of the Greek
expedition against Troy, had just taken a slave girl away from him.
That would be very odd in plain vernacular English. A whole epic
poem set in motion just because Achilles was dispossessed of a slave
girl? That doesn't make sense.
/r
Carmen L. Abruzzi
----------
In article <8r305m$hop$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, Steve MacGregor
<esper...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>The complication to this is that the sentence can be reformulated in
>the passive, with either original object as the subject:
>
>"He was given the book by me," or "He was given the book." This form
>is possible and grammatical, but confusing, and seldom used.
Grammatical in English, but not in Latin, as I read only
yesterday. In Latin, an indirect object cannot be made the
subject of a passive phrase. Another reason not to follow the
grammar of Latin when analyzing English.
Robert Lieblich
>
> In article <39D49D24...@calpha.com>,
> Olivers <ol...@calpha.com> writes:
> >Robert Lieblich wrote:
> >>
> >> No. I merely constructed a grammatically correct sentence in which the
> >> word that immediately follows the preposition is a pronoun in the
> >> nominative case.
> >
> >Your belief that the sentence is grammatically correct is but belief, a
> >contention with which purists might argue, preferring "whomever" to
> >achieve case agreement,
>
> I don't think Bob holds the "whomever" version to be incorrect, but
> offers "whoever" as an additional example which is *also* correct,
> albeit with a different construction.
Here'e the sentence that's under our microscope: "Give it to whoever
first asks for it." By the standards of traditional Thistlebottom
grammar, "whoever" is the only correct usage So, yes, at least in
traditional grammar, "whomever" is wrong -- probably hypercorrection.
On the other hand, I've been known to acknowledge, if not actively
defend, "between he and I," so I'm hardly the one to go around handing
out binding decisions.
[ . . . ]
> Either we treat "who(ever) asks" as the corresponding nominative noun
> phrase of which "who" is the principal pronoun, in which case it has
> to become "whom(ever) asks" when we put it into the dative,
>
> or else we omit "him" from the dative, in which case "who" remains, as
> it was before, the subject of the subphrase which more clearly defines
> the (now absent) "him". The subphrase subject does not track the case
> of its antecedent.
>
> Bob, if you think I've got it wrong, please put me right.
Speaking as attorney for Ms. Thistlebottom . . . "The object of "to"
is the entire clause "whoever first asks for it," a dependent clause
connected to the remainder of the sentence by a relative pronoun and
functioning as a noun. "Whoever" is the subject of the clause and
therefore can only be in the subjective case -- in traditional English
grammar.
There are other grammars that explain things differently. Perhaps one
or more of them yields a justification for "whomever" in the example
sentence. I know of none, but my ignorance of such things indicates
nothing more than my ignorance, which is boundless.
Earle Jones
Valentine <r...@clark.net> wrote:
[...]
> --------------------------------
>
> I was looking around Goethe's house in Frankfurt (a.M.) with my Uncle
> Fred. After the guide/guard (there must be a word) explained a few
> things, Uncle Fred said, "Wow, he was some guy!"
>
> The old god got about four inches taller and pronounced, "Goethe was no
> 'guy'!"
>
> --------------------------------
>
> So I'm guessing that "guy" is a malediction of some sort, somewhere.
*
He thought he said, "Goy".
earle
*
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
> On Fri, 29 Sep 2000 19:57:03 GMT, "Reinhold (Rey) Aman"
> <am...@sonic.net> wrote:
> >R J Valentine wrote:
[...]
> >> Guy walks into the dry cleaners and plops a pair of pants
> >> on the counter.
> >>
> >> Proprietor: "Euripides?"
> >>
> >> Guy: "Eumenides?"
> >>
> >> Proprietor nods, guy leaves.
> >Better setup: "Italian tailor" instead of "dry cleaners." First,
> >dry cleaners are often run by Chinese, who don't talk like Italian
> >immigrants. Second, the joke is about ripped pants (a job for a tailor,
> >not a dry-cleaning shop, even though the latter establishments do mend
> >ripped clothing). Am I being too logical again?
> Still better setup, Greek tailor, since Euripides was Greek, and
> Euminides a Greek play.
I don't think so, Michael. Greek immigrants are not known for running
small tailor (and cobbler) shops, but Italians are. More importantly,
they don't speak like Italian immigrants, whose stereotypical,
epenthetic English is well known and the basis for these clever
wordplays.
--
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
Goethe *was* a goy; therefore:
(1) the guide would not have protested;
(2) you are not witty, as usual.
--
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
R J Valentine
] R J Valentine wrote:
]
]> Schainbaum, Robert <Robert.S...@berlin.de> wrote:
]> ...
]> ] And Goethe considered it our good fortune that the ancient library
]> ] at Alexandria was burnt by Caesar. Otherwise, we'd be underwater
]> ] in hundred of plays by Aescheylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
]
]> Guy walks into the dry cleaners and plops a pair of pants on the counter.
]>
]> Proprietor: "Euripides?"
]>
]> Guy: "Eumenides?"
]>
]> Proprietor nods, guy leaves.
]
] Better setup: "Italian tailor" instead of "dry cleaners." First, dry
] cleaners are often run by Chinese, who don't talk like Italian
] immigrants. Second, the joke is about ripped pants (a job for a tailor,
] not a dry-cleaning shop, even though the latter establishments do mend
] ripped clothing). Am I being too logical again?
Oh, like way. First of all, there's no particular setup needed, any such
being an insult to the listener. Secondly, any setup for the person
behind the counter fails to account for the customer, and accounting for
the customer would tenderize it senseless. Third, it's an old joke that I
think was in _Reader's Digest_ thirty years ago or so (and I assume from
David Brenner before that), so any extended setup is like putting up a
Sixth Avenue sign. Next, there are any number of stereotypical accents
one could posit to make sense of it. (I think our local dry cleaners is
run by Koreans, some of whom speak English at least as well as I do; but
who am I to spoil the joke for someone who prefers to hear it as a Korean
accent.) Semifinally, the point of it was to see if I could say "Non
sequitur" without saying "Non Sequitur". And, last but not least, I
wanted to segue through "guy" to Godwin's Law without being too obvious
about it, because you know how explaining jokes spoils all the fun (the
thing about pronouns following prepositions having gone the route of
oversetup jokes long since).
]> --------------------------------
]
]> I was looking around Goethe's house in Frankfurt (a.M.) with my Uncle
]> Fred. After the guide/guard (there must be a word)
]
] Führer.
Thank you. The fellow had a uniform on and mostly stood in the corner.
You may have it exactly.
]> explained a few things, Uncle Fred said, "Wow, he was some guy!"
]>
]> The old god got about four inches taller and pronounced,
]> "Goethe was no 'guy'!"
]
] The Goethehausführer thought Onkel Fred meant "gay." Goethe was hetero
] and had a love affair with a young chick when he was an old man. My
] kinda guy.
That may be what the old fellow was saying.
] --
] Reinhold (Rey) Aman
*The* Reinhold Aman? The one with the Web site about the mystery novel?
R J Valentine
] R J Valentine wrote:
]
]> Schainbaum, Robert <Robert.S...@berlin.de> wrote:
]> ...
]> ] And Goethe considered it our good fortune that the ancient library
]> ] at Alexandria was burnt by Caesar. Otherwise, we'd be underwater
]> ] in hundred of plays by Aescheylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
]
]> Guy walks into the dry cleaners and plops a pair of pants on the counter.
]>
]> Proprietor: "Euripides?"
]>
]> Guy: "Eumenides?"
]>
]> Proprietor nods, guy leaves.
]
] Better setup: "Italian tailor" instead of "dry cleaners." First, dry
] cleaners are often run by Chinese, who don't talk like Italian
] immigrants. Second, the joke is about ripped pants (a job for a tailor,
] not a dry-cleaning shop, even though the latter establishments do mend
] ripped clothing). Am I being too logical again?
Oh, like way. First of all, there's no particular setup needed, any such
being an insult to the listener. Secondly, any setup for the person
behind the counter fails to account for the customer, and accounting for
the customer would tenderize it senseless. Third, it's an old joke that I
think was in _Reader's Digest_ thirty years ago or so (and I assume from
David Brenner before that), so any extended setup is like putting up a
Sixth Avenue sign. Next, there are any number of stereotypical accents
one could posit to make sense of it. (I think our local dry cleaners is
run by Koreans, some of whom speak English at least as well as I do; but
who am I to spoil the joke for someone who prefers to hear it as a Korean
accent.) Semifinally, the point of it was to see if I could say "Non
sequitur" without saying "Non sequitur". And, last but not least, I
wanted to segue through "guy" to Godwin's Law without being too obvious
about it, because you know how explaining jokes spoils all the fun (the
thing about pronouns following prepositions having gone the route of
oversetup jokes long since).
]> --------------------------------
]
]> I was looking around Goethe's house in Frankfurt (a.M.) with my Uncle
]> Fred. After the guide/guard (there must be a word)
]
] Führer.
Thank you. The fellow had a uniform on and mostly stood in the corner.
You may have it exactly.
]> explained a few things, Uncle Fred said, "Wow, he was some guy!"
]>
]> The old god got about four inches taller and pronounced,
]> "Goethe was no 'guy'!"
]
] The Goethehausführer thought Onkel Fred meant "gay." Goethe was hetero
] and had a love affair with a young chick when he was an old man. My
] kinda guy.
That may be what the old fellow was saying.
] --
] Reinhold (Rey) Aman
*The* Reinhold Aman? The one with the Web site about the mystery novel?
--
Tom Deveson
>Third, it's an old joke that I
>think was in _Reader's Digest_ thirty years ago or so (and I assume from
>David Brenner before that), so any extended setup is like putting up a
>Sixth Avenue sign.
In *The Connoisseur's Crossword Book* (Penguin 1964) there's a crossword
by Torquemada called 'Knock-Knock' in which most of the clues take the
form of knock-knock jokes. These are truncated -- only the final part of
the joke is stated and 'blank' is used as the repeated name. You have
to guess the name to substitute for 'blank'.
Clue 55 reads: 'Blank who? Blank pants, I make-a you another pair' which
misses out the Eumenides but does use what was then a common spelling
convention in England for Italian dialect.
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Peter Moylan
>I think the best set of case-names for English is subjective,
>possessive, and objective, as it is descriptive, and less confusing.
Now and then, and sometimes even on aue, you'll find someone arguing
that a phrase like "the day's news" is ungrammatical because the
day does not in any sense possess the news.
I blame that misconception on teachers' using the word "possessive"
instead of "genitive". Perhaps "genitive" isn't the right word either
- unless you accept that grammatical case in English is an attribute
of noun phrases rather than solely of one-word nouns - but in my
view the term "possessive" is actively misleading.
--
Peter Moylan pe...@ee.newcastle.edu.au
http://eepjm.newcastle.edu.au
Bob Cunningham
Moylan) said:
>Steve MacGregor wrote:
For additional reading on this point, see
http://www.alt-usage-english.org/genitive_and_possessive.html
.
anker...@my-deja.com
Steve MacGregor <esper...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> I think the best set of case-names for English is subjective,
> possessive, and objective, as it is descriptive, and less confusing.
And incorrect. Dative and accusative are not the same just
because the spelling is the same. We have in our German class
a student who is burdened with your understanding of grammar.
She cannot understand the difference between the indirect object
(dative) and the direct object (accusative).
And, considering pronunciaiton problems, I find potential confusion
between "subjunctive" and "subjective". Or do you claim that the
subjunctive is dead in English? If so, explain "God be praised."
GFH
Robert Lieblich
>
> In article <8r305m$hop$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> Steve MacGregor <esper...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> > I think the best set of case-names for English is subjective,
> > possessive, and objective, as it is descriptive, and less confusing.
>
> And incorrect. Dative and accusative are not the same just
> because the spelling is the same. We have in our German class
> a student who is burdened with your understanding of grammar.
> She cannot understand the difference between the indirect object
> (dative) and the direct object (accusative).
English draws no morphological distinction between the direct and
indirect objects, so arguing about whether they are in the same or a
different "case" is pointless. The only way to learn the difference is
to study multiple examples in context, analogizing them to their German
equivalents if you happen to be a native speaker of German. I do agree
with others who have made the point that the label "possessive" can
cause problems. I no longer know whether the "genitive" -- or whatever
you call it -- is a separate case. I don't much care either.
>
> And, considering pronunciaiton problems, I find potential confusion
> between "subjunctive" and "subjective". Or do you claim that the
> subjunctive is dead in English? If so, explain "God be praised."
I believe that there is still a bit of the subjunctive remaining in
English. This is as much an article of faith as it is a reasoned
analysis. But "God be praised" is simply an idiom; its internal grammar
is of no significance.
As for mixing up "subjunctive" and "subjective" -- nah!
anker...@my-deja.com
lieb...@erols.com wrote:
>"God be praised" is simply an idiom; its internal grammar
> is of no significance.
From that point of view, one hundred percent of the English language
is a very large idiom. The subjunctive construction comes from the
German (English is a Germanic language).
"Gott sei bei uns!"
"God be with us!"
See the similarity?
Steve MacGregor
"Carmen L. Abruzzi" <n...@mit.edu> wrote:
> In Latin, an indirect object cannot be made the
> subject of a passive phrase. Another reason not to follow the
> grammar of Latin when analyzing English.
I would rather say, we should follow the grammar of Latin when
analyzing English, when doing so is appropriate, and not do so when it
is not appropriate. It's possible to end a sentence with a preposition
meaningfully in English, but not in Latin, for example.
Latin's way of using the masculine gender as untagged corresponds to
the standard way (not the PC way) of doing it in English, so the Latin
explanation will suffice.
--
How many grammar books to a metric buttload?
Skitt
<anker...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8r5bb1$719$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article <39D5FD...@erols.com>,
> lieb...@erols.com wrote:
>
> >"God be praised" is simply an idiom; its internal grammar
> > is of no significance.
>
> From that point of view, one hundred percent of the English language
> is a very large idiom. The subjunctive construction comes from the
> German (English is a Germanic language).
>
> "Gott sei bei uns!"
> "God be with us!"
>
> See the similarity?
Be advised that the above can also be construed to be pleas and not what we
are not supposed to call "subjunctives".
--
Skitt (in SF Bay Area) http://i.am/skitt/
Wayward in Hayward
Kai Henningsen
> In article <8r305m$hop$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> Steve MacGregor <esper...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> > I think the best set of case-names for English is subjective,
> > possessive, and objective, as it is descriptive, and less confusing.
>
> And incorrect. Dative and accusative are not the same just
> because the spelling is the same. We have in our German class
> a student who is burdened with your understanding of grammar.
> She cannot understand the difference between the indirect object
> (dative) and the direct object (accusative).
Are you perchance confusing "grammar" with "English grammar" in one part
of that paragraph, and with "German grammar" in another?
There's no reason to assume a rule or concept valid in German grammar must
necessarily apply to English grammar, or vice versa.
Kai
--
http://www.westfalen.de/private/khms/
"... by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it."
- Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu)
Steve MacGregor
"Skitt" <sk...@i.am> wrote:
> Be advised that the above can also be construed to be pleas and
> not what we are not supposed to call "subjunctives".
How can they be construed as pleas?
--
How many verb moods to a metric buttload?
Steve MacGregor
kaih=7mqLt...@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen) wrote:
> There's no reason to assume a rule or concept valid in German grammar
> must necessarily apply to English grammar, or vice versa.
Right. English and German grammar were much more similar many
centuries back, but English has lost one case along the way. I believe
the equivalent has happened in Yiddish; the former dative case now has
the functions of both the former dative and accusative, paralleling
English usage, but I believe the equivalent of an indirect object must
be expressed with the preposition "tsu", so "tsu mir" = English "to me"
(or just "me" under some circumstances) = German "mir", and "mir" =
English "me" = German "mich".
Please correct me on this if I'm wrong, as I've picked up very little
Yiddish over the years.
--
How many grammar books to a metric buttload?
Robert Lieblich
>
> In article <39D5FD...@erols.com>,
> lieb...@erols.com wrote:
>
> >"God be praised" is simply an idiom; its internal grammar
> > is of no significance.
>
> From that point of view, one hundred percent of the English language
> is a very large idiom. The subjunctive construction comes from the
> German (English is a Germanic language).
>
> "Gott sei bei uns!"
> "God be with us!"
>
> See the similarity?
Sure. But except in a few set examples -- "Jack be nimble," anyone --
the structure isn't used in English anymore. You wouldn't say, for
example, "George W. Bush be elected" or, probably, "Bush be praised."
You might say "Bush be damned" if you were really feeling defiant, but
that's about as far as the idiom can be stretched.
I think that what linguists call "productivity" is implicated here.
There's not much you can do with the subjunctive form "<noun> be <past
participle>" beyond a few specific examples. So you call those few
specific examples an idiom and move on.
Skitt
"Steve MacGregor" <esper...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8r5emr$9kj$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article <7CqB5.1179$B42....@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,
> "Skitt" <sk...@i.am> wrote:
>
> > Be advised that the above can also be construed to be pleas and
> > not what we are not supposed to call "subjunctives".
>
> How can they be construed as pleas?
Well, you snipped them. Go back and re-read. Insert a comma, if you must.
Arcadian Rises
>Sure. But except in a few set examples -- "Jack be nimble," anyone --
>the structure isn't used in English anymore. You wouldn't say, for
>example, "George W. Bush be elected" or, probably, "Bush be praised."
>You might say "Bush be damned" if you were really feeling defiant, but
>that's about as far as the idiom can be stretched.
>
>I think that what linguists call "productivity" is implicated here.
>There's not much you can do with the subjunctive form "<noun> be <past
>participle>" beyond a few specific examples. So you call those few
>specific examples an idiom and move on.
>
>
Truth be told, you're right.
On a different vein, how many similar idioms does it take to make a rule?
Arcadian Rises
>> Be advised that the above can also be construed to be pleas and
>> not what we are not supposed to call "subjunctives".
>
>How can they be construed as pleas?
>
Perhaps, as in the Latin vocative?
anker...@my-deja.com
> > And incorrect. Dative and accusative are not the same just
> > because the spelling is the same. We have in our German class
> > a student who is burdened with your understanding of grammar.
> > She cannot understand the difference between the indirect object
> > (dative) and the direct object (accusative).
>
> Are you perchance confusing "grammar" with "English grammar" in one
> part of that paragraph, and with "German grammar" in another?
Not really, Kai. (Good to read you here in my court.) :-)
English depends on word order to establish which is the direct
and which is the indirect object. Or English uses the auxilary
prepositions "to" or "for". German uses a different spelling and
thus allows more freedom in word order. But, the important point
is that English still has the dative.
German also has forms which are not distinguished by spelling.
Consider the (second) subjunctive/indicative "ich habe gemacht".
Every German knows (I hope) whether the indicitive or subjunctive
is being used. If he does not, he will have trouble with "er ..."
OK? ;-)
GFH
Steve MacGregor
"Skitt" <sk...@i.am> wrote:
> Well, you snipped them. Go back and re-read. Insert a comma, if
> you must.
Inserting a comma would change the subject of the sentence into a
vocative -- yes, then it would be a plea, but it would be a differently-
structured sentence.
--
How many vocatives to a metric buttload?
Steve MacGregor
arcadi...@aol.com (Arcadian Rises) wrote:
> Perhaps, as in the Latin vocative?
Just as for the English vocative: no.
--
How many Latin scholars to a metric buttload?
anker...@my-deja.com
You are headed in the wrong direction. The use of the subjunctive
for "pious wishes" was common. Like many other constructions in
English, it's use is becoming increasingly rare. When the origin
is forgotten, an unusual construction may be classified as an idiom.
(We discussed "a 30,000 square foot warehouse" recently.) But in
this case, as the many examples have shown, 1) the rule is remembered
and 2)usage, while limited, is more common than the 'idiom' explanation
can support.
I suggest the question really is how few uses of a rule allow its
elimination and replacement with the 'idiom explanation'?
GFH
John Lawler
>anker...@my-deja.com wrote:
>> And, considering pronunciaiton problems, I find potential confusion
>> between "subjunctive" and "subjective". Or do you claim that the
>> subjunctive is dead in English? If so, explain "God be praised."
>I believe that there is still a bit of the subjunctive remaining in
>English. This is as much an article of faith as it is a reasoned
>analysis. But "God be praised" is simply an idiom; its internal grammar
>is of no significance.
There are still a few bits of subjunctive, from various stems,
left lying around in the Poet's Corner:
Present stem:
If this be treason, make the most of it.
It's important that you be there on time.
Preterite stem:
I wish it were true.
If I were you, I'd shut up.
But we can dispense with them nicely, leaving them to totter around and
share tales of the Goode Olde Dayes; they all have paraphrases or
alternates that don't require us to recognize 'subjunctive' (i.e,
irregular) categories:
If this is treason, make the most of it.
It's important for you to be there on time.
I wish it was true.
If I was you, .. (this one is less likely, but that's just
because the phrase 'if I were you' is learned
as a unit, rather than being parsed)
But "God be praised" isn't technically the subjunctive mood, but rather
the benedictive or predicative, like "May this house be safe from tigers",
or "O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us"; this is the mood in which prayers
and benedictions are pronounced. In Sanskrit it has specific morphological
markings. So does the optative (the mood for expressing hopes and
wishes), and in Greek as well. The subjunctive, by contrast, has to do
with either hypotheticality (in the Present stem) or counter-factuality
(in the Preterite stem).
Of course, since English doesn't mark any of these, they don't form any
part of English grammar per se, but rather of the technical semantic
description of some of its constructions, notably ones with modal
auxiliary verbs. "Modal" means the same thing as "mood", and refers to the
same spectrum of cognitive coloration - wishing, thinking, believing,
knowing, doubting, hoping, praying, blessing, damn-well denying, and so
on.
For more about modals, try http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/modals.html
Since English has hardly any inflections left at all (no cases, only two
numbers, only two tenses, no moods, no voices, only two participles, no
gender except in third-person singular personal pronouns), this category
is most useful in describing constructions, of which English has many
thousands.
As for the original question, it's the wrong question. First, there's
no case in English. Second, the choice of pronoun in English isn't
governed by the single word that precedes it -- syntax is not linear.
You've got to look at whole clauses and their transformations to make
sense of what's going on. "Word follows word" is too simplistic to
be of any use as a syntactic theory.
-John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler U of Michigan Linguistics Dept
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a - Edward Sapir
mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations." Language (1921)
Arcadian Rises
>But "God be praised" isn't technically the subjunctive mood, but rather
>the benedictive or predicative, like "May this house be safe from tigers",
>or "O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us"; this is the mood in which prayers
>and benedictions are pronounced
Isn't it rather vocative?
You be the judge!
John Lawler
>>From: jla...@umich.edu
"Vocative" is a case, and only nouns and pronouns have cases.
It's the case of a noun in direct address, like
Terence, this is stupid stuff.
Even in Latin, vocative was rarely distinguished from nominative; the only
real vocative ending was the -e of the second declension, as in
Domine, non sum dignus.
'O Lord, I am not worthy.'
Naturally, since English has no cases, it doesn't have vocative any more
than it has dative, accusative, or instrumental.
Verbs can't have cases, because they *define* case for the nominals (=
nouns and/or pronouns) in their sentences by relating them one to another.
I was referring to the 'be' in "God be praised" as a benedictive
construction. If it were (for instance), an imperative instead, then you
might be correct that 'God' was vocative, as being the addressee of the
(rather strange, arguably ungrammatical, and hardly reverent) order to 'Be
praised!':
God, be praised.
As it is, though, in the most likely parsing of the idiom, 'God' is the
subject of the passive 'be praised', and the sense is that the speaker
wishes and prays that God will in fact be praised (by some unspecified
praiser or praisers).
As subject, 'God' couldn't be a vocative, but rather (if English had
cases) nominative, unless there were some rule requiring some other case
as the subject of a passive with 'praise', as there is with verbs like
'help' in German. The dative case is required with the subject of a
passive of 'helfen', because the direct object of 'helfen' takes the
dative instead of the accusative (and passive subjects are always third
person, regardless of their meaning):
Er sieh-t mich/*mir.
3PerSing[nom] see-3PerSing 1PerSing[acc]/[dat]
'He sees me'
Ich/*Mir werde/*wird gesehen (von ihm).
1PerSg[nom]/[dat] be-1PerSg/3PerSg seen (by 3PerSg[dat])
'I am seen (by him)'
Er hilf-t mir/*mich.
3Sg[nom] help-3Sg 1S[dat]/[acc]
'He helps me'
Mir/*Ich wird/*werde geholfen (von ihm).
1Sg[dat]/[nom] be-3Sg/1Sg helped (by 3Sg[dat])
'I am helped (by him)'
But that's German, not English, and that's the kind of irregularity and
special cases you expect in a language where there really is a case
system. In English, choice of pronoun isn't really a matter of case, and
there are no noun forms to choose from in the first place, so there's
no regularity to define irregularity in terms of.
Remember, you asked.
Arcadian Rises
><arcadi...@aol.com> wrote:
>>Isn't it rather vocative?
>>You be the judge!
>"Vocative" is a case, and only nouns and pronouns have cases.
>It's the case of a noun in direct address, like
Ooops, sorry. I meant imperative mood, not the vocative case. I deeply regret
the error.
The imperative mood also expresses a request, or a plea.
Alan Jones
| The notation of "dative" is only useful for indirect objects, but
| calling all objects just "objects", and not designating separate cases
| is a good-enough description of the grammar.
|
| "I gave it to him". One subjective, two objective. No indirect
| object; "him" is an object-of-pronoun.
|
| "I gave him the book." Here, "him" is the indirect object, and in the
| objective, and "book" is the direct object, and in the objective (as
if
| anyone cared). When there are two objects, the first is the indirect
| object.
|
| The complication to this is that the sentence can be reformulated in
| the passive, with either original object as the subject:
|
| "He was given the book by me," or "He was given the book." This form
| is possible and grammatical, but confusing, and seldom used.
|
| "The book was given to him," or "The book was given him." Both are
| possible, but the second can be confusing, and is hardly ever used.
This analysis seems correct. "Him" in "I gave him a book" behaves
grammatically like "book", in that either can be made the subject of a
passive reformulation. So why say that they are in different cases?
Modern English has no dative if we judge either by form or by
syntactical patterning.
I would differ with Steve MacGregor only when he says that the pattern
"He was given the book" is confusing and seldom used. It seems quite
common in both speech and print, and I should have thought it could
rarely if ever be confusing. However, I look forward to seeing a
potentially confusing example.
"The book was given to him" sounds awkward as it stands, but "The book
was given to him as a reward for good behaviour" sounds fine to my ear:
perhaps it's a matter of sentence rhythm. "To him" here might be
regarded as an adverb prepositional phrase, not the indirect object as
in the version without "to".
When only pronouns are involved, the rule about the indirect object
coming first may not apply, at least in speech. "Give me it!" - "Give it
me!" - "Give it to me!" are all versions I've heard, but perhaps the
second is dialectal.
Alan Jones
R J Valentine
] Arcadian Rises <arcadi...@aol.com> wrote:
]>>From: jla...@umich.edu
]
]>>But "God be praised" isn't technically the subjunctive mood, but rather
]>>the benedictive or predicative, like "May this house be safe from tigers",
]>>or "O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us"; this is the mood in which prayers
]>>and benedictions are pronounced
]
]>Isn't it rather vocative?
]>You be the judge!
]
] "Vocative" is a case, and only nouns and pronouns have cases.
Yeah, but in digging for meaning we realize that Prof. Rises wasn't
talking about "vocative" at all, but rather "imperative". Holding a
speaker or writer to the words used is almost as silly as saying that a
simple declarative sentence stands on its own without the context that
went with it.
] It's the case of a noun in direct address, like
]
] Terence, this is stupid stuff.
]
] Even in Latin, vocative was rarely distinguished from nominative; the only
] real vocative ending was the -e of the second declension, as in
]
] Domine, non sum dignus.
] 'O Lord, I am not worthy.'
]
] Naturally, since English has no cases, it doesn't have vocative any more
] than it has dative, accusative, or instrumental.
[Much otherwise quite typically correct and informative stuff snipped.]
You see there, it's easy for a linguist to say that English doesn't have
cases, just because they are indistinguishable at a certain level. (That's
like saying that society doesn't have occupations, just because a
housewife is indistinguishable from a college professor.) Because English
cases may be distinguished by position, rather than by word ending or
punctuation, is no good reason to say it doesn't have cases. It's like
forcing people to wear all right shoes because right shoes may be somehow
congruent to left shoes. That all of course doesn't mean there might not
be some value in noting how each language expresses the mystical concept
of "case". It just means we don't have to throw that particular baby out
just because we may want to water the lawn with the bathwater.
Kai Henningsen
> <anker...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> news:8r5bb1$719$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > In article <39D5FD...@erols.com>,
> > lieb...@erols.com wrote:
> >
> > >"God be praised" is simply an idiom; its internal grammar
> > > is of no significance.
> >
> > From that point of view, one hundred percent of the English language
> > is a very large idiom. The subjunctive construction comes from the
> > German (English is a Germanic language).
> >
> > "Gott sei bei uns!"
> > "God be with us!"
> >
> > See the similarity?
>
> Be advised that the above can also be construed to be pleas and not what we
> are not supposed to call "subjunctives".
Actually, the German one can *not* be constructed as anything *but* a
plea. (Of course, it needs a comma.) Except that this particular idion
has, by now, been contracted into a single word, "Gottseibeiuns", which is
a (slightly outdated) euphemism for Satan.
Now if you had used, say, "Gott sei's geklagt" - still pretty much an
idiom, but not something directed *at* God.
Kai Henningsen
Not really OK, no.
There's a difference between forms that are only distinguished for some
words and not for others (as your example here), and forms that are never
distinguished at all. And it seems accusative vs. dative in English falls
in the latter category - the distinction doesn't exist anywhere at all.
Steve MacGregor
kaih=7n2jU...@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen) wrote:
>> "Gott sei bei uns!"
>> "God be with us!"
> Actually, the German one can *not* be constructed as anything *but*
> a plea. (Of course, it needs a comma.)
If it has a comma, then like English, it's a plea:
Gott, sei bei uns!
God, be with us!
Without the comma, it's a subjunctive statement (Konjunktiv I in
German, "present subjunctive" in some people's descriptions of English
grammar).
Try to construe "God bless you" as a plea, rather than a subjunctive.
If it's a plea, then it's "God, bless you", "God" is a vocative,
and "you" has to refer to the person spoken to: God.
--
How many subjunctives to a metric buttload?
Steve MacGregor
jla...@login.itd.umich.edu (John Lawler) wrote:
> Naturally, since English has no cases, it doesn't have vocative
> any more than it has dative, accusative, or instrumental.
In English, vocative is a particular construction, and not a case, and
it does have that construction:
Bill, hand me that folder, if you please.
We do have a vocative marker, if you will: the word "O". Note that
vocatives are always set off by commas. Always. Sentences such as "Go
Suns!" are incorrectly punctuated, as the vocative, "Suns", should be
set aside by a comma: "Go, Suns!"
Consider, in the light of my above pronouncement:
O God, hear our prayer.
O king, live forever!
The word "O" here is =part= of the vocative, and the name or other
vocatative is not separated from it. This is not just an ordinary
interjection, like "oh".
Jack Benny: "Oh, Rochester!"
--
How many vocatives to a metric buttload?
Steve MacGregor
"Alan Jones" <a...@cableinet.co.uk> wrote:
> This analysis seems correct. "Him" in "I gave him a book" behaves
> grammatically like "book", in that either can be made the subject of a
> passive reformulation. So why say that they are in different cases?
I do not say that they are different cases. I would allow the indirect
object to be called, if one needed to, a "dative construction". denoted
by its place between the verb and direct object, but would expect this
term to apply to a prepositional phrase with "to" as well, if it had
the same meaning. Under extreme circumstances, it may exist in the
absence of a direct object: "Write me if you have any questions on
this matter."
--
How many noun cases to a metric buttload?
John Lawler
>John Lawler <jla...@umich.edu> writes:
>] Arcadian Rises <arcadi...@aol.com> writes:
>]>>From: jla...@umich.edu
>]>>But "God be praised" isn't technically the subjunctive mood, but rather
>]>>the benedictive or predicative, like "May this house be safe from tigers",
>]>>or "O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us"; this is the mood in which prayers
>]>>and benedictions are pronounced
>]>Isn't it rather vocative?
>]>You be the judge!
>] "Vocative" is a case, and only nouns and pronouns have cases.
>Yeah, but in digging for meaning we realize that Prof. Rises wasn't
>talking about "vocative" at all, but rather "imperative". Holding a
>speaker or writer to the words used is almost as silly as saying that a
>simple declarative sentence stands on its own without the context that
>went with it.
If he meant to say "imperative", then that's what he meant to say, not
what he said. I was responding to what he said; I'm a linguist, I deal
with what people say, not what they mean to say but don't. And in the
event, I actually pointed out in the post that it *wasn't* imperative,
since it has no addressee.
>] It's the case of a noun in direct address, like
>] Terence, this is stupid stuff.
>] Even in Latin, vocative was rarely distinguished from nominative; the only
>] real vocative ending was the -e of the second declension, as in
>] Domine, non sum dignus.
>] 'O Lord, I am not worthy.'
>] Naturally, since English has no cases, it doesn't have vocative any more
>] than it has dative, accusative, or instrumental.
>[Much otherwise quite typically correct and informative stuff snipped.]
>You see there, it's easy for a linguist to say that English doesn't have
>cases, just because they are indistinguishable at a certain level.
No, the problem is that many people believe they're there (wherever they
think *that* is), but there's no consistent account for all the reported
occurrences. It's rather like saying that there are no flying saucers.
Latin had cases, and Old English had (rather fewer) cases, but they were
lost in Middle English, and Modern English just doesn't have any left at
all. It's a matter of historical fact, sorry.
If you or anybody else wants to assert that Modern English *does* in fact
have cases, you are at liberty to do so, but you really needn't expect
anybody else to agree with you just because you say so. And, as the
evidence of the postings in a.u.e shows, even those who claim the
existence of a case system in Modern English can't agree on how it works.
>(That's like saying that society doesn't have occupations, just because a
> housewife is indistinguishable from a college professor.)
But those two occupations aren't distinct; one could be both, or neither,
or either. Which shows that it's always a little risky to reason from
analogy, and that 'occupation' isn't a simple concept that either exists
or doesn't. Unlike grammatical case, which can be demonstrated
objectively in some languages but not in others.
>Because English cases may be distinguished by position, rather than by
>word ending or punctuation, is no good reason to say it doesn't have
>cases.
Once again, if you want to make that claim, feel free, but you should then
be prepared to list the criteria for distinguishing these cases (and also
to list the cases exhaustively), based on "position" (one assumes that
that would be a well-defined category as well, natch). Punctuation
doesn't enter into it, I'm afraid, since that's a characteristic of
written language only, and I'm sure you'd want to be able to say that
English has cases even when it's spoken by illiterates to illiterates.
>It's like forcing people to wear all right shoes because right shoes may
>be somehow congruent to left shoes.
Lost me there, I'm afraid. I don't know what you mean by "congruent",
and it's your word, not mine.
>That all of course doesn't mean there might not be some value in noting
>how each language expresses the mystical concept of "case".
Oh, the *mystical* concept of "case". Sorry, forgive me. My mistake.
I thought you were discussing objective reality, specifically the reality
of English grammar. Mystical stuff is lots of fun, I agree, but I'd never
want to try to contradict anybody else's religious beliefs. It's a free
county, at least in the US -- though this might contravene the UK's
Official Secrets statutes; after all, there's still an Established Church
there.
>It just means we don't have to throw that particular baby out just
>because we may want to water the lawn with the bathwater.
Whatever you say. And Free Willie, too; why not?
Kai Henningsen
> In article <7n2jU...@khms.westfalen.de>,
> kaih=7n2jU...@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen) wrote:
>
> >> "Gott sei bei uns!"
> >> "God be with us!"
>
> > Actually, the German one can *not* be constructed as anything *but*
> > a plea. (Of course, it needs a comma.)
>
> If it has a comma, then like English, it's a plea:
>
> Gott, sei bei uns!
> God, be with us!
>
> Without the comma, it's a subjunctive statement (Konjunktiv I in
> German, "present subjunctive" in some people's descriptions of English
> grammar).
But it doesn't make sense that way.
> Try to construe "God bless you" as a plea, rather than a subjunctive.
> If it's a plea, then it's "God, bless you", "God" is a vocative,
> and "you" has to refer to the person spoken to: God.
Just like the example I gave that you snipped.
R J Valentine
] R J Valentine <r...@clark.net> writes:
]>John Lawler <jla...@umich.edu> writes:
]>] Arcadian Rises <arcadi...@aol.com> writes:
]>]>>From: jla...@umich.edu
]
]>]>>But "God be praised" isn't technically the subjunctive mood, but rather
]>]>>the benedictive or predicative, like "May this house be safe from tigers",
]>]>>or "O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us"; this is the mood in which prayers
]>]>>and benedictions are pronounced
]
]>]>Isn't it rather vocative?
]>]>You be the judge!
]
]>] "Vocative" is a case, and only nouns and pronouns have cases.
]
]>Yeah, but in digging for meaning we realize that Prof. Rises wasn't
]>talking about "vocative" at all, but rather "imperative". Holding a
]>speaker or writer to the words used is almost as silly as saying that a
]>simple declarative sentence stands on its own without the context that
]>went with it.
]
] If he meant to say "imperative", then that's what he meant to say, not
] what he said. I was responding to what he said; I'm a linguist, I deal
] with what people say, not what they mean to say but don't. And in the
] event, I actually pointed out in the post that it *wasn't* imperative,
] since it has no addressee.
No, I'm afraid not. The thread as quoted was about moods, and a case word
was interjected. What you went off into was a doctoral-level spelling
flame, when it was pretty obvious to any native speaker of English that
the wrong word had just popped out. Whatever withering comment you might
have about "imperative" once that was proposed would at least be
productive. Myself, I deal in what people mean to say as I can perceive
it from what they do say. I don't necessarily hold linguists to that
standard, but I expect them to rappel down off their horses from time to
time when they're dealing with mere mortals.
[Some sneerage snippage before and after the following from first me, then
Prof. Lawler:]
]>Because English cases may be distinguished by position, rather than by
]>word ending or punctuation, is no good reason to say it doesn't have
]>cases.
]
] Once again, if you want to make that claim, feel free, but you should then
] be prepared to list the criteria for distinguishing these cases (and also
] to list the cases exhaustively), based on "position" (one assumes that
] that would be a well-defined category as well, natch). Punctuation
] doesn't enter into it, I'm afraid, since that's a characteristic of
] written language only, and I'm sure you'd want to be able to say that
] English has cases even when it's spoken by illiterates to illiterates.
No, I don't think so there, either, but I'll certainly leave it to the
interested student to list them all. What I'll suggest is that anyone
passably familiar with the English Language can extract the sort of
information that is sometimes extracted from case prefixes or suffixes
from the very position of the words in something like "Chris give Pat
Terry book."
(Oh, yeah, and, if you want to deny that claim, like feel free, yourself.)
Rainer Thonnes
Steve MacGregor <esper...@my-deja.com> writes:
>
> I would allow the indirect
>object to be called, if one needed to, a "dative construction". denoted
>by its place between the verb and direct object, but would expect this
>term to apply to a prepositional phrase with "to" as well, if it had
>the same meaning. Under extreme circumstances, it may exist in the
>absence of a direct object: "Write me if you have any questions on
>this matter."
Interestingly enough, that would be incorrect English, though it is
perfectly correct American. In Rightpondia we never write someone,
we always write *to* someone, unless a direct object is present.
*Write me.
Write to me.
Write me a letter.
Write a letter to me.
Rainer Thonnes
kaih=7n7WK...@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen) writes:
>esper...@my-deja.com (Steve MacGregor) wrote
>> kaih=7n2jU...@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen) wrote:
>> > Actually, the German one can *not* be constructed as anything *but*
>> > a plea. (Of course, it needs a comma.)
>>
>> If it has a comma, then like English, it's a plea:
>>
>> Gott, sei bei uns!
>> God, be with us!
>>
>> Without the comma, it's a subjunctive statement (Konjunktiv I in
>> German, "present subjunctive" in some people's descriptions of English
>> grammar).
>
>But it doesn't make sense that way.
Of course it does, though I expect in modern German the use of the
bare subjunctive other than in a dependent context (for example as
in "Ich wuensche dass Gott bei uns sei" = "I wish that God were with
us" or even "Ich wuensche Gott sei bei us" = "I wish that God be with
us") is no longer at the height of fashion.
I guess Kai, if he thinks this does not make sense, is one of these
youngsters to whom this use of the subjunctive is far from the second
nature it would have been to people 50 or 100 years ago. It's just
unfamiliar to him, so he fails to recognise it, so he claims it
doesn't make sense. An easy mistake to make.
While in "Gott, sei bei uns", with comma, "sei" is 2nd person
imperative, in "Gott sei bei uns", without comma, it is 3rd person
Konjunktiv. In other words, "Gott sei bei uns" means the same as
"Moege Gott bei uns sein". This is exactly the same as in English
where "God be with us" means the same as "May God be with us".
Things must be pretty desperate when you get two Germans discussing
a point of German grammar in an English language newsgroup. :-)
--
Rainer (Abitur 1973)
Donna Richoux
> Interestingly enough, that would be incorrect English, though it is
> perfectly correct American.
What's this? You playing the obtuse Angle?
I thought it was Ferg who tried to get those fights going.
--
Best --- Donna Richoux
Michael Cargal
<am...@sonic.net> wrote:
>Michael Cargal wrote:
>> Still better setup, Greek tailor, since Euripides was Greek, and
>> Euminides a Greek play.
>
>I don't think so, Michael. Greek immigrants are not known for running
>small tailor (and cobbler) shops, but Italians are. More importantly,
>they don't speak like Italian immigrants, whose stereotypical,
>epenthetic English is well known and the basis for these clever
>wordplays.
Yes, those are points for making the joke about an Italian who speaks
Greeklish. The fact that both words are Greek is a point for making
the tailor Greek.
--
Michael Cargal mhca...@home.com
John Lawler
Re: 'vocative' instead of 'imperative'
>] If he meant to say "imperative", then that's what he meant to say, not
>] what he said. I was responding to what he said; I'm a linguist, I deal
>] with what people say, not what they mean to say but don't. And in the
>] event, I actually pointed out in the post that it *wasn't* imperative,
>] since it has no addressee.
>No, I'm afraid not. The thread as quoted was about moods, and a case word
>was interjected. What you went off into was a doctoral-level spelling
>flame, when it was pretty obvious to any native speaker of English that
>the wrong word had just popped out. Whatever withering comment you might
>have about "imperative" once that was proposed would at least be
>productive. Myself, I deal in what people mean to say as I can perceive
>it from what they do say. I don't necessarily hold linguists to that
>standard, but I expect them to rappel down off their horses from time to
>time when they're dealing with mere mortals.
C'mon down from yours, then. I've been reading a.u.e for 5 or 6 years now
and in that time I've seen otherwise apparently reasonable people say
completely astounding things, which I was even more astounded to discover
that they actually intended to say. Now I simply deal with what's on the
plate, and don't attempt to second-guess or mindread. Language is for
communication; use it or lose it.
It's a daily occurrence in a.u.e for case to intrude on tense, mood, or
anything else. "Tense", for instance, is widely and erroneously used to
refer to any ending that one might put on a verb, or even a noun. The
mishmosh that passes for grammar in the schools leaves everybody equally
confused, for which I don't blame them; but technical vocabulary is
technical, and has a use, and I intend to use it that way. If anybody
wants to know what it means, I'll try to explain; if it gets misused, I'll
try to correct. That's all. We're all merely mortal, but some aspire to
occasional accuracy.
>]>Because English cases may be distinguished by position, rather than by
>]>word ending or punctuation, is no good reason to say it doesn't have
>]>cases.
>] Once again, if you want to make that claim, feel free, but you should then
>] be prepared to list the criteria for distinguishing these cases (and also
>] to list the cases exhaustively), based on "position" (one assumes that
>] that would be a well-defined category as well, natch). Punctuation
>] doesn't enter into it, I'm afraid, since that's a characteristic of
>] written language only, and I'm sure you'd want to be able to say that
>] English has cases even when it's spoken by illiterates to illiterates.
>No, I don't think so there, either, but I'll certainly leave it to the
>interested student to list them all.
The interested students, eh? Who's going to read their homework?
Me. I have to deal with the output of the American educational system
and their lack of grammatical knowledge; I've been teaching grammar
and English linguistics in college for 35 years, and I'm frankly damn
sick and tired of having to unteach the twaddle they've been exposed to.
"Interested students" post in a.u.e, one assumes, and therefore the
various contradictory (but always authoritative) claims we see here daily
constitute the definitive list? Or is English case strictly a matter of
individual faith and morals?
Not much hinges on this, incidentally; it's at worst a minor nuisance to
be having to disentangle real English grammar from the (often well-
meaning) confused pronouncements of those who can't distinguish it from
Latin. But it does get in the way of explaining reality, and to that
extent it *is* a nuisance, and I think it's a mistake to pretend
otherwise.
>What I'll suggest is that anyone
>passably familiar with the English Language can extract the sort of
>information that is sometimes extracted from case prefixes or suffixes
>from the very position of the words in something like "Chris give Pat
>Terry book."
That's not a sentence; a sentence would use prepositions. This is what
prepositions were invented for. Quite literally; when Latin lost its case
system in the first millenium AD, the use of prepositions skyrocketed to
take up the relational slack in the Romance languages. Similar things
happened in Middle English when Old English lost *its* case system. We
don't need cases because we have prepositions.
>(Oh, yeah, and, if you want to deny that claim, like feel free, yourself.)
No evidence except your belief has been produced to support it, so I don't
have to deny it. It's been denied for centuries, but some beliefs are
apparently difficult to give up. And, to be fair, some people actually
*do* remember the paradigms better when they have Latin names associated;
but for many it's an unnecessary encumbrance, and for others it defeats
the purpose by confusing them totally. This is not enlightenment, this is
dogma; and dogma can be ignored.
anker...@my-deja.com
r...@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Rainer Thonnes) wrote:
> Things must be pretty desperate when you get two Germans discussing
> a point of German grammar in an English language newsgroup. :-)
I find it most interesting and instructive. English is a Germanic
language. Both languages have evolved in the last 500 years. Just
read Luther's translation of the bible. It has more English-like
words and sentence constructions than modern German does.
In fact, as many other posters to this thread have proven, there are
many examples of the use of the subjunctive "be" in English. "Praise
be to God." was mentioned. Again, the use of the Konjunktiv I in
English.
My point was that one can find in English examples of both the
Konjunktiv I and II. And, often the constructions are similar
to German and often there is an identical indicative construction,
but the speaker does know which one is meant. That goes back to
the dative and accusative question. I urge you to read the Valentine
post, about 5 spaces above at this time on deja. He points out
that the linguist who claim that English has but two tenses and no
cases is going to extremes, and doing so incorrectly.
GFH
Alex Chernavsky
>Myself, I deal in what people mean to say as
>I can perceive it from what they do say.
I once met a surgical nurse, who was apparently very good at her job (or so
she said, anyway). She confided in me the secret of her success: "I don't
give the surgeon what he asks for; I give him what he wants".
At the time, I assumed she was talking about slapping scalpels and such into
his palm, but now I'm beginning to wonder...
--
Alex Chernavsky
al...@astrocyte-design.com
R J Valentine
or two of the previous ones. I should note that I agree with most of the
presumed intent of it, so my disagreement on maybe three points shouldn't
be taken as overly contentious. And in general it's rare that I disagree
with anything in one of Prof. Lawler's postings.
John Lawler <jla...@login.itd.umich.edu> wrote:
] R J Valentine <r...@clark.net> writes:
]>John Lawler <jla...@umich.edu> writes:
]
] Re: 'vocative' instead of 'imperative'
]
]>] If he meant to say "imperative", then that's what he meant to say, not
]>] what he said. I was responding to what he said; I'm a linguist, I deal
]>] with what people say, not what they mean to say but don't. And in the
]>] event, I actually pointed out in the post that it *wasn't* imperative,
]>] since it has no addressee.
]
]>No, I'm afraid not. The thread as quoted was about moods, and a case word
]>was interjected. What you went off into was a doctoral-level spelling
]>flame, when it was pretty obvious to any native speaker of English that
]>the wrong word had just popped out. Whatever withering comment you might
]>have about "imperative" once that was proposed would at least be
]>productive. Myself, I deal in what people mean to say as I can perceive
]>it from what they do say. I don't necessarily hold linguists to that
]>standard, but I expect them to rappel down off their horses from time to
]>time when they're dealing with mere mortals.
]
] C'mon down from yours, then. I've been reading a.u.e for 5 or 6 years now
] and in that time I've seen otherwise apparently reasonable people say
] completely astounding things, which I was even more astounded to discover
] that they actually intended to say. Now I simply deal with what's on the
] plate, and don't attempt to second-guess or mindread. Language is for
] communication; use it or lose it.
A swell slogan, and I could hardly fault the casual poster for relying on
a misspelling to make a sudden change in topic. Surely less major
spelling errors than "vocative" for "imperative" wouldn't trip you up. Did
you notice "interview" for "review" in another thread last week? That
seemed to throw a couple of people off. And there was a poster who left
off a "not", which confused a few people. It happens. I've been reading
alt.usage.english for five or six years, myself, and my son had for some
time before that (so it's not like I stumbled in disoriented). I don't
think I'm as easily astounded as you claim to be, though.
] It's a daily occurrence in a.u.e for case to intrude on tense, mood, or
] anything else. "Tense", for instance, is widely and erroneously used to
] refer to any ending that one might put on a verb, or even a noun. The
] mishmosh that passes for grammar in the schools leaves everybody equally
] confused, for which I don't blame them; but technical vocabulary is
] technical, and has a use, and I intend to use it that way. If anybody
] wants to know what it means, I'll try to explain; if it gets misused, I'll
] try to correct. That's all. We're all merely mortal, but some aspire to
] occasional accuracy.
Here are two errors, kind of mixed together, so I'll tease them apart for
comment.
Your occasional claim (and Aaron's) that English has only two tenses may
well be part of the jargon you require of students to get through your
courses, and I can appreciate the argument to a certain extent, but this
isn't alt.usage.jargon, it's alt.usage.english; and in English usage we
use "tense" the way we do in English, perhaps as reflected in ordinary
dictionaries. For instance, my trusty old _American Heritage Dictionary_
(I) has for "tense": "1. Any of the inflected forms in the conjugation of
a verb that indicate the time (past, present, or future) as well as the
continuance (imperfect) or completion (perfect) of the action or state.
2. A set of such forms indicating a particular time: _the future tense_."
Now I realize that that may not be the definition you use in your
classroom, and I freely admit that the definition you use in your
classroom may have some scientific merit, but that's *a* definition that's
out there in English usage, and you can deal with it or not. Now whether
the tense information (and other ancillary information lumped
"erroneously" in with "tense") is indicated by different forms or by
primitive forms of other verbs now slapped on as endings or by "helping
verbs" is the purest of trivia. If it can be expressed in one language
that has heaps of jargon tenses and it can be expressed in another
language that does it in a different way, the time is getting expressed,
and it's "tense" in English usage. There are no doubt places where it
would be wise to regurgitate a narrower view of the subject, and that
narrower view may well give some valuable insight into something. I can't
tell if you're building a straw man where "mood" or nouns are somehow
involved. I hope not; but, if you are, I reject your straw man with you.
The other error here is the shot you take at the educational system. The
public school systems do what they can with what they have to deal with.
If they are sent illiterate children and manage to teach some of them to
read, then they at least are doing something. If a university is sent the
brightest of the bright and manage to teach them some jargon so that they
are no longer able to communicate with ordinary people, I'm not sure they
deserve as much credit. But there is blame enough to go around. Parents
who spend the best years of their children's lives sending them off to
learn how to line up or to move across a room in a variety of ways instead
of teaching them to read can take some of it. (There's an irritating
commercial running lately with a somber woman saying something about how a
V-chip can help you monitor what your children watch on television. What
it fails to mention is that sitting down next to them and watching it with
them and talking to them about it can help you monitor what your children
watch on television even better.) An economic system that makes that a
normal way of life can take some. Religions that put up with it can take
some. I can only guess at the frustration you may feel in being presented
with blank slates thirsting for your wisdom; but, if you must blame
anyone, blame the parents who are paying your salary and then get on with
training your students to train future generations. We here are blessed
with what is rumored to be the worst county school system in the state of
Maryland. But I have found that the teachers are ready to teach anyone
who shows the least interest in the subject, and I've found that the
school system isn't an obstacle to anything later. Sure, it'd be easier
if the students all came in knowing everything already. But that's not
the way it is.
]>]>Because English cases may be distinguished by position, rather than by
No, the interested student could be you (unless of course you've stopped
being interested or stopped being a student). Definitive lists of things
are best done under the guidance of a college professor or a pope. Latin
manages to indicate time, but people have been indicating time long before
they take Latin (or even English) in school. At school they may have a
shot at organizing it or understanding it a little better (or
differently).
]>What I'll suggest is that anyone
]>passably familiar with the English Language can extract the sort of
]>information that is sometimes extracted from case prefixes or suffixes
]>from the very position of the words in something like "Chris give Pat
]>Terry book."
]
] That's not a sentence; a sentence would use prepositions. This is what
] prepositions were invented for. Quite literally; when Latin lost its case
] system in the first millenium AD, the use of prepositions skyrocketed to
] take up the relational slack in the Romance languages. Similar things
] happened in Middle English when Old English lost *its* case system. We
] don't need cases because we have prepositions.
So here's the other error I promised. It happens I overheard almost
exactly that sentence on the bus the other day (the names have been
changed to protect the innocent). That's a sentence, I tell you flat out;
and it didn't have a single preposition or inflected noun. The speaker
understood it by definition; the listener understood it without any
apparent confusion; and I understood it sitting behind them. And yet I
claim that the information that might be found in case endings in a more
inflected language is present in the word positions of this sentence.
]>(Oh, yeah, and, if you want to deny that claim, like feel free, yourself.)
]
] No evidence except your belief has been produced to support it, so I don't
] have to deny it.
A little more than that. I heard it. I understood it. I state that I
did. If you want to call me a liar, that's one thing. If you want to
counterclaim that I misheard or misunderstood what was said, that's
another. If you want to claim that caselike information represented by
word position is essentially different from caselike information
represented by word inflection, that's yet another. I don't see how you'd
even be _able_ to *deny* the claim except by way of clarification. If you
want to assign the problem of making up a definitive list of word-position
stuff to your class, that's frosting on the cake. I present you with an
observed sentence; feel free to do with it what you will.
] It's been denied for centuries, but some beliefs are
] apparently difficult to give up. And, to be fair, some people actually
] *do* remember the paradigms better when they have Latin names associated;
] but for many it's an unnecessary encumbrance, and for others it defeats
] the purpose by confusing them totally. This is not enlightenment, this is
] dogma; and dogma can be ignored.
Who can argue with that. And yet it moves.
Chris Conner
John Lawler <jla...@login.itd.umich.edu> wrote:
>The interested students, eh? Who's going to read their homework?
>Me. I have to deal with the output of the American educational system
>and their lack of grammatical knowledge; I've been teaching grammar
>and English linguistics in college for 35 years, and I'm frankly damn
>sick and tired of having to unteach the twaddle they've been exposed to.
So what should they be taught? More specifically, if you wanted to
teach high school students non-twaddly English grammar, what book would
you use?
--
Chris Conner
P&D Schultz
>
> Robert Lieblich wrote:
> > <...>
> > Or is it everything you post intended either rhetorically or ironically?
>
> I'm tired. Just forget about it.
Ok, but please recall this particular goat-rope of yours before starting
another round of similar nonsense next time, ok?
\\P. Schultz
P&D Schultz
>
> In "Give it to the person who asks", "the person" is in the dative
> case, <...>
Maybe if you translated into Russian or Latin it would be. But English
doesn't have a dative case.
\\P. Schultz
P&D Schultz
>
> In article <39D3F14D...@erols.com>,
> P&D Schultz <schu...@erols.com> wrote:
>
> > If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for
> > Shainbaum.
>
> Was that not why Joan d'Arc was burned? Because God spoke to her
> in French instead of English? I can quote Shaw as a reference.
St. Bernadette, the 19th century French girl who claimed she saw the
Virgin Mary, was disbelieved by her teachers partly because they
couldn't believe the BVM would speak in dialect instead of in Parisian
French.
\\P. Schultz
P&D Schultz
> I would rather say, we should follow the grammar of Latin when
> analyzing English, when doing so is appropriate, and not do so when it
> is not appropriate. <...>
And by the exact same logic, we should should follow the grammar of
Navajo and of Chinese when analyzing English, when doing so is
appropriate, and not do so when it is not appropriate.
And when would any of that be appropriate?
\\P. Schultz
Robert Lieblich
Can you say "truism"?
John Lawler
>Here are two errors, kind of mixed together, so I'll tease them apart for
>comment.
>Your occasional claim (and Aaron's) that English has only two tenses may
>well be part of the jargon you require of students to get through your
>courses, and I can appreciate the argument to a certain extent, but this
>isn't alt.usage.jargon, it's alt.usage.english; and in English usage we
>use "tense" the way we do in English, perhaps as reflected in ordinary
>dictionaries.
Sorry, it's not my claim, nor even Aaron's. It's a simple fact, that's
all. There is evidence for two tenses (Present and Past) in modern
English, and not any others. Calling this an "error" does not make it
erroneous, nor does calling correct use of technical terminology "jargon"
make it incorrect. You should be able to do better than simply casting
aspersions.
>For instance, my trusty old _American Heritage Dictionary_
>(I) has for "tense": "1. Any of the inflected forms in the conjugation of
>a verb that indicate the time (past, present, or future) as well as the
>continuance (imperfect) or completion (perfect) of the action or state.
>2. A set of such forms indicating a particular time: _the future tense_."
>Now I realize that that may not be the definition you use in your
>classroom, and I freely admit that the definition you use in your
>classroom may have some scientific merit, but that's *a* definition that's
>out there in English usage, and you can deal with it or not.
I can live with that. It's accurate enough. But note that nowhere does
it refer to the *English* future tense. In fact, English has precisely two
inflected forms in the conjugation of a verb that indicate the time, and
they're the Present and the Past. The present inflection is {-z} for
third person singular and zero otherwise. Here's the paradigm:
I see /si/ We see /si/
You see /si/ You see /si/
He/She/It sees /siz/ They see /si/
The past regular ending is {-d} for all persons and numbers, though there
are many irregular verbs (among them 'see'). I don't think we're in any
disagreement about this, so I won't bother with the paradigm.
That's it. Those are *all* the inflections of the verb that indicate time
in English. We have lots of other constructions that indicate time, of
course, and some (but not all) of them are often called 'tense', but
they're not inflections. Take the "present perfect". That's got the
present tense inflection on the auxiliary verb 'have', making it Present
tense. The Perfect part comes from the perfect construction, using
a form of 'have' followed by the past participle of the next verb.
I wrote a piece on this a while back in a.u.e; it's at
http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/tense.html
Latin, now, Latin has lots more verbal inflections, including 6 inflected
tenses; but English only has the two. And every English sentence that
doesn't contain a modal auxiliary in its main clause has one of those two
inflections on the first auxiliary verb, and no others. That's a fact.
It's enough of a fact that it can be found in every grammar of English
used to teach English to non-native speakers, who don't have time for the
usual nonsense, but have to get on with learning something.
>Now whether
>the tense information (and other ancillary information lumped
>"erroneously" in with "tense") is indicated by different forms or by
>primitive forms of other verbs now slapped on as endings or by "helping
>verbs" is the purest of trivia.
No, it's not. Sorry. The definition you quoted says "inflected forms of
the verb", and that means forms of the verb with inflections. In English
that's {-d} or {-z}. *Not* any of the raft of auxiliary verb constructions
that one might assemble to accompany the main verb; those aren't inflected
forms of the verb. The inflected form of each of *those* is the first
auxiliary, which has either present or past inflection. The rest of the
forms are either participles or infinitives, which do *not* indicate
tense. That's why they're called "non-finite" forms; no tense.
>If it can be expressed in one language
>that has heaps of jargon tenses and it can be expressed in another
>language that does it in a different way, the time is getting expressed,
>and it's "tense" in English usage. There are no doubt places where it
>would be wise to regurgitate a narrower view of the subject, and that
>narrower view may well give some valuable insight into something. I can't
>tell if you're building a straw man where "mood" or nouns are somehow
>involved. I hope not; but, if you are, I reject your straw man with you.
Now, now, "jargon", "regurgitate", "narrow", "straw man", ... that's
hardly reasoned argument. Don't forget, *you're* making the claim that
I'm in error to say there are only 2 tenses in English. I demonstrated
exactly what I mean by that, using *your* definition. If you don't accept
it, OK. But calling names doesn't prove anything, except possibly that
you don't feel comfortable at this depth.
Once again, if you believe that there are N > 2 tenses in English, let's
see them, eh? Or N > 0 cases, for that matter. My cards are on the
table; let's see your hand.
>The other error here is the shot you take at the educational system. The
>public school systems do what they can with what they have to deal with.
>If they are sent illiterate children and manage to teach some of them to
>read, then they at least are doing something.
All schools everywhere are sent illiterate children. Put another way,
everybody is born illiterate. It's the job of the school system to remedy
that. As a matter of fact, most school systems in the world do a better
job at simple literacy than American schools.
But that's not what I was talking about.
I was talking about the fact that American schools teach their students
nothing about language, either their own or others'. In particular, they
seem to inculcate an attitude toward grammar that mixes aggressiveness and
ignorance in about equal measures. Most people escape our educational
system with an acquired distaste for grammar; and that's bad enough. But
a minority leave with a bag of misinformation that they're doggedly and
dogmatically determined to defend, even though they can't explain why or
how they know it's true, and they frequently proceed to spend the rest of
their lives beating everybody over the head with it.
*That's* what I'm talking about. It's the fault of the school system for
perpetuating such a shameful state of ignorance, and that's no error,
either.
Enough, already. It's clear I'm not going to convince you, and it's
getting late. Good night.
Steve MacGregor
P&D Schultz <schu...@erols.com> wrote:
> And by the exact same logic, we should should follow the grammar of
> Navajo and of Chinese when analyzing English, when doing so is
> appropriate, and not do so when it is not appropriate.
Of course.
> And when would any of that be appropriate?
Hardly ever, as expected, since English is related to Latin, but not to
Navajo or Chinese.
When I attempt to explain Hebrew grammar, I use Latin grammatical terms
whenever possible, but not when inappropriate. That is, Hebrew nouns
have two genders (but also two states -- not a Latin term). Verbs have
person, number, voice, and gender, and also aspect (a notion borrowed
from Greek grammar), but not (in my explanation) tense.
Whereas Latin and English verbs have two voices and Greek verbs have
three, I describe Hebrew as having seven voices. That is, I'll use the
grammatical term "voice", as in Latin, but use it differently to
describe what I see in Hebrew.
--
How many verb tenses to a metric buttload?
R J Valentine
] R J Valentine <r...@clark.net> writes:
]
]>Here are two errors, kind of mixed together, so I'll tease them apart for
]>comment.
]
]>Your occasional claim (and Aaron's) that English has only two tenses may
]>well be part of the jargon you require of students to get through your
]>courses, and I can appreciate the argument to a certain extent, but this
]>isn't alt.usage.jargon, it's alt.usage.english; and in English usage we
]>use "tense" the way we do in English, perhaps as reflected in ordinary
]>dictionaries.
]
] Sorry, it's not my claim, nor even Aaron's. It's a simple fact, that's
] all. There is evidence for two tenses (Present and Past) in modern
] English, and not any others. Calling this an "error" does not make it
] erroneous, nor does calling correct use of technical terminology "jargon"
] make it incorrect. You should be able to do better than simply casting
] aspersions.
Well, sure it's your claim and Aaron's and one or two other people's. But
nobody else talks like that in English. This is not to say there's
anything wrong with your claim; it's certainly an interesting curiosity
about English usage. Yet English is perfectly capable of expressing the
future tense, regardless of the history of the forms of the pieces of
words that make it evident. In those languages where verb "inflections"
are desiccated forms of other verbs, is is an accident of orthography that
they are attached to the root. Calling one sort of thing a simple fact
doesn't make it essentially different from another sort of thing that
accomplishes the same purpose in a different way. Calling an error an
error is like calling a duck a duck. And what good are aspersions if not
cast. Do you keep yours locked in a box to sort on a rainy day? If
telling the emperor he has no clothes is casting aspersions, how is he
ever going to find out. I put in the effort to figure out what you're
saying, and I don't even argue with it in the area where it happens to be
appropriate.
]>For instance, my trusty old _American Heritage Dictionary_
]>(I) has for "tense": "1. Any of the inflected forms in the conjugation of
]>a verb that indicate the time (past, present, or future) as well as the
]>continuance (imperfect) or completion (perfect) of the action or state.
]>2. A set of such forms indicating a particular time: _the future tense_."
]
]>Now I realize that that may not be the definition you use in your
]>classroom, and I freely admit that the definition you use in your
]>classroom may have some scientific merit, but that's *a* definition that's
]>out there in English usage, and you can deal with it or not.
]
] I can live with that. It's accurate enough. But note that nowhere does
] it refer to the *English* future tense.
Nice try, but it's an English-language dictionary talking about English as
she is spoke unless otherwise indicated. Doubt it? For "future tense" it
has: "A verb tense used to express action in the future." That's it.
Nothing about other languages. No hint that you can't express action in
the future in English. This is English usage writ large, and they're
talking about the future tense in English. Under "will" it has: "It can
indicate: 1. Simple futurity: _They will appear later._" Nothing about
there's no way to represent simple futurity, nothing about this is some
strange way to represent simple futurity, though a little about what it
used to mean. Now while you're casting aspersions about casting
aspersions, I should point out for anyone who thinks I'm picking on you
that I know well that you've known all this since early childhood, and
that I appreciate at least on my superficial level your point about two
tenses of the stuff we build tenses out of. I'm just suggesting that the
quoted "will appear" is widely recognized as the future tense of "appear"
(and that it does not make a whit of difference that it's not written
"willappear" or "'llappear"). It's what I've observed in English usage in
about the same time you've been observing English usage, though of course
I've also heard a few people present your position as if it were a simple
fact universally, when in actual fact it's just a curiosity. I don't deny
it as a curiosity. I wouldn't waste time in your class contradicting you,
and I wouldn't bother the folks over on sci.lang, where it might be more
than a curiosity.
] In fact, English has precisely two
] inflected forms in the conjugation of a verb that indicate the time, and
] they're the Present and the Past. The present inflection is {-z} for
] third person singular and zero otherwise. Here's the paradigm:
]
] I see /si/ We see /si/
] You see /si/ You see /si/
] He/She/It sees /siz/ They see /si/
]
] The past regular ending is {-d} for all persons and numbers, though there
] are many irregular verbs (among them 'see'). I don't think we're in any
] disagreement about this, so I won't bother with the paradigm.
]
] That's it. Those are *all* the inflections of the verb that indicate time
] in English. We have lots of other constructions that indicate time, of
] course, and some (but not all) of them are often called 'tense', but
] they're not inflections. Take the "present perfect". That's got the
] present tense inflection on the auxiliary verb 'have', making it Present
] tense. The Perfect part comes from the perfect construction, using
] a form of 'have' followed by the past participle of the next verb.
]
] I wrote a piece on this a while back in a.u.e; it's at
] http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/tense.html
Well of course. I grant you all that from the git-go, though it's
certainly useful to review it, and I encourage people to flog useful,
informative, and entertaining websites in the course of a discussion.
Your contributions to alt.usage.english are far above the average in
quality and wit. Your website is a monument to what education can be.
Really. People should go there. It's not all highfalutin or anything.
] Latin, now, Latin has lots more verbal inflections, including 6 inflected
] tenses; but English only has the two. And every English sentence that
] doesn't contain a modal auxiliary in its main clause has one of those two
] inflections on the first auxiliary verb, and no others. That's a fact.
It's a fact if you limit verbal inflections to attached endings that might
have been left over from other verbs and disqualify auxilliary verbs as
part of the verb proper.
] It's enough of a fact that it can be found in every grammar of English
] used to teach English to non-native speakers, who don't have time for the
] usual nonsense, but have to get on with learning something.
I don't doubt that it's useful in some languages. I wonder if it's useful
in all languages. But sure, with your set of rules, one stage of the
curiosity becomes dominant. But that's not the ordinary English usage.
]>Now whether
]>the tense information (and other ancillary information lumped
]>"erroneously" in with "tense") is indicated by different forms or by
]>primitive forms of other verbs now slapped on as endings or by "helping
]>verbs" is the purest of trivia.
]
] No, it's not. Sorry. The definition you quoted says "inflected forms of
] the verb", and that means forms of the verb with inflections. In English
] that's {-d} or {-z}. *Not* any of the raft of auxiliary verb constructions
] that one might assemble to accompany the main verb; those aren't inflected
] forms of the verb. The inflected form of each of *those* is the first
] auxiliary, which has either present or past inflection. The rest of the
] forms are either participles or infinitives, which do *not* indicate
] tense. That's why they're called "non-finite" forms; no tense.
The definition I quoted also mentions the "future tense" with *no*
indication _whatsoever_ that such a thing is not found in English. I say
that there's no mention not because they forgot it, but because it's a
given, assumed throughout in other definitions I also quoted. Your
position (true enough as far as it goes, mind you) appears tucked away in
parentheses and notes, "Extra for Experts", if you will, and not at all
part of English usage in general.
]>If it can be expressed in one language
]>that has heaps of jargon tenses and it can be expressed in another
]>language that does it in a different way, the time is getting expressed,
]>and it's "tense" in English usage. There are no doubt places where it
]>would be wise to regurgitate a narrower view of the subject, and that
]>narrower view may well give some valuable insight into something. I can't
]>tell if you're building a straw man where "mood" or nouns are somehow
]>involved. I hope not; but, if you are, I reject your straw man with you.
]
] Now, now, "jargon", "regurgitate", "narrow", "straw man", ... that's
] hardly reasoned argument.
Think not? Do you deny that it was a straw man? Did my agreement with
your opinion of the straw man burst any bubbles? Do you deny that the
two-tense view of English is narrower than the six-tense view? Do you
accept other positions in your two-tense classes, or are you open to
different views of the importance of attached inflections? Do you
actually use words the way they are used in widely used dictionaries of
English, or do you have a more limited scope to them and even invent new
words to help you express your position? Answer those and we'll see
what's a reasoned argument.
] Don't forget, *you're* making the claim that
] I'm in error to say there are only 2 tenses in English.
Just in English usage. I'm not treading on your turf and spreading
dissension among your students. If they care about my opinion at all (and
I'm not claiming more than a couple of people who might), they should give
you back the sort of thing on examinations and papers that you want to
hear, confident in the knowledge that it's a good way of looking at things
for some purposes. Biologists should be familiar with microscopes, but
they shouldn't necessarily wear them out in public.
] I demonstrated
] exactly what I mean by that, using *your* definition. If you don't accept
] it, OK.
Oh, good, because you haven't given a reasonable explanation of what they
mean by "future tense" that doesn't conflict with what they say they mean.
You may have differences with the definition I quoted, but you didn't
demonstrate squat with it. In case you think I'm just picking
dictionaries that agree with me, let's take a look at "tense" in some
others. NSOED93 is about as clear (not much more or less) as AHD1, but it
has an interesting quote to go with it: (Quoting C. P. Mason) "The tenses
of the English verb are made partly by inflection." I mention it for the
use of the word, and understand that by your definitions it might not fit
your definitions. The word "partly" is in there; I didn't make it up (let
me check; yup, it's really in there). Webster's Second has: "2. _Gram._
Distinctive form in a verb for the expression of distinctions as to time;
the modification of verbal forms to express such distinctions for the
actionor occurrence signified; an inflectional form or phrase thus
expressive of a time distinction. Tense forms are called _point tenses_
when they express the action simply as falling at past, present, or future
times (_wrote, writes, will write_); they are called _durative tenses_
when they express aspects of duration, as the continuance of the act or
its completion (_am writing, have written_)." Yup, with English examples
of more than two tenses and all. This is the dictionary on the stand in
libraries all the time you were growing up. This is ordinary English
usage that you had to unlearn to earn your linguist's hat.
] But calling names doesn't prove anything, except possibly that
] you don't feel comfortable at this depth.
Oooh! Possibly that I don't feel comfortable at this depth! Good one.
That sure put me in my place. This depth, by the way, is English usage.
(Just out of curiosity, I'd be intersted to know what names have wounded
you so. The only one I recall using is "Prof. Lawler". Did another one
slip through? You're talking about "bad" names, right, in English usage?
Is saying you're wrong when you're wrong calling names? Is categorizing
your arguments and giving you full credit for the good ones calling names?
I mean just how gentle do I have to be with you? You *are* implying that
I have called you names, right? I'm not misunderstanding your usage of
English here, am I? Seems to be you have a Web page on what's assumed in
a statement and what's asserted. Is this one of those assumed-as-fact
things? Would a neutral observer (say, an expert in the field like Rey
(oops, wait a second; can we stipulate that "linguist" isn't a dirty
word?)) be able to discern any names I've called you. I could almost
assume that you meant to make just a general statement out of the blue,
but you went and used the word "you" in the same sentence. What do you
think? Are you going to stand by the implication or deny it or withdraw
it? But I, too, digress.)
I am eager to hear of any general dictionaries of English that see it your
way. I don't doubt for a second that what you say is common linguist
usage, but then I'm not dealing at that depth, though I have nothing
against learning about it. Nothing you've said in this thread is any
different from what Aaron has been saying for years, and it's been an
interesting curiosity each time.
] Once again, if you believe that there are N > 2 tenses in English, let's
] see them, eh? Or N > 0 cases, for that matter. My cards are on the
] table; let's see your hand.
Deal with "future" in English usage. If it's any help, I'll grant you
that "will" is usually separated from the thing that looks like the
infinitive and that it has an obscure past of its own when construed as
present. Is there anything else in your satchel?
]>The other error here is the shot you take at the educational system. The
]>public school systems do what they can with what they have to deal with.
]>If they are sent illiterate children and manage to teach some of them to
]>read, then they at least are doing something.
]
] All schools everywhere are sent illiterate children.
Oh, don't be silly. There are plenty of kindergarten classes with a table
of students who could read on day one and are used as teacher's aides or
shuffled off into a corner. Almost all children are ready to start
reading at age one and it's easy to teach them at age two. There is no
reason beyond the disinclination of parents to bother that children can't
all be sent to kindergarten knowing how to read. Blame Canada!
] Put another way,
] everybody is born illiterate.
That one I'll grant you, and in general I'm happy to agree with you when
you're right and learn from you when you say something I don't know. But
I know for a fact that many children start school knowing how to read. If
you deny that, you are wrong.
] It's the job of the school system to remedy
] that.
No, it's the job of the parents to remedy that. It's the job of the
school to try to play catch-up ball when the parents for whatever reason
don't. Parents are not assistant-teachers; teachers are
assistant-parents.
] As a matter of fact, most school systems in the world do a better
] job at simple literacy than American schools.
As a matter of opinion, maybe. They certainly put a lot of effort into
teaching English as a foreign language. It could be to keep up with the
British or the Australians or the South Africans or the Canadians, I
suppose. I suspect that American teachers are doing what they can, don't
you.
] But that's not what I was talking about.
Of course not.
] I was talking about the fact that American schools teach their students
] nothing about language, either their own or others'. In particular, they
] seem to inculcate an attitude toward grammar that mixes aggressiveness and
] ignorance in about equal measures. Most people escape our educational
] system with an acquired distaste for grammar; and that's bad enough. But
] a minority leave with a bag of misinformation that they're doggedly and
] dogmatically determined to defend, even though they can't explain why or
] how they know it's true, and they frequently proceed to spend the rest of
] their lives beating everybody over the head with it.
]
] *That's* what I'm talking about. It's the fault of the school system for
] perpetuating such a shameful state of ignorance, and that's no error,
] either.
They bear some responsibility, sure, as do the people that trained them,
eh, Professor?
] Enough, already. It's clear I'm not going to convince you, and it's
] getting late. Good night.
You'll convince me of anything you're right about. I didn't need
convincing about the two-tense thing (I think I figured that out for
myself about fifty years ago), and it's true enough that you're unlikely
to convince me that what I'm saying isn't ordinary English usage, unless
maybe Macquarie's dictionary has a different and convincing slant on it.
But you're free to quit if you want. Mind the door.
] -John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler U of Michigan Linguistics Dept
(A very good website, in case there's anyone left who hasn't seen it. The
guy really knows his stuff.)
Alan Jones
"John Lawler" <jla...@login.itd.umich.edu> wrote in message
news:eMcC5.5434$O5.1...@news.itd.umich.edu...
| Latin, now, Latin has lots more verbal inflections, including 6
inflected
| tenses; but English only has the two. And every English sentence that
| doesn't contain a modal auxiliary in its main clause has one of those
two
| inflections on the first auxiliary verb, and no others. That's a
fact.
| It's enough of a fact that it can be found in every grammar of English
| used to teach English to non-native speakers, who don't have time for
the
| usual nonsense, but have to get on with learning something.
|
......"inflected forms of
| the verb" ... means forms of the verb with inflections. In English
| that's {-d} or {-z}. *Not* any of the raft of auxiliary verb
constructions
| that one might assemble to accompany the main verb; those aren't
inflected
| forms of the verb. The inflected form of each of *those* is the first
| auxiliary, which has either present or past inflection. The rest of
the
| forms are either participles or infinitives, which do *not* indicate
| tense. That's why they're called "non-finite" forms; no tense.
.......|
| American schools teach their students
| nothing about language, either their own or others'. In particular,
they
| seem to inculcate an attitude toward grammar that mixes aggressiveness
and
| ignorance in about equal measures. Most people escape our educational
| system with an acquired distaste for grammar; and that's bad enough.
But
| a minority leave with a bag of misinformation that they're doggedly
and
| dogmatically determined to defend, even though they can't explain why
or
| how they know it's true, and they frequently proceed to spend the rest
of
| their lives beating everybody over the head with it.
|
| *That's* what I'm talking about. It's the fault of the school system
for
| perpetuating such a shameful state of ignorance, and that's no error,
| either.
Sorry to have snipped so much of this important discussion, which
deserves full and careful reading.
Writing as a retired UK school teacher of English, I want to say that
Professor Lawler's "only two tenses" analysis is not only self-evidently
true but also the easiest way of getting children to understand sentence
construction in a productive way - I mean, so that they can reliably
construct sentences for themselves. The most difficult part of learning
about grammatical sentence construction is grasping what a finite verb
is, since a finite verb is the axis of any fully-expressed sentence
(yes, there are rhetorical exceptions, but one's initial examples for
children have to be basic and uncontentious).
As a beginning teacher, I found that the old "doing or being word"
definition of a verb was useless - at least, it seemed to mean nothing
to at least a quarter of every class. After all, non-finites are "doing
and being words", too. So asking a child to find the verb in a sentence
won't work reliably if s/he looks for the "doing or being word". I won't
go into the tedious details of the approach I eventually devised, but it
depends on spotting the *single* tense-word in a simple sentence, which
will always be e.g. the "saw" form or the "see[s]" form. I avoided the
words "past" and "present" in the early stages, because they only baffle
the learner. Avoiding them also helps in teaching the use of "may" and
"might" and of other modals, I may say. Tying "tense" to "time" simply
misleads. (We eventually used the term "compound verb" for forms such as
"will see" and "might see" and "had seen".)
One practical significance of having a reliable system of analysis that
every child could use was that in those days they would all eventually
have to do sentence analysis in School Certificate and the early years
of GCE, and it carried an alarmingly large number of marks. I was able
to guarantee every student at least 18 out of 20 for that part of the
examination if he (they were all boys) simply followed my step-by-step
system. Granted, many students could get 15 out of 20 by a sort of
instinct, shared by most members of this group, I imagine; but I was
after the extra few marks for the few and success for everyone - and, as
far as practicable, trying to teach them the truth about their own
language.
So, as a school teacher, I want entirely to endorse Professor Lawler's
academic judgment: it works, as well as being right!
Alan Jones
R J Valentine
...
] Writing as a retired UK school teacher of English, I want to say that
] Professor Lawler's "only two tenses" analysis is not only self-evidently
] true but also the easiest way of getting children to understand sentence
] construction in a productive way - I mean, so that they can reliably
] construct sentences for themselves. The most difficult part of learning
] about grammatical sentence construction is grasping what a finite verb
] is, since a finite verb is the axis of any fully-expressed sentence
] (yes, there are rhetorical exceptions, but one's initial examples for
] children have to be basic and uncontentious).
]
] As a beginning teacher, I found that the old "doing or being word"
] definition of a verb was useless - at least, it seemed to mean nothing
] to at least a quarter of every class. After all, non-finites are "doing
] and being words", too. So asking a child to find the verb in a sentence
] won't work reliably if s/he looks for the "doing or being word". I won't
] go into the tedious details of the approach I eventually devised, but it
] depends on spotting the *single* tense-word in a simple sentence, which
] will always be e.g. the "saw" form or the "see[s]" form. I avoided the
] words "past" and "present" in the early stages, because they only baffle
] the learner. Avoiding them also helps in teaching the use of "may" and
] "might" and of other modals, I may say. Tying "tense" to "time" simply
] misleads. (We eventually used the term "compound verb" for forms such as
] "will see" and "might see" and "had seen".)
Okay, so far, and I've got little use for distinguishing doing or being
words just now, but how did you get across the idea of "*single*
tense-word"? By examples alone? The students would recognize the
inflections and irregular forms? Did they come to you unable to form
proper sentences?
At this point did you introduce introduce the idea of "will" being a
"sees" sort of word and "might" and "had" being a "saw" sort of word? If
so, I can certainly see that it might be useful to delink the ideas of
"tense" and "time".
] One practical significance of having a reliable system of analysis that
] every child could use was that in those days they would all eventually
] have to do sentence analysis in School Certificate and the early years
] of GCE, and it carried an alarmingly large number of marks. I was able
] to guarantee every student at least 18 out of 20 for that part of the
] examination if he (they were all boys) simply followed my step-by-step
] system. Granted, many students could get 15 out of 20 by a sort of
] instinct, shared by most members of this group, I imagine; but I was
] after the extra few marks for the few and success for everyone - and, as
] far as practicable, trying to teach them the truth about their own
] language.
Was preparing for this test a large part of the course of study or just a
sort of review technique toward the end of the course?
] So, as a school teacher, I want entirely to endorse Professor Lawler's
] academic judgment: it works, as well as being right!
But did you ever get around to admitting of a "future tense" when you got
around to tenses and compound verbs? Or was everything just "present"
(like "will see") and "past" (like "might see"). In other words, is the
two-tense view something your students grew out of or something that they
stuck with when things got to "compound verbs"?
K. Edgcombe
R J Valentine <r...@clark.net> wrote:
>Alan Jones <a...@cableinet.co.uk> wrote:
>...
>] Writing as a retired UK school teacher of English, I want to say that
>] Professor Lawler's "only two tenses" analysis is not only self-evidently
>] true but also the easiest way of getting children to understand sentence
>] construction in a productive way - I mean, so that they can reliably
>] construct sentences for themselves. The most difficult part of learning
>
>around to tenses and compound verbs? Or was everything just "present"
>(like "will see") and "past" (like "might see"). In other words, is the
>two-tense view something your students grew out of or something that they
>stuck with when things got to "compound verbs"?
I have been watching this discussion with interest, and if it weren't the first
week of term I would want to join in. But it does seem to me that
positions are being stated more emphatically than the differences
actually justify.
John Lawler uses "tense" only to describe something shown by an inflection of
the basic verb. Other people use "tense" as a convenient shorthand to talk
about the general concept of making a statement about the future, about the
past, about an even earlier past, and so on. A third group uses "tense" to
describe the ways in which the English language, in particular, provides for
statements describing the future, the past, and so on.
The argument is not about what a tense "is", or what English tenses "are".
It's about what is the most useful and helpful definition of the words for
use in certain sorts of discussion, or, for some people, about what
they believe to be the most widely understood scope for the word.
Mathematicians are up against this sort of thing all the time. They have words
for which they need precise and tightly-drawn definitions, so that they can
have sensible discussions about the concepts. Sometimes these words are used
differently in the wider world. Sometimes the two communities clash, primarily
because while mathematicians will usually concede that their definitions are
essentially arbitrary, many other people appear to believe that in arguing, for
instance, about whether zero is even they are talking about some
sort of reality, rather than about what would be a useful and productive
definition.
The same thing happens with subjunctives. The professionals get understandably
irritated because they think technical words are being used in a way which
obscures understanding. The non-professionals are liable to say "but that's not
how it *is*!", rather than saying "but we like to use the words this way and
find it useful for our purposes."
And then, of course, you get the professionals differing amongst themselves,
and even some of them start to say "but that's not how it *is*!" when they are
really talking about a definition.
I did say I wasn't going to join in, didn't I?
Katy