"50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice"
Mike
50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice
By Geoffrey K. Pullum
April 16 is the 50th anniversary of the publication of a little book
that is loved and admired throughout American academe. Celebrations,
readings, and toasts are being held, and a commemorative edition has
been released.
I won't be celebrating.
The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it
is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp
platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence has not
improved American students' grasp of English grammar; it has
significantly degraded it.
The authors won't be hurt by these critical remarks. They are long
dead. William Strunk was a professor of English at Cornell about a
hundred years ago, and E.B. White, later the much-admired author of
Charlotte's Web, took English with him in 1919, purchasing as a
required text the first edition, which Strunk had published privately.
After Strunk's death, White published a New Yorker article reminiscing
about him and was asked by Macmillan to revise and expand Elements for
commercial publication. It took off like a rocket (in 1959) and has
sold millions.
This was most unfortunate for the field of English grammar, because
both authors were grammatical incompetents. Strunk had very little
analytical understanding of syntax, White even less. Certainly White
was a fine writer, but he was not qualified as a grammarian. Despite
the post-1957 explosion of theoretical linguistics, Elements settled
in as the primary vehicle through which grammar was taught to college
students and presented to the general public, and the subject was
stuck in the doldrums for the rest of the 20th century.
Notice what I am objecting to is not the style advice in Elements,
which might best be described the way The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy describes Earth: mostly harmless. Some of the recommendations
are vapid, like "Be clear" (how could one disagree?). Some are
tautologous, like "Do not explain too much." (Explaining too much
means explaining more than you should, so of course you shouldn't.)
Many are useless, like "Omit needless words." (The students who know
which words are needless don't need the instruction.) Even so, it
doesn't hurt to lay such well-meant maxims before novice writers.
Even the truly silly advice, like "Do not inject opinion," doesn't
really do harm. (No force on earth can prevent undergraduates from
injecting opinion. And anyway, sometimes that is just what we want
from them.) But despite the "Style" in the title, much in the book
relates to grammar, and the advice on that topic does real damage. It
is atrocious. Since today it provides just about all of the grammar
instruction most Americans ever get, that is something of a tragedy.
Following the platitudinous style recommendations of Elements would
make your writing better if you knew how to follow them, but that is
not true of the grammar stipulations.
"Use the active voice" is a typical section head. And the section in
question opens with an attempt to discredit passive clauses that is
either grammatically misguided or disingenuous.
We are told that the active clause "I will always remember my first
trip to Boston" sounds much better than the corresponding passive "My
first visit to Boston will always be remembered by me." It sure does.
But that's because a passive is always a stylistic train wreck when
the subject refers to something newer and less established in the
discourse than the agent (the noun phrase that follows "by").
For me to report that I paid my bill by saying "The bill was paid by
me," with no stress on "me," would sound inane. (I'm the utterer, and
the utterer always counts as familiar and well established in the
discourse.) But that is no argument against passives generally. "The
bill was paid by an anonymous benefactor" sounds perfectly natural.
Strunk and White are denigrating the passive by presenting an invented
example of it deliberately designed to sound inept.
After this unpromising start, there is some fairly sensible style
advice: The authors explicitly say they do not mean "that the writer
should entirely discard the passive voice," which is "frequently
convenient and sometimes necessary." They give good examples to show
that the choice between active and passive may depend on the topic
under discussion.
Sadly, writing tutors tend to ignore this moderation, and simply red-
circle everything that looks like a passive, just as Microsoft Word's
grammar checker underlines every passive in wavy green to signal that
you should try to get rid of it. That overinterpretation is part of
the damage that Strunk and White have unintentionally done. But it is
not what I am most concerned about here.
What concerns me is that the bias against the passive is being
retailed by a pair of authors so grammatically clueless that they
don't know what is a passive construction and what isn't. Of the four
pairs of examples offered to show readers what to avoid and how to
correct it, a staggering three out of the four are mistaken diagnoses.
"At dawn the crowing of a rooster could be heard" is correctly
identified as a passive clause, but the other three are all errors:
"There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground" has no
sign of the passive in it anywhere.
"It was not long before she was very sorry that she had said what she
had" also contains nothing that is even reminiscent of the passive
construction.
"The reason that he left college was that his health became impaired"
is presumably fingered as passive because of "impaired," but that's a
mistake. It's an adjective here. "Become" doesn't allow a following
passive clause. (Notice, for example, that "A new edition became
issued by the publishers" is not grammatical.)
These examples can be found all over the Web in study guides for
freshman composition classes. (Try a Google search on "great number of
dead leaves lying.") I have been told several times, by both students
and linguistics-faculty members, about writing instructors who think
every occurrence of "be" is to be condemned for being "passive." No
wonder, if Elements is their grammar bible. It is typical for college
graduates today to be unable to distinguish active from passive
clauses. They often equate the grammatical notion of being passive
with the semantic one of not specifying the agent of an action. (They
think "a bus exploded" is passive because it doesn't say whether
terrorists did it.)
The treatment of the passive is not an isolated slip. It is typical of
Elements. The book's toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal
eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English
grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to
notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules. They can't help
it, because they don't know how to identify what they condemn.
"Put statements in positive form," they stipulate, in a section that
seeks to prevent "not" from being used as "a means of evasion."
"Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs," they
insist. (The motivation of this mysterious decree remains unclear to
me.)
And then, in the very next sentence, comes a negative passive clause
containing three adjectives: "The adjective hasn't been built that can
pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place."
That's actually not just three strikes, it's four, because in addition
to contravening "positive form" and "active voice" and "nouns and
verbs," it has a relative clause ("that can pull") removed from what
it belongs with (the adjective), which violates another edict: "Keep
related words together."
"Keep related words together" is further explained in these terms:
"The subject of a sentence and the principal verb should not, as a
rule, be separated by a phrase or clause that can be transferred to
the beginning." That is a negative passive, containing an adjective,
with the subject separated from the principal verb by a phrase ("as a
rule") that could easily have been transferred to the beginning.
Another quadruple violation.
The book's contempt for its own grammatical dictates seems almost
willful, as if the authors were flaunting the fact that the rules
don't apply to them. But I don't think they are. Given the evidence
that they can't even tell actives from passives, my guess would be
that it is sheer ignorance. They know a few terms, like "subject" and
"verb" and "phrase," but they do not control them well enough to
monitor and analyze the structure of what they write.
There is of course nothing wrong with writing passives and negatives
and adjectives and adverbs. I'm not nitpicking the authors' writing
style. White, in particular, often wrote beautifully, and his old
professor would have been proud of him. What's wrong is that the
grammatical advice proffered in Elements is so misplaced and
inaccurate that counterexamples often show up in the authors' own
prose on the very same page.
Some of the claims about syntax are plainly false despite being
respected by the authors. For example, Chapter IV, in an unnecessary
piece of bossiness, says that the split infinitive "should be avoided
unless the writer wishes to place unusual stress on the adverb." The
bossiness is unnecessary because the split infinitive has always been
grammatical and does not need to be avoided. (The authors actually
knew that. Strunk's original version never even mentioned split
infinitives. White added both the above remark and the further
reference, in Chapter V, admitting that "some infinitives seem to
improve on being split.") But what interests me here is the
descriptive claim about stress on the adverb. It is completely wrong.
Tucking the adverb in before the verb actually de-emphasizes the
adverb, so a sentence like "The dean's statements tend to completely
polarize the faculty" places the stress on polarizing the faculty. The
way to stress the completeness of the polarization would be to write,
"The dean's statements tend to polarize the faculty completely."
This is actually implied by an earlier section of the book headed
"Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end," yet White still
gets it wrong. He feels there are circumstances where the split
infinitive is not quite right, but he is simply not competent to spell
out his intuition correctly in grammatical terms.
An entirely separate kind of grammatical inaccuracy in Elements is the
mismatch with readily available evidence. Simple experiments (which
students could perform for themselves using downloaded classic texts
from sources like http://gutenberg.org) show that Strunk and White
preferred to base their grammar claims on intuition and prejudice
rather than established literary usage.
Consider the explicit instruction: "With none, use the singular verb
when the word means 'no one' or 'not one.'" Is this a rule to be
trusted? Let's investigate.
Try searching the script of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being
Earnest (1895) for "none of us." There is one example of it as a
subject: "None of us are perfect" (spoken by the learned Dr.
Chasuble). It has plural agreement.
Download and search Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). It contains no cases
of "none of us" with singular-inflected verbs, but one that takes the
plural ("I think that none of us were surprised when we were asked to
see Mrs. Harker a little before the time of sunset").
Examine the text of Lucy Maud Montgomery's popular novel Anne of
Avonlea (1909). There are no singular examples, but one with the
plural ("None of us ever do").
It seems to me that the stipulation in Elements is totally at variance
not just with modern conversational English but also with literary
usage back when Strunk was teaching and White was a boy.
Is the intelligent student supposed to believe that Stoker, Wilde, and
Montgomery didn't know how to write? Did Strunk or White check even a
single book to see what the evidence suggested? Did they have any
evidence at all for the claim that the cases with plural agreement are
errors? I don't think so.
There are many other cases of Strunk and White's being in conflict
with readily verifiable facts about English. Consider the claim that a
sentence should not begin with "however" in its connective adverb
sense ("when the meaning is 'nevertheless'").
Searching for "however" at the beginnings of sentences and "however"
elsewhere reveals that good authors alternate between placing the
adverb first and placing it after the subject. The ratios vary. Mark
Liberman, of the University of Pennsylvania, checked half a dozen of
Mark Twain's books and found roughly seven instances of "however" at
the beginning of a sentence for each three placed after the subject,
whereas in five selected books by Henry James, the ratio was one to
15. In Dracula I found a ratio of about one to five. The evidence
cannot possibly support a claim that "however" at the beginning of a
sentence should be eschewed. Strunk and White are just wrong about the
facts of English syntax.
The copy editor's old bugaboo about not using "which" to introduce a
restrictive relative clause is also an instance of failure to look at
the evidence. Elements as revised by White endorses that rule. But
19th-century authors whose prose was never forced through a 20th-
century prescriptive copy-editing mill generally alternated between
"which" and "that." (There seems to be a subtle distinction in meaning
related to whether new information is being introduced.) There was
never a period in the history of English when "which" at the beginning
of a restrictive relative clause was an error.
In fact, as Jan Freeman, of The Boston Globe, noted (in her blog, The
Word), Strunk himself used "which" in restrictive relative clauses.
White not only added the anti-"which" rule to the book but also
revised away the counterexamples that were present in his old
professor's original text!
It's sad. Several generations of college students learned their
grammar from the uninformed bossiness of Strunk and White, and the
result is a nation of educated people who know they feel vaguely
anxious and insecure whenever they write "however" or "than me" or
"was" or "which," but can't tell you why. The land of the free in the
grip of The Elements of Style.
So I won't be spending the month of April toasting 50 years of the
overopinionated and underinformed little book that put so many people
in this unhappy state of grammatical angst. I've spent too much of my
scholarly life studying English grammar in a serious way. English
syntax is a deep and interesting subject. It is much too important to
be reduced to a bunch of trivial don't-do-this prescriptions by a pair
of idiosyncratic bumblers who can't even tell when they've broken
their own misbegotten rules.
Geoffrey K. Pullum is head of linguistics and English language at the
University of Edinburgh and co-author (with Rodney Huddleston) of The
Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Cambridge University Press,
2002).
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
wrote:
>www.chronicle.com
>
>50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice
>By Geoffrey K. Pullum
Mike, did you get permission to reproduce that copyrighted article?
http://chronicle.com/article/Permissions/44236
USE OF CHRONICLE ARTICLES ONLINE
....
Permission is required to post Chronicle articles, or the contents
of Chronicle e-mail reports, on Web sites, newsgroups, or electronic
mailing lists (either restricted or general).
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
Eric Walker
> www.chronicle.com
>
> 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice
> By Geoffrey K. Pullum
That rant is old--almost a year old. It was stupid then and hasn't
gotten any tastier for having been hung to age. It is clear from various
posts he has made here and there that Pullum regards himself as being on
a crusade to rescue the English-speaking world from that evil overlord
Will Strunk. As Slappy Squirrel used to say, What a yutz.
Alternative views can be seen here--
http://mleddy.blogspot.com/2009/04/pullum-on-strunk-and-white.html
--where appear, besides the author's own views, links to many others'.
Pullum is a sad creature indeed.
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, Owlcroft House
http://owlcroft.com/english/
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
wrote:
>It's a shame that schools no longer teach things like
>grammar and sentenece construction
<chuckle>
...or the construction of words, aka spelling.
Garrett Wollman
Lewis <g.k...@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> wrote:
>Couldn't agree more. Strunk & White was essential to me all through
>school, and since.
I hope it hasn't damaged you too much. Most of their advice is at
best questionable if not down right wrong. I have a few quibbles with
Pullum's criticism -- he doesn't seem to understand that some of S&W's
maxims are *not meant to be taken literally* -- but most of the text
is merely a compendium of antique peeves that have nothing to do with
the actual grammar of the actual English language as used by the best
writers (including, for what it's worth, E.B. White himself).
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Garrett Wollman
Lewis <g.k...@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> wrote:
>[I wrote:]
>> maxims are *not meant to be taken literally* -- but most of the text
>> is merely a compendium of antique peeves that have nothing to do with
>> the actual grammar of the actual English language as used by the best
>> writers (including, for what it's worth, E.B. White himself).
>
A number of its directives purport to be claims about grammar, either
explicitly or implicitly (by using the formal vocabulary of grammar).
One of the places where I disagree with Pullum is over S&W's "Use
nouns and verbs, not adjectives and adverbs", which Pullum
(mis)interprets as a literal claim about parts of speech rather than a
wordier version of the standard writer's maxim "Show, don't tell." On
the other hand, he correctly points out flat-out errors in S&W's
actual claims about grammar, and also the hypocrisy of some of White's
recommendations (which apparently White himself did not feel bound by,
and were disobeyed by numerous acclaimed writers).
I believe Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (frequently
cited here as "MWDEU") is widely cited as a better -- evidence-based
-- source of usage advice for the modern writer.
Mike
perfect? Are you a snob? the chronicle article is free for all.
On Mar 8, 10:23 am, "Peter Duncanson (BrE)" <m...@peterduncanson.net>
wrote:
> On Mon, 8 Mar 2010 06:17:36 -0800 (PST), Mike <yard22...@yahoo.com>
HVS
> Are you upper-class? always look down on other people? are you so
> perfect? Are you a snob? the chronicle article is free for all.
Let's take another look at the copyright statement that Peter quoted:
"Permission is required to post Chronicle articles, or the contents of
Chronicle e-mail reports, on Web sites, newsgroups, or electronic mailing
lists (either restricted or general)."
You appear to have interpreted this to mean "Feel free to repost the entire
content of Chronicle articles on web sites, newsgroups, or electronic mailing
lists, and don't bother obtaining permission".
Here's a hint as to why your mistake was highlighted: a number of people who
post to AUE are published writers, and the group thus tends to respect
copyright and to take it seriously.
Don't be rude.
Murray Arnow
[...]
>
>Sure, there are still prescriptivists that insist the a split infinitive
>is an 'error' but those people are, not to put too fine a point on it,
>wrong. Ending sentences with prepositions is sometimes necessary.
>English is *not* Latin, never was Latin, and Latin grammar rules don't
>apply.
>
You do know you're preaching to the choir?
>Marlboros taste good like a cigarette should was controversial 40+ years
>ago, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone under 60 who could tell
>you why.
>
Over over 600. This is a tempest in a teapot. From the AHD:
like - conjunction
Usage Problem.
1.In the same way that; as: To dance like she does requires great
discipline.
2.As if: It looks like we'll finish on time.
[Middle English, from like, similar (from Old English gel�c and Old
Norse l�kr) and from like, similarly (from Old English gel�ce, from
gel�c, similar).]
Usage Note: Writers since Chaucer's time have used like as a
conjunction, but 19th-century and 20th-century critics have been so
vehement in their condemnations of this usage that a writer who uses the
construction in formal style risks being accused of illiteracy or worse.
Prudence requires The dogs howled as (not like) we expected them to.
Like is more acceptably used as a conjunction in informal style with
verbs such as feel, look, seem, sound, and taste, as in It looks like we
are in for a rough winter. But here too as if is to be preferred in
formal writing. There can be no objection to the use of like as a
conjunction when the following verb is not expressed, as in He took to
politics like a duck to water. See Usage Note at as1, together.
Donna Richoux
> Marlboros taste good like a cigarette should was controversial 40+ years
> ago, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone under 60 who could tell
> you why.
I don't know if you care, but it was Winston.
The "click, click" or "snap, snap" was quite memorable. "Winston tastes
good, like a [click, click] cigarette should."
Here's a Life magazine ad of 1966.
--
Donna Richoux (under 60)
R H Draney
A few years after that, the slogan was prefixed with "pardon our grammar,
but--"...they also started including "what do you want? good grammar or good
taste?" in the copy about the same time....r
--
"Oy! A cat made of lead cannot fly."
- Mark Brader declaims a basic scientific principle
Chuck Riggs
wrote:
>Donna Richoux filted:
>>
>>Lewis <g.k...@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> wrote:
>>
>>> Marlboros taste good like a cigarette should was controversial 40+ years
>>> ago, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone under 60 who could tell
>>> you why.
>>
>>I don't know if you care, but it was Winston.
>>
>>The "click, click" or "snap, snap" was quite memorable. "Winston tastes
>>good, like a [click, click] cigarette should."
>>
>>Here's a Life magazine ad of 1966.
>>
>> http://tinyurl.com/yc9gp8s
>
>A few years after that, the slogan was prefixed with "pardon our grammar,
>but--"...they also started including "what do you want? good grammar or good
>taste?" in the copy about the same time....r
Call me a dummy, but I saw no earthly reason to say "Winston tastes
good, as a cigarette should" back then, nor do I now, for that's not
how people talk, at least not the people I know.
--
Regards,
Chuck Riggs,
An American who lives near Dublin, Ireland and usually spells in BrE
Skitt
> R H Draney wrote:
>> Donna Richoux filted:
>>>> Marlboros taste good like a cigarette should was controversial 40+
>>>> years ago, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone under 60 who
>>>> could tell you why.
>>>
>>> I don't know if you care, but it was Winston.
>>>
>>> The "click, click" or "snap, snap" was quite memorable. "Winston
>>> tastes good, like a [click, click] cigarette should."
>>>
>>> Here's a Life magazine ad of 1966.
>>>
>>> http://tinyurl.com/yc9gp8s
>>
>> A few years after that, the slogan was prefixed with "pardon our
>> grammar, but--"...they also started including "what do you want?
>> good grammar or good taste?" in the copy about the same time....r
>
> Call me a dummy, but I saw no earthly reason to say "Winston tastes
> good, as a cigarette should" back then, nor do I now, for that's not
> how people talk, at least not the people I know.
Like, word!
--
Skitt
Seen it all, done it all.
Can't remember most of it.
Bob Cunningham
wrote:
I too frequently encounter "as" when looking things up in a certain
dictionary. They often say "as" where normal people would say "like".
It's especially annoying when people use "as" where "like" would be
correct and preferable even according to the dated prescriptive rule.
This is another example of a rule being drummed into students' heads
to the point where they misapply the rule in apparently but falsely
analogical cases.
Another example is the avoidance of split participial phrases because
of confusion with the useless rule against splitting "infinitives". An
example of that would be something like writing "quickly had gone"
where the writer would like to write "had quickly gone". There is not
even a dated rule against the latter like there is against the
so-called "split infinitive". (And yes, "had gone quickly" is also
possible and maybe the best.)
I'm using quotes for the "split infinitive" because the infinitive in
a phrase like "to go" is "go", not "to go". The phrase "split
infinitive" is a misnomer that is so firmly entrenched in the language
that we have to accept it, but we don't have to like it.
Strictly speaking, so far as I know, there is no such thing as a split
infinitive in the English language unless you consider intensive
constructions like "We need to circumgoddamvent that requirement".
That is truly an infinitive that is split.
(I posted that idea in AUE years ago, and some fool responded to tell
me that's not the same thing as a split infinitive.)
By the way, some readers--if anyone has read this far--may have
noticed mixed tenses in my last sentence. I follow the recommendation
of grammarians who tell me to use a past-present combination if the
occurrence is past but the state to which it refers is--or is assumed
to be--still present.
The fool responded in the past, but he or she would presumably still
find it worthwhile to mention that "circumgoddamvent" is not the same
sort of thing as "to goddam circumvent".
--
Bob Cunningham, Southern California, USA. Western American English
Jerry Friedman
["split participial phrase"]
> There is not
> even a dated rule against the latter like there is against the
> so-called "split infinitive". (And yes, "had gone quickly" is also
> possible and maybe the best.)
>
> I'm using quotes for the "split infinitive" because the infinitive in
> a phrase like "to go" is "go", not "to go". The phrase "split
> infinitive" is a misnomer that is so firmly entrenched in the language
> that we have to accept it, but we don't have to like it.
>
> Strictly speaking, so far as I know, there is no such thing as a split
> infinitive in the English language unless you consider intensive
> constructions like "We need to circumgoddamvent that requirement".
> That is truly an infinitive that is split.
...
That's just terminology. Some grammarians refer to the "full
infinitive", which includes the "to". Others use the same terminology
you do. /The Cambridge Grammar of the English/ doesn't use the noun
"infinitive" for English; it refers to the "plain form", which has
infinitival, imperative, and subjunctive uses (and maybe others I'm
forgetting--and I hope I got that right). There's no fact about
whether "go" or "to go" is an infinitive, only taste in terminology.
--
Jerry Friedman
Bob Cunningham
But there is an underlying evil. The "split-infinitive" rule leads to
unnatural wordings brought about by people thinking they have to
follow it. If it were fully recognized that there's nothing wrong
with splitting "to go", then that evil would vanish.
If I were fifty years younger, I might start a collection of awkward
wordings brought about by writers avoiding the "split infinitive".
Since I'm fifty years older, I must content myself with knowing that
there have been many, many examples that could have been noted.
I'm not unfamiliar with the reaction to something I'm reading: "Why
did he say it that strange way? Oh, he's avoiding the split
infinitive."
Grammarians' discussions of the split-infinitive rule are often
summarized by saying something like, "Follow the rule, but if clarity
and least ambiguity demand it, ignore the rule." Their whole
discussion could well be replaced by the advice, "Forget there's a
'split-infinitive' rule: In everything you write, always aim for
greatest clarity and least ambiguity."
Bob Cunningham
<jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
But we have to remember that the evil "split-infinitive" rule arose in
English based on the inability to split infinitives in Latin. That
development depends upon falsely recognizing English "to go" to be an
infinitive analogous to the Latin infinitive. If you accept some
other concept of the term "infinitive", then the underlying historical
reason for the "split-infinitive" rule may vanish. That ain't all
bad, but it leaves us without a reason the fallacy originated.
It's nice to have reasons.
R H Draney
>
>I too frequently encounter "as" when looking things up in a certain
>dictionary. They often say "as" where normal people would say "like".
>
>It's especially annoying when people use "as" where "like" would be
>correct and preferable even according to the dated prescriptive rule.
"Do like I say, not like I do"?...
Here's one for the books...back in the late '70s, I worked on a program for
generating budget reports...somewhere in my interactions with the accountants, I
learned that a statement can be "as of" a certain date if it reports figures for
a period of time that may or may not be final on the date in question (e.g.
income statements, cash flow statements)...but if the statement instead reports
*balances* at a given point in time (such as a balance sheet), the associated
verbiage should instead say "as *at*" that date....
Thus a report listing the current values of a division's fixed assets and dated
"as of March 31, 1979" is a solecism....
Has anyone else here ever heard this bit of bookkeeping lore?...r
R H Draney
>
>Either way, 'To boldy go...' is not incorrect and has never been
>incorrect, prescriptivists be damned.
Well, except for the spelling error....r
Bob Cunningham
<g.k...@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> wrote:
>In message <1e47b991-15e8-4dc0...@k6g2000prg.googlegroups.com>
> Jerry <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> On Mar 11, 4:53?pm, Bob Cunningham <exw6...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> ["split participial phrase"]
>
>>> There is not
>>> even a dated rule against the latter like there is against the
>>> so-called "split infinitive". ?(And yes, "had gone quickly" is also
>>> possible and maybe the best.)
>>>
>>> I'm using quotes for the "split infinitive" because the infinitive in
>>> a phrase like "to go" is "go", not "to go". ?The phrase "split
>>> infinitive" is a misnomer that is so firmly entrenched in the language
>>> that we have to accept it, but we don't have to like it.
>>>
>>> Strictly speaking, so far as I know, there is no such thing as a split
>>> infinitive in the English language unless you consider intensive
>>> constructions like "We need to circumgoddamvent that requirement".
>>> That is truly an infinitive that is split.
>> ...
>
>> That's just terminology. Some grammarians refer to the "full
>> infinitive", which includes the "to". Others use the same terminology
>> you do. /The Cambridge Grammar of the English/ doesn't use the noun
>> "infinitive" for English; it refers to the "plain form", which has
>> infinitival, imperative, and subjunctive uses (and maybe others I'm
>> forgetting--and I hope I got that right). There's no fact about
>> whether "go" or "to go" is an infinitive, only taste in terminology.
>
>Either way, 'To boldy go...' is not incorrect and has never been
>incorrect, prescriptivists be damned.
I like what you said, except that I might change
prescriptivists be damned.
to something like
prescriptivists be recognized and honored for their noble
but misguided efforts to bring logic to an illogical
language.
Jerry Friedman
Sorry to be predictable, but--though that last sentence may be true,
I've looked and I've asked a lot of people, and never found any
evidence for it.
> If you accept some
> other concept of the term "infinitive", then the underlying historical
> reason for the "split-infinitive" rule may vanish. That ain't all
> bad, but it leaves us without a reason the fallacy originated.
>
> It's nice to have reasons.
It is, but in this case we don't know them. The split-infinitive rule
was based on actual usage in the 15th through 17th centuries. No one
seems to know why the split infinitive appeared in Middle English,
mostly disappeared in the 15th century or so, and then reappeared in
the 18th and 19th.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive
--
Jerry Friedman contributed a lot to that article.
Jerry Friedman
> In message <1e47b991-15e8-4dc0-9549-7370982b4...@k6g2000prg.googlegroups.com>
> Jerry <jerry_fried...@yahoo.com> wrote:
...
> >There's no fact about
> > whether "go" or "to go" is an infinitive, only taste in terminology.
>
> Either way, 'To boldy go...' is not incorrect and has never been
> incorrect, prescriptivists be damned.
As I was just saying to our doyen, it seems to have been ungrammatical
in the descriptive sense in, say, the 16th and 17th centuries and the
beginning of the 18th.
> --
> It was a fifty-four with a mashed up door and a cheesy little amp with a sign
> on the front said "Fender Champ" and a second-hand guitar it was a Stratocaster
> with a whammy bar
--
Jerry Friedman
Reen-toon-teen-toon-teen-toon-teenooneenooneen.
Eric Walker
[...]
>> I like what you said, except that I might change
>
>> prescriptivists be damned.
>
>> to something like
>
>> prescriptivists be recognized and honored for their noble but
>> misguided efforts to bring logic to an illogical language.
>
> and then damned?
You know, you can look this up: I rarely if ever use really strong
adjectives about others' views. Really. Look it up. Google Is Your
Friend.
But where in all Hell did you dickheads get the fuck-all ignorant idea
that prescriptionists--people who believe that there are some rules that
guide grammar and usage--think that "split infinitives" are a sin?
Anyone not a complete ignoramus will know that prescriptive grammar holds
that there is no such thing as a "split infinitive", and the belief in
one at all, much less as a sin, is the hallmark of a schmuck?
Wake up and smell the coffee, or whatever mind-addling substance you
yutzes partake of. . . .
--
Most uncordially,
Eric Walker, Owlcroft House
http://owlcroft.com/english/
James Hogg
There are pondial differences in the use of "split infinitives".
Speakers of BrE are much less likely than Americans to say things like
"to not go". This has nothing to do with prescriptionism, it's simply
not a natural feature of most people's language.
--
James
Stan Brown
<exw...@earthlink.net>:
> I'm using quotes for the "split infinitive" because the infinitive in
> a phrase like "to go" is "go", not "to go".
Then what part of speech is "to", out of curiosity?
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Shikata ga nai...
Stan Brown
<Jas....@gOUTmail.com>:
> Speakers of BrE are much less likely than Americans to say things like
> "to not go".
I beg to differ. I can't imagine *any* native speaker saying "to not
go", unless being consciously humorous.
James Hogg
> Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:43:43 +0100 from James Hogg
> <Jas....@gOUTmail.com>:
>> Speakers of BrE are much less likely than Americans to say things like
>> "to not go".
>
> I beg to differ. I can't imagine *any* native speaker saying "to not
> go", unless being consciously humorous.
Interesting. I've certainly heard it from Americans. Let's wait and see
what others say.
--
James
Eric Walker
[...]
> I beg to differ. I can't imagine *any* native speaker saying "to not
> go", unless being consciously humorous.
"I've been advised to not go." Alternatives are available, but I cannot
see that as disfunctional; indeed, it seems the preferable form.
In modern English, the prevailing feeling is that a "sentence adverb" (as
"not" normally is) stands best immediately before the verb. To quote
Curme (_English Grammar_, 70.B):
Similarly, we often put the sentence adverb between 'to' and the
infinitive, i.e. split the infinitive, in order that the sentence
adverb may stand immediately before the infinitive."
What have I been advised to do? To not go.
--
Cordially,
R H Draney
>
>In message <MPG.2603dd024...@news.individual.net>
>> Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:43:43 +0100 from James Hogg
>> <Jas....@gOUTmail.com>:
>>> Speakers of BrE are much less likely than Americans to say things like
>>> "to not go".
>
>> go", unless being consciously humorous.
>
>
>"I want to go see that movie."
>
>"Oh? I really want to not go [and] see that movie."
>
>The second person *really* doesn't want to go see that movie.
A: "I can't get my Toyota to go."
B: "You're lucky. A lot of people can't get their Toyotas to *not* go."
(Hmmm...I see that Firefox thinks "Toyotas" is incorrectly spelled)....r
Skitt
> Bob Cunningham wrote:
>> I'm using quotes for the "split infinitive" because the infinitive in
>> a phrase like "to go" is "go", not "to go".
>
> Then what part of speech is "to", out of curiosity?
From M-W Online: [for "to"]
8 -used as a function word to indicate that the following verb is an
infinitive <wants to go> and often used by itself at the end of a clause in
place of an infinitive suggested by the preceding context <knows more than
she seems to>
--
Skitt (AmE)
James Hogg
It's often classified as a "particle".
--
James
Donna Richoux
> But where in all Hell did you dickheads get the fuck-all ignorant idea
> that prescriptionists--people who believe that there are some rules that
> guide grammar and usage--think that "split infinitives" are a sin?
> Anyone not a complete ignoramus will know that prescriptive grammar holds
> that there is no such thing as a "split infinitive", and the belief in
> one at all, much less as a sin, is the hallmark of a schmuck?
First of the old guys that comes to hand:
Henry Alford, _The Queen's English_
In my 1866 copy, it is page 188, section 238, but in this on-line
edition it is page 227, section 350:
http://www.archive.org/stream/queensenglishstr00alfouoft#page/226/mode/2
up
I can retype the paragraph in case it doesn't open for you.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
erilar
Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> But we have to remember that the evil "split-infinitive" rule arose in
> English based on the inability to split infinitives in Latin.
Fortunately I studied German well before I got around to Latin, so I had
a different set of references before I started teaching English, quite
apart from dipping a foot into linguistics.
--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:55:04 +0000, Lewis wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>>> I like what you said, except that I might change
>>
>>> prescriptivists be damned.
>>
>>> to something like
>>
>>> prescriptivists be recognized and honored for their noble but
>>> misguided efforts to bring logic to an illogical language.
>>
>> and then damned?
>
>You know, you can look this up: I rarely if ever use really strong
>adjectives about others' views. Really. Look it up. Google Is Your
>Friend.
>
>But where in all Hell did you dickheads get the fuck-all ignorant idea
>that prescriptionists--people who believe that there are some rules that
>guide grammar and usage--think that "split infinitives" are a sin?
>Anyone not a complete ignoramus will know that prescriptive grammar holds
>that there is no such thing as a "split infinitive", and the belief in
>one at all, much less as a sin, is the hallmark of a schmuck?
And, can anyone show where Strunk and White prohibited the split infinitive?
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Jerry Friedman
> Stan Brown wrote:
> > Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:43:43 +0100 from James Hogg
> >> Speakers of BrE are much less likely than Americans to say things like
> >> "to not go".
>
> > I beg to differ. I can't imagine *any* native speaker saying "to not
> > go", unless being consciously humorous.
>
> Interesting. I've certainly heard it from Americans. Let's wait and see
> what others say.
I hear it all the time from young people. I use it rarely and only
for special purposes--not because of prescriptions, but because of
what I heard as a child.
--
Jerry Friedman
Donna Richoux
> On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:30:45 +0000 (UTC), Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com>
> wrote:
>
> >But where in all Hell did you dickheads get the fuck-all ignorant idea
> >that prescriptionists--people who believe that there are some rules that
> >guide grammar and usage--think that "split infinitives" are a sin?
> >Anyone not a complete ignoramus will know that prescriptive grammar holds
> >that there is no such thing as a "split infinitive", and the belief in
> >one at all, much less as a sin, is the hallmark of a schmuck?
>
> And, can anyone show where Strunk and White prohibited the split infinitive?
Did anyone say they did? The original article by G. Pullam refers to
some remarks White made about splitting infinitives. In my 1979 edition,
these are on page 58 and 78.
Garrett Wollman
Donna Richoux <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote:
>Did anyone say they did? The original article by G. Pullam refers to
I believe Prof. Pullum has always spelled his name with two u's.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Reinhold {Rey} Aman
[...]
> The original article by G. Pullam ...
>
Pullum goes nuts when people misspell or mispronounce his name. About a
year ago, he posted a long rant about it on "Language Log."
--
~~~ Reinhold {Rey} Aman ~~~
R H Draney
>
>Donna Richoux wrote:
>[...]
>> The original article by G. Pullam ...
>>
>Pullum goes nuts when people misspell or mispronounce his name. About a
>year ago, he posted a long rant about it on "Language Log."
Ah, so he's one of *those*, the people who think that using a name confers
magical power over that which is named....r
HVS
> Reinhold {Rey} Aman filted:
>>
>> Donna Richoux wrote:
>> [...]
>>> The original article by G. Pullam ...
>>>
>> Pullum goes nuts when people misspell or mispronounce his name. About a
>> year ago, he posted a long rant about it on "Language Log."
>
> Ah, so he's one of *those*, the people who think that using a name confers
> magical power over that which is named....r
Spelling a person's name correctly is basic politeness (says one who has a
surname people get wrong -- in capitalising, spacing, spelling, or all three
-- all the time).
That said, whinging about it in a whole bloody column says a lot more about
the writer's insecurities than it does about the offender's sloppiness.
--
Cheers, Harvey
CanEng and BrEng, indiscriminately mixed
sjde...@yahoo.com
> On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 05:10:02 -0500, Stan Brown wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > I beg to differ. I can't imagine *any* native speaker saying "to not
> > go", unless being consciously humorous.
>
> "I've been advised to not go." Alternatives are available, but I cannot
> see that as disfunctional; indeed, it seems the preferable form.
It certainly sounds clunky to me. "I've been advised not to go" would
be the more common form, in my (AmE) experience.
Robert Bannister
> On Mar 11, 4:53 pm, Bob Cunningham <exw6...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> ["split participial phrase"]
>
>> There is not
>> even a dated rule against the latter like there is against the
>> so-called "split infinitive". (And yes, "had gone quickly" is also
>> possible and maybe the best.)
>>
>> infinitive" is a misnomer that is so firmly entrenched in the language
>> that we have to accept it, but we don't have to like it.
>>
>> Strictly speaking, so far as I know, there is no such thing as a split
>> infinitive in the English language unless you consider intensive
>> constructions like "We need to circumgoddamvent that requirement".
>> That is truly an infinitive that is split.
> ...
>
> That's just terminology. Some grammarians refer to the "full
> infinitive", which includes the "to". Others use the same terminology
> you do. /The Cambridge Grammar of the English/ doesn't use the noun
> "infinitive" for English; it refers to the "plain form", which has
> infinitival, imperative, and subjunctive uses (and maybe others I'm
> whether "go" or "to go" is an infinitive, only taste in terminology.
And, comparing two languages that may have influenced English at various
times (German and French), when they have a preposition attached to an
infinitive, there are a very limited number of words that can intervene
- with German "zu gehen", I'm not sure whether you can put anything in
between;
- with French "d'aller" or "à aller", there is the possibility of
pronouns or "ne pas", but not much else.
Similarly, in English, good style allows "not" and a small number of
short adverbs. There is no rule, but style does matter.
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
>> On Mar 11, 4:53?pm, Bob Cunningham <exw6...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> ["split participial phrase"]
>
>>> There is not
>>> even a dated rule against the latter like there is against the
>>> possible and maybe the best.)
>>>
>>> I'm using quotes for the "split infinitive" because the infinitive in
>>> infinitive" is a misnomer that is so firmly entrenched in the language
>>> that we have to accept it, but we don't have to like it.
>>>
>>> Strictly speaking, so far as I know, there is no such thing as a split
>>> infinitive in the English language unless you consider intensive
>>> constructions like "We need to circumgoddamvent that requirement".
>>> That is truly an infinitive that is split.
>> ...
>
>> That's just terminology. Some grammarians refer to the "full
>> infinitive", which includes the "to". Others use the same terminology
>> you do. /The Cambridge Grammar of the English/ doesn't use the noun
>> "infinitive" for English; it refers to the "plain form", which has
>> infinitival, imperative, and subjunctive uses (and maybe others I'm
>> forgetting--and I hope I got that right). There's no fact about
>> whether "go" or "to go" is an infinitive, only taste in terminology.
>
> incorrect, prescriptivists be damned.
>
>
It may not be incorrect, but it is not standard English. Non-standard
English is of course fine in poetry or other language intended to sound
pretentious.
--
Rob Bannister
Bob Cunningham
If you have _Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage_, look on
page 868, where it says
[...] the objection to the split infinitive has never had a
rational basis. The original cause for complaint was
probably awareness of a relatively sudden marked increase in
use of the construction, perhaps combined with the knowledge
that in those more elegant languages, Latin and Greek, the
infinitive is never split--because it is a single word
distinguished by its ending rather than by an introductory
particle.
Or--better--if you have that excellent guide _The Handbook of Good
English_, by Edward D Johnson, look in Section 1-20 under the heading
"split infinitives", where it says
The rule against the split infinitive is an arbitrary one, a
hangover from the nineteenth century, when grammarians
attempted to make English grammar conform to Latin grammar.
The Latin infinitive cannot be split, but only because it is
all one word, not because there is any rule against splitting
it.
And, for what it's worth, in the grossly misnamed _The New Fowler's
Modern English Usage_, by Burchfield, it says on page 736
In Latin such a construction could not arise because an
infinitive (_amare_ 'to love', _crescere_ 'to grow') is
indivisible
>> If you accept some
>> other concept of the term "infinitive", then the underlying historical
>> reason for the "split-infinitive" rule may vanish. �That ain't all
>> bad, but it leaves us without a reason the fallacy originated.
>>
>> It's nice to have reasons.
>
>It is, but in this case we don't know them.
But we have enough reason for strong suspicion that it was related to
misguided attempts to shoehorn English grammar into Latin grammar.
>The split-infinitive rule
>was based on actual usage in the 15th through 17th centuries. No one
>seems to know why the split infinitive appeared in Middle English,
>mostly disappeared in the 15th century or so, and then reappeared in
>the 18th and 19th.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive
--
Bob Cunningham, Southern California, USA. Western American English
Bob Cunningham
<the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:53:33 -0800 from Bob Cunningham
><exw...@earthlink.net>:
>> I'm using quotes for the "split infinitive" because the infinitive in
>> a phrase like "to go" is "go", not "to go".
>
>Then what part of speech is "to", out of curiosity?
First, I think most grammarians would say that it's not a preposition,
but an exception is in the Evans's _A Dictionary of Contemporary
American Usage_, where it is called a preposition.
_Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage_ calls it "an
appurtenance to the infinitive".
I think I've seen it referred to elsewhere as something like "a
particle that often accompanies an infinitive".
But it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck ... .
Bob Cunningham
And in this case, "style" leads to unnecessarily clumsy, unnatural
wordings.
Bob Cunningham
Some people might say, with some merit, that "standard English" is not
standard English, because there is no such thing as standard English.
A standard implies an authority that governs conformance to that
standard. English has none such.
But if in some people's minds there is such a thing as standard
English, and if it forbids the use of the split "infinitive", then it
were well the concept of "standard English" were banished from those
minds. The "split infinitive" is often a necessary construction for
clear, unambiguous expression.
But, again, it should be forgotten that there is a rule about "split
infinitive". Grammarians say it doesn't hurt to obey it, but then
they say that where necessary for clarity and unambiguity, use it.
They could as well forget the rule and simply say, "Always aim for
clarity and unambiguity".
(I tremble to think that Skitt's Law may find examples of unclarity or
ambiguity in this posting.)
Bob Cunningham
wrote:
>Bob Cunningham filted:
>>
>>I too frequently encounter "as" when looking things up in a certain
>>dictionary. They often say "as" where normal people would say "like".
>>
>>It's especially annoying when people use "as" where "like" would be
>>correct and preferable even according to the dated prescriptive rule.
>
>"Do like I say, not like I do"?...
>
>Here's one for the books...back in the late '70s, I worked on a program for
>generating budget reports...somewhere in my interactions with the accountants, I
>learned that a statement can be "as of" a certain date if it reports figures for
>a period of time that may or may not be final on the date in question (e.g.
>income statements, cash flow statements)...but if the statement instead reports
>*balances* at a given point in time (such as a balance sheet), the associated
>verbiage should instead say "as *at*" that date....
>
>Thus a report listing the current values of a division's fixed assets and dated
>"as of March 31, 1979" is a solecism....
>
>Has anyone else here ever heard this bit of bookkeeping lore?...r
I haven't heard of it, but it seems reasonable. "As of" does seem to
carry a suggestion of "pending further and possibly imminent updates".
James Hogg
When we discussed this a while back, some people here reached the
conclusion that this was not the case. The split infinitive mostly
wasn't used in English for a time, then when it started to appear, some
people didn't like it and prescribed against it because they thought it
was alien to English. Only later did prescriptivists invoke the Latin
infinitive as an unsplittable parallel. No shoehorning involved.
>> The split-infinitive rule was based on actual usage in the 15th
>> through 17th centuries. No one seems to know why the split
>> infinitive appeared in Middle English, mostly disappeared in the
>> 15th century or so, and then reappeared in the 18th and 19th.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive
Well done, Jerry.
--
James
Peter Moylan
--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.
HVS
> James Hogg wrote:
>> Skitt wrote:
>>> Stan Brown wrote:
>>>> Bob Cunningham wrote:
>>>>> I'm using quotes for the "split infinitive" because the infinitive in
>>>>> a phrase like "to go" is "go", not "to go".
>>>> Then what part of speech is "to", out of curiosity?
>>> From M-W Online: [for "to"]
>>> 8 -used as a function word to indicate that the following verb is an
>>> infinitive <wants to go> and often used by itself at the end of a clause
>>> in place of an infinitive suggested by the preceding context <knows more
>>> than she seems to>
>>
>> It's often classified as a "particle".
>>
> Yes, that's what was approved by the particle board.
I believe they accelerated the process.
Eric Walker
[...]
> First of the old guys that comes to hand:
>
> Henry Alford, _The Queen's English_
>
> In my 1866 copy, it is page 188, section 238, but in this on-line
> edition it is page 227, section 350 . . . .
Grammar strictures propounded prior to about a century ago were wildly
idiosyncratic, and are almost wholly irrelevant to what we speak of when
we refer to what recognized authorities say. You can look through pretty
much whatever authority you prefer--Fowler and Follett, Bernstein and
Garner, Partridge, Barzun, Gowers, Curme, Mencken, and (famously) Bernard
Shaw--none proscribed the "split infinitive". Even the staid old
Harbrace College Handbook only advises avoiding "awkward" splits.
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, Owlcroft House
http://owlcroft.com/english/
HVS
> On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:09:33 +0100, Donna Richoux wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> First of the old guys that comes to hand:
>>
>> Henry Alford, _The Queen's English_
>>
>> In my 1866 copy, it is page 188, section 238, but in this on-line
>> edition it is page 227, section 350 . . . .
>
> Grammar strictures propounded prior to about a century ago were wildly
> idiosyncratic, and are almost wholly irrelevant to what we speak of when
> we refer to what recognized authorities say.
Nice redefining of your inexcusably ill-mannered and abusively-framed
question, after it was answered.
Eric Walker
Consider question and answer:
What were you advised to do?
I was advised to not go.
"I've been advised not to go" is certainly unexceptionable, and doubtless
common; but, as I said earlier, the natural feeling in English is and
long has been that sentence adverbs really, really want to go right in
front of the operative verb form--it's very the reason the "do" form was
invented:
I think not.
I do not think so.
It's wise to heed natural feelings when they do not breach any set rule.
musika
HVS <use...@REMOVETHISwhhvs.co.uk> typed:
For that particular particle, possibly.
--
Ray
UK
Bob Cunningham
wrote:
>James Hogg wrote:
>> Skitt wrote:
>>> Stan Brown wrote:
>>>> Bob Cunningham wrote:
>>>>> I'm using quotes for the "split infinitive" because the infinitive in
>>>>> a phrase like "to go" is "go", not "to go".
>>>> Then what part of speech is "to", out of curiosity?
>>> From M-W Online: [for "to"]
>>> 8 -used as a function word to indicate that the following verb is an
>>> infinitive <wants to go> and often used by itself at the end of a clause
>>> in place of an infinitive suggested by the preceding context <knows more
>>> than she seems to>
>>
>> It's often classified as a "particle".
>>
>Yes, that's what was approved by the particle board.
But has the Committee ruled particularly on it?
erilar
Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
Oh, it's a preposition, too. 8-) Words in the clump of "parts of
speech" called prepositions, (shorter)adverbs, even conjunctions shift
function with usage and syntax. It seems to be a Germanic thing,
because German does it, too. 8-)
sjde...@yahoo.com
> On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:30:24 -0800, sjdevn...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > On Mar 12, 5:46 am, Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> >> On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 05:10:02 -0500, Stan Brown wrote:
>
> >> [...]
>
> >> > I beg to differ. I can't imagine *any* native speaker saying "to not
> >> > go", unless being consciously humorous.
>
> >> "I've been advised to not go." Alternatives are available, but I
> >> cannot see that as disfunctional; indeed, it seems the preferable form.
>
> > It certainly sounds clunky to me. "I've been advised not to go" would
> > be the more common form, in my (AmE) experience.
>
> Consider question and answer:
>
> What were you advised to do?
>
> I was advised to not go.
>
That still sounds clunky and unnatural--it seems like the sort of
phrasing that's used by people consciously trying to mimic the
question or unsure about what's formally correct.
The problem is really that the answer is sort of nonresponsive--you're
weren't really advised to _do_ anything, just enjoined _against_ doing
one particular thing. In my experience, people naturally tend to use
a form that emphasizes that, but making it clear that they've been
"advised not to" do something, rather than "advised to" do something
(later negated).
> "I've been advised not to go" is certainly unexceptionable, and doubtless
> common; but, as I said earlier, the natural feeling in English is and
> long has been that sentence adverbs really, really want to go right in
> front of the operative verb form--it's very the reason the "do" form was
> invented:
>
> I think not.
>
> I do not think so.
>
For one thing, those carry different meanings. "I think not" implies
an active belief in the negation. "I don't think so" merely indicates
a lack of belief in the affirmative--it's often used when the speaker
is unsure about something.
Independent of that, the latter has the advantage of moving the "not"
up to the beginning of the sentence. That avoids temporary confusion
on the listener's part, in much the same way that "advised not to"
avoids surprise.
IOW, I think the natural tendency to use one form or the other is
determined far more by the meaning and clarity of the speech and less
by a rigorous desire to follow some rule (e.g. "sentence adverbs go
right in front of the operative verb").
> It's wise to heed natural feelings when they do not breach any set rule.
I agree, but we seem to disagree on what feels natural.
(FWIW, Google has 8.8 million hits for +"advised not to", and 7
million for +"advised to not", and similar ratios for +"advised not to
go" vs. "advised to not go".)
Skitt
> But, again, it should be forgotten that there is a rule about "split
> infinitive". Grammarians say it doesn't hurt to obey it, but then
> they say that where necessary for clarity and unambiguity, use it.
> They could as well forget the rule and simply say, "Always aim for
> clarity and unambiguity".
>
> (I tremble to think that Skitt's Law may find examples of unclarity or
> ambiguity in this posting.)
Well, you asked for it --
How about the paragraph before the parenthesized sentence? Breaking it
down, what you wrote is "Grammarians say it is OK to use the rule about
split infinitives, but where necessary, use it."
Like, "Huh?
"--
Skitt (AmE)
means to please
John Dunlop
> Then what part of speech is "to", out of curiosity?
To add to the terms already mentioned, the "to" of a to-infinitive is
sometimes called an infinitive marker and grouped with other particles.
--
John
Jerry Friedman
/The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language/, co-edited and co-
written by the same Geoffrey Pullum quoted in the OP, calls it a VP
subordinator.
Certainly the "to-infinitive" is not much like any other construction
in English, so there's a lot of choice about terminology.
--
Jerry Friedman
erilar
<889f3404-f6b3-449c...@g19g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>,
Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Certainly the "to-infinitive" is not much like any other construction
> in English, so there's a lot of choice about terminology.
It's easier to throw it into the bin of "function words" and trust your
ear for your native usage to use it appropriately. Does someone want to
play at classifying "do" next?
Mike Lyle
[> Bob Cunningham wrote:]
>> On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:04:16 -0800 (PST), Jerry Friedman
And, as I generally say on these occasions, the Latin periphrastic
infinitives consist by definition of more than one word.
--
Mike.
Mike Lyle
But the chip board challenged it.
--
Mike.
Jerry Friedman
> In article
> <889f3404-f6b3-449c-b415-d39a8feef...@g19g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>,
> Jerry Friedman <jerry_fried...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Certainly the "to-infinitive" is not much like any other construction
> > in English, so there's a lot of choice about terminology.
>
> It's easier to throw it into the bin of "function words" and trust your
> ear for your native usage to use it appropriately.
I agree, unless you're writing a grammar and feel duty-bound to
classify things.
> Does someone want to
> play at classifying "do" next?
I'll rush in where angels fear to tread. It's a proverb.
--
Jerry Friedman
Mike Lyle
I saw that coming.
--
Mike.
HVS
I didn't, but I only use amateur verbs.
Jerry Friedman
> Bob Cunningham wrote:
> > On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:04:16 -0800 (PST), Jerry Friedman
>
> >> On Mar 11, 10:49 pm, Bob Cunningham <exw6...@earthlink.net> wrote:
I know people believe it, including people whose beliefs are generally
worthy of respect. But I'd like to see evidence. That means someone
saying, "'To love' is really one word, as shown by /amare/, so you
should abso-goddamn-lutely never split it." Or any other prohibition
on split infinitives that gives Latin or any other language as a
justification. So far I know of one example, from John Opdycke in
1941, more than a century after the first known prohibition.
> >>> If you accept some other concept of the term "infinitive", then
> >>> the underlying historical reason for the "split-infinitive" rule
> >>> may vanish. That ain't all bad, but it leaves us without a
> >>> reason the fallacy originated.
>
> >>> It's nice to have reasons.
> >> It is, but in this case we don't know them.
>
> > But we have enough reason for strong suspicion that it was related to
> > misguided attempts to shoehorn English grammar into Latin grammar.
>
> When we discussed this a while back, some people here reached the
> conclusion that this was not the case. The split infinitive mostly
> wasn't used in English for a time, then when it started to appear, some
> people didn't like it and prescribed against it because they thought it
> was alien to English.
Certainly that's what they said. We can suspect that they had reasons
related to Latin that they didn't reveal, maybe even because they
weren't aware of them, but I'm not willing to call that a "strong"
suspicion. Bob's mileage may vary.
> Only later did prescriptivists invoke the Latin
> infinitive as an unsplittable parallel.
Do you know of an example other than Opdycke?
> No shoehorning involved.
>
> >> The split-infinitive rule was based on actual usage in the 15th
> >> through 17th centuries. No one seems to know why the split
> >> infinitive appeared in Middle English, mostly disappeared in the
> >> 15th century or so, and then reappeared in the 18th and 19th.
>
> >>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive
>
> Well done, Jerry.
Thank you.
--
Jerry Friedman
Jerry Friedman
wrote:
[split infinitives and Latin]
> And, as I generally say on these occasions, the Latin periphrastic
> infinitives consist by definition of more than one word.
And then all the little worms wriggle out of their can. Well, in
crossposts, anyway.
--
Jerry Friedman
Robert Bannister
> Grammarians' discussions of the split-infinitive rule are often
> summarized by saying something like, "Follow the rule, but if clarity
> and least ambiguity demand it, ignore the rule." Their whole
> discussion could well be replaced by the advice, "Forget there's a
> 'split-infinitive' rule: In everything you write, always aim for
> greatest clarity and least ambiguity."
I could not possibly argue with that last sentence.
I prefer the sound of sentences that do not contain split infinitives
*in most cases*, but obviously there are times when a split is the best
option. However, I always thought "to boldly go" was pretentious (and I
nearly mistyped it as 'bloody' which I find fits in that position far
more happily).
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
> On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:41:18 +0800, Robert Bannister
> <rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
>> Jerry Friedman wrote:
>>> ["split participial phrase"]
>>>
>>>> There is not
>>>> even a dated rule against the latter like there is against the
>>>> so-called "split infinitive". (And yes, "had gone quickly" is also
>>>> possible and maybe the best.)
>>>>
>>>> infinitive" is a misnomer that is so firmly entrenched in the language
>>>> that we have to accept it, but we don't have to like it.
>>>>
>>>> Strictly speaking, so far as I know, there is no such thing as a split
>>>> infinitive in the English language unless you consider intensive
>>>> constructions like "We need to circumgoddamvent that requirement".
>>>> That is truly an infinitive that is split.
>>> ...
>>>
>>> That's just terminology. Some grammarians refer to the "full
>>> infinitive", which includes the "to". Others use the same terminology
>>> "infinitive" for English; it refers to the "plain form", which has
>>> infinitival, imperative, and subjunctive uses (and maybe others I'm
>>> forgetting--and I hope I got that right). There's no fact about
>>> whether "go" or "to go" is an infinitive, only taste in terminology.
>> times (German and French), when they have a preposition attached to an
>> infinitive, there are a very limited number of words that can intervene
>> - with German "zu gehen", I'm not sure whether you can put anything in
>> between;
>> - with French "d'aller" or "à aller", there is the possibility of
>> pronouns or "ne pas", but not much else.
>> Similarly, in English, good style allows "not" and a small number of
>> short adverbs. There is no rule, but style does matter.
>
> And in this case, "style" leads to unnecessarily clumsy, unnatural
> wordings.
Sometimes, but usually the boldly-goers end up with something worse.
--
Rob Bannister
Eric Walker
[...]
>> Consider question and answer:
>>
>> What were you advised to do?
>>
>> I was advised to not go.
>>
> That still sounds clunky and unnatural--it seems like the sort of
> phrasing that's used by people consciously trying to mimic the question
> or unsure about what's formally correct.
Well, as I often say, differences of opinion are why they race horses.
[...]
>> "I've been advised not to go" is certainly unexceptionable, and
>> doubtless common; but, as I said earlier, the natural feeling in
>> English is and long has been that sentence adverbs really, really want
>> to go right in front of the operative verb form--it's very the reason
>> the "do" form was invented:
>>
>> I think not.
>>
>> I do not think so.
>>
> For one thing, those carry different meanings. "I think not" implies an
> active belief in the negation. "I don't think so" merely indicates a
> lack of belief in the affirmative--it's often used when the speaker is
> unsure about something.
I disagree. "I think not" is simply an older form, from before the "do"
construction had been devised; it is elliptical for "I think not so." It
may be that the contracted form "I don't think so" can, in print, come
across a hair ambivalent, but in speech much depends on the placement of
the stress:
I *don't* think so. [quite assured]
I don't *think* so. [not quite sure]
But my feeling is that when it is spoken out, or written out, the stress
is more or less automatically felt as emphatic: you'd have to work at it
a bit to get--
I do not *think* so. [not quite sure]
--and it sounds curious, stilted and artificial. (To me, anyway.)
> Independent of that,
. . . surely that should be independently? (just a joke) . . .
> the latter has the advantage of moving the "not" up
> to the beginning of the sentence. That avoids temporary confusion on
> the listener's part, in much the same way that "advised not to" avoids
> surprise.
I may have got lost in the cycle of quotations, but if we're still
comparing--
I was advised to not go.
I was advised not to go.
--we're talking about a shift of one syllable. And still, there is
stress. I don't sense, in this case, a major difference, but I do sense
some difference. I hear them as:
I was advised to *not* go.
I was advised not to *go*.
Perhaps an idiosyncratic ear, but that's how it seems to read (and feel
it would sound if said).
> IOW, I think the natural tendency to use one form or the other is
> determined far more by the meaning and clarity of the speech and less by
> a rigorous desire to follow some rule (e.g. "sentence adverbs go right
> in front of the operative verb").
That's not a rule, it's just a known tendency in natural English speech.
>> It's wise to heed natural feelings when they do not breach any set
>> rule.
>
> I agree, but we seem to disagree on what feels natural.
More horses on the track. . . .
> (FWIW, Google has 8.8 million hits for +"advised not to", and 7 million
> for +"advised to not", and similar ratios for +"advised not to go" vs.
> "advised to not go".)
Remarkable. I would have expected a much higher ratio for the "non-
split" form. The near parity is quite interesting.
Eric Walker
[...]
>> Grammar strictures propounded prior to about a century ago were wildly
>> idiosyncratic, and are almost wholly irrelevant to what we speak of
>> when we refer to what recognized authorities say.
>
> Nice redefining of your inexcusably ill-mannered and abusively-framed
> question, after it was answered.
It is not a definition a posteriori, it is a definition a priori. A
reference to "prescriptionists" doesn't have much of a referent when
times over a century ago are rung in. Do we go to Ben Jonson for
relevant grammatical advice? He considered himself an authority, yet
could have a character say "Look superciliously while I introduce you."
My remarks were certainly abusive; whether they were ill-mannered depends
on one's interpretations of context and appropriate levels of response to
provocation.
I am at an age when I don't feel I have enough time to waste much of it
on fools who condescendingly flaunt their stupendous ignorance of the
matters on which they so sarcastically and bemeaningly hold forth. A
wise man once said that there is no harm in being a fool: harm is in
being a fool at the top of your lungs. They were at the tops of theirs
and I at the top of mine. Who the fools were and are remains a matter
that each can judge for him or herself.
--
Stan Brown
<em...@owlcroft.com>:
> On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:30:24 -0800, sjde...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> > On Mar 12, 5:46 am, Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> >> On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 05:10:02 -0500, Stan Brown wrote:
> >>
> >> [...]
> >>
> >> > I beg to differ. I can't imagine *any* native speaker saying "to not
> >> > go", unless being consciously humorous.
> >>
> >> "I've been advised to not go." Alternatives are available, but I
> >> cannot see that as disfunctional; indeed, it seems the preferable form.
> >
> > It certainly sounds clunky to me. "I've been advised not to go" would
> > be the more common form, in my (AmE) experience.
>
> Consider question and answer:
>
> What were you advised to do?
>
> I was advised to not go.
With just a bare "go"? Nope (in my experience). I was advised to
stay home or to stay away.
*"John advised me to not go to to that restaurant."
"John advised me not to go to that restaurant."
I've never heard anyone use the fist form.
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Shikata ga nai...
Stan Brown
>
> Stan Brown wrote:
> > Bob Cunningham wrote:
>
> >> a phrase like "to go" is "go", not "to go".
> >
>
> From M-W Online: [for "to"]
> 8 -used as a function word to indicate that the following verb is an
> infinitive <wants to go> and often used by itself at the end of a clause in
> place of an infinitive suggested by the preceding context <knows more than
> she seems to>
A "function word". Sigh -- things have changed since I was in
school. There used to be two kingdoms, and now there are five
(Monera, and Protista having been added and Fungi promoted out of
Plants).
There used to be just eight parts of speech. Can anyone recommend a
book hat tells me about "function words" and other parts of speech?
(I hope that doesn't sounds sarcastic -- I really would like to
update my knowledge.)
Django Cat
> Lewis <g.k...@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> wrote:
>
> > Marlboros taste good like a cigarette should was controversial 40+
> > years ago, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone under 60 who
> > could tell you why.
>
> I don't know if you care, but it was Winston.
>
> The "click, click" or "snap, snap" was quite memorable. "Winston
> tastes good, like a [click, click] cigarette should."
>
> Here's a Life magazine ad of 1966.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/yc9gp8s
That really is an alarming image. It's a hot day, you're laying flat
on your back in the full sun, buried up the neck in sand, and you're
smoking a cig. Makes me feel nauseous just thinking about it. Maybe
in 1966 that was an attractive idea. Power of advertising, I suppose...
DC, seven years off the weed and counting...
--
HVS
> On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:07:05 +0000, HVS wrote:
-snip-
|
>> ...your inexcusably ill-mannered and abusively-framed
>> question...
-snip-
>
> My remarks were certainly abusive; whether they were ill-mannered depends
> on one's interpretations of context and appropriate levels of response to
> provocation.
>
> I am at an age when I don't feel I have enough time to waste much of it
> on fools who condescendingly flaunt their stupendous ignorance of the
> matters on which they so sarcastically and bemeaningly hold forth. A
> wise man once said that there is no harm in being a fool: harm is in
> being a fool at the top of your lungs. They were at the tops of theirs
> and I at the top of mine. Who the fools were and are remains a matter
> that each can judge for him or herself.
My final comment is that I'm more than happy to judge that responding with
like at the top of your lungs is the response of a slightly-immature 12-
year old in the playground.
The "I'm at an age" defence is more a second-childhood one -- "He said it
first, Miss" -- and it removes any age-appropriate respect or consideration
you may think you're entitled to.
Django Cat
> On Mar 11, 4:53 pm, Bob Cunningham <exw6...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> ["split participial phrase"]
>
> > There is not
> > even a dated rule against the latter like there is against the
> > so-called "split infinitive". (And yes, "had gone quickly" is also
> > possible and maybe the best.)
> >
> > I'm using quotes for the "split infinitive" because the infinitive
> > in a phrase like "to go" is "go", not "to go". The phrase "split
> > infinitive" is a misnomer that is so firmly entrenched in the
> > language that we have to accept it, but we don't have to like it.
> >
> > Strictly speaking, so far as I know, there is no such thing as a
> > split infinitive in the English language unless you consider
> > intensive constructions like "We need to circumgoddamvent that
> > requirement". That is truly an infinitive that is split.
> ...
>
> That's just terminology. Some grammarians refer to the "full
> infinitive", which includes the "to". Others use the same terminology
> you do.
Or call the base form (there's another term) without 'to' the 'bare
infinitive'.
DC, a few days behind
--
Django Cat
> Lewis filted:
> >
> > Either way, 'To boldy go...' is not incorrect and has never been
> > incorrect, prescriptivists be damned.
>
> Well, except for the spelling error....r
Who are you calling 'Boldy'?
--
Donna Richoux
> On 13 Mar 2010, Eric Walker wrote
>
> > On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:09:33 +0100, Donna Richoux wrote:
> >
> >> First of the old guys that comes to hand:
> >>
> >> Henry Alford, _The Queen's English_
> >>
> >> In my 1866 copy, it is page 188, section 238, but in this on-line
> >> edition it is page 227, section 350 . . . .
> >
> > Grammar strictures propounded prior to about a century ago were wildly
> > idiosyncratic, and are almost wholly irrelevant to what we speak of when
> > we refer to what recognized authorities say.
>
> Nice redefining of your inexcusably ill-mannered and abusively-framed
> question, after it was answered.
Amidst his blowing off steam, Eric raised a question worth researching
-- what was said about split infinitives in textbooks and style guides
of the past?
I checked the "On Line Books Page" for grammar books. Two from the 1850s
and 60s didn't appear to recognize the issue, repeating only that you
recognize the infinitive because it has "to." This one from 1896
addresses the issue:
Higher Lessons in English: A Work on English Grammar
and Composition (revised edition, 1896), by Alonzo
Reed and Brainerd Kellogg (Gutenberg text)
+Caution+.--So place adverbs that there can be no
doubt as to what you intend them to modify. Have
regard to the sound also. They seldom stand between _
to_ and the infinitive.
[Footnote: Instances of the "cleft, or split,
infinitive"--the infinitive separated from its _to_
by an intervening adverb--are found in Early English
and in English all the way down, Fitzedward Hall and
others have shown this.
But there can be no question that usage is
overwhelmingly against an adverb's standing between _
to_ and the infinitive. Few writers ever place an
adverb there at all; and these few, only an
occasional adverb, and that adverb only occasionally.
Whether the adverb should be placed before the _to_
or after the infinitive is often a nice question,
sometimes to be determined by the ear alone. It
should never stand, however, where it would leave the
meaning ambiguous or in any way obscure.]
That sort of cautious position is much the same as White. It can be
done -- but it's rarely done -- so be careful if you do it.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
tony cooper
Why is it necessary to add "to to [sic] that restaurant" if the
restaurant has been named and discussed in the conversation at earlier
points? Every sentence does not need to include all referents.
--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
R H Draney
>
>A "function word". Sigh -- things have changed since I was in
>school. There used to be two kingdoms, and now there are five
>(Monera, and Protista having been added and Fungi promoted out of
>Plants).
>
>There used to be just eight parts of speech. Can anyone recommend a
>book hat tells me about "function words" and other parts of speech?
>(I hope that doesn't sounds sarcastic -- I really would like to
>update my knowledge.)
The explosion of biological kingdoms and parts of speech is somewhat balanced by
the number of "food groups"...WIWAL, there were seven, and in researching the
matter I've discovered that at one time there were twelve...now they're four in
number, and travel in a pyramid....
(The four food groups of my youth: Bread, Cream, Raspberries, Vanilla
Fudge)....r
--
"Oy! A cat made of lead cannot fly."
- Mark Brader declaims a basic scientific principle
erilar
<8b471cfe-e1ac-4ff2...@d2g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Mar 13, 2:04 pm, erilar <dra...@chibardun.net.invalid> wrote:
> > In article
> > <889f3404-f6b3-449c-b415-d39a8feef...@g19g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>,
> > Jerry Friedman <jerry_fried...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Certainly the "to-infinitive" is not much like any other construction
> > > in English, so there's a lot of choice about terminology.
> >
> > It's easier to throw it into the bin of "function words" and trust your
> > ear for your native usage to use it appropriately.
>
> I agree, unless you're writing a grammar and feel duty-bound to
> classify things.
Well, actually, I once did that. I had all the 9th grade, about a
third came in with a solid background in traditional grammar, 8 parts of
speech and all, and the rest with nothing of the kind(different grade
schools, different towns), so I threw it all out, invented new names,
and taught them structural grammar from handouts. I also included
Cummings' "anyone lived in a pretty how town" in their poetry unit 8-)
>
> > Does someone want to
> > play at classifying "do" next?
>
> I'll rush in where angels fear to tread. It's a proverb.
>
> --
> Jerry Friedman
--
Reinhold {Rey} Aman
[...]
> Who the fools were and are remains a matter
> that each can judge for him or herself.
>
--
~~~ Reinhold {Rey} Aman ~~~
Mike Lyle
>> million for +"advised to not", and similar ratios for +"advised not
>> to go" vs. "advised to not go".)
>
> Remarkable. I would have expected a much higher ratio for the "non-
> split" form. The near parity is quite interesting.
But I would have expected a much higher frequency for the "split"
version, since it seems from outside that so many Americans have that as
their default arrangement.
--
Mike.
Jerry Friedman
wrote:
> Eric Walker wrote:
> > On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:45:37 -0800, sjdevn...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >> (FWIW, Google has 8.8 million hits for +"advised not to", and 7
> >> million for +"advised to not", and similar ratios for +"advised not
> >> to go" vs. "advised to not go".)
>
> > Remarkable. I would have expected a much higher ratio for the "non-
> > split" form. The near parity is quite interesting.
>
> But I would have expected a much higher frequency for the "split"
> version, since it seems from outside that so many Americans have that as
> their default arrangement.
I think it's partly an age thing. Younger Americans are more likely
to default to the split.
And of course, sj said "for what it's worth". Those results probably
aren't good to better than a factor of 10.
--
Jerry Friedman
sjde...@yahoo.com
> Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:56:23 -0800 from Skitt <skit...@comcast.net>:
>
>
>
> > Stan Brown wrote:
> > > Bob Cunningham wrote:
>
> > >> I'm using quotes for the "split infinitive" because the infinitive in
> > >> a phrase like "to go" is "go", not "to go".
>
> > > Then what part of speech is "to", out of curiosity?
>
> > From M-W Online: [for "to"]
> > 8 -used as a function word to indicate that the following verb is an
> > infinitive <wants to go> and often used by itself at the end of a clause in
> > place of an infinitive suggested by the preceding context <knows more than
> > she seems to>
>
> A "function word". Sigh -- things have changed since I was in
> school. There used to be two kingdoms, and now there are five
> (Monera, and Protista having been added and Fungi promoted out of
> Plants).
Protista were added c. 1969 IIRC, but they've since been eliminated.
Likewise, Monera aren't generally considered a kingdom anymore.
In the most common classification system, there are 7 kingdoms of
eukaryotes now:
Animalia
Fungi
Amoebozoa
Plantae
Chromalveolata
Rhizaria
Excavata
Plus the prokaryotic domains and kingdoms (the stuff formerly under
Monera).
Garrett Wollman
sjde...@yahoo.com <sjde...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>In the most common classification system, there are 7 kingdoms of
>eukaryotes now:
>Animalia
>Fungi
>Amoebozoa
>Plantae
>Chromalveolata
>Rhizaria
>Excavata
I suppose this means that systematics is now dominated by splitters
rather than joiners. There is probably a reasonably principled basis
for this classification, but of course previous generations of
taxonomists felt the same. (Hmmm. I wonder what sort of taxonomy is
taught in schools run by evolution-denying religious nuts? Or Kansas,
assuming those aren't the same this election cycle?)
-GAWollman
("Eukaryotes of the world, unite!")
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Bob Cunningham
wrote:
>Bob Cunningham wrote in small part:
>
>> But, again, it should be forgotten that there is a rule about "split
>> infinitive". Grammarians say it doesn't hurt to obey it, but then
>> they say that where necessary for clarity and unambiguity, use it.
>> They could as well forget the rule and simply say, "Always aim for
>> clarity and unambiguity".
>>
>> (I tremble to think that Skitt's Law may find examples of unclarity or
>> ambiguity in this posting.)
>
>Well, you asked for it --
>
>How about the paragraph before the parenthesized sentence? Breaking it
>down, what you wrote is "Grammarians say it is OK to use the rule about
>split infinitives, but where necessary, use it."
>
>Like, "Huh?
Yes, thank you, I meant to say of course "where necessary for clarity
and unambiguity, ignore it".
I think I was so busy wondering if "unambiguity" is really a word that
I didn't notice what else was happening.
>"--
>Skitt (AmE)
>means to please
>
--
Bob Cunningham, Southern California, USA. Western American English
R H Draney
>
>In article <51a8a330-d3c4-48a0...@f8g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>,
>sjde...@yahoo.com <sjde...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>In the most common classification system, there are 7 kingdoms of
>>eukaryotes now:
>>Animalia
>>Fungi
>>Amoebozoa
>>Plantae
>>Chromalveolata
>>Rhizaria
>>Excavata
Unintended consequence: throwing the opening of every game of Twenty Questions
into a cocked hat....
>I suppose this means that systematics is now dominated by splitters
>rather than joiners. There is probably a reasonably principled basis
>for this classification, but of course previous generations of
>taxonomists felt the same. (Hmmm. I wonder what sort of taxonomy is
>taught in schools run by evolution-denying religious nuts? Or Kansas,
>assuming those aren't the same this election cycle?)
Six categories, starting with separating the light from the darkness....r
Stan Brown
> (The four food groups of my youth: Bread, Cream, Raspberries, Vanilla
> Fudge)....r
Sodium, sugar, caffeine, and cholesterol. Chocolate is the perfect
food because it blends all four.