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Grammar Questions

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Started 3 years ago by M. J. Young
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M. J. Young
Moderator

I'm starting this thread largely but not exclusively as an aid to Nikolaj, whose English is quite good for a Belgian, I think (certainly much better than my abilities in any other language).

I've started it as a separate thread not because I'm not wanting to answer him in the game thread (I have no problem with that) but because he threw me a curve in his latest post, writing:

I thanked master Robert for going to arrange me to go on the trading route. (Is that even a correct sentence?)
The problem is, I know that is wrong, and I know how to make it right, but I'm not certain why it's wrong. I'm hoping my favorite grammarian will stick her head in here and help me figure it out.

I'll comment first that you tend to write your actions in the past tense. That's not wrong, really, and is the way most fiction is written; but you may have noticed that everyone else writes mostly in the future tense (I will do) and sometimes in the present or perfect tense (I do, I am doing). This is because role playing happens progressively, and is treated as if it is happening now. However, I don't mind if you're more comfortable in the past tense.

The problem lies in the bit

going to arrange me to go

English is tricky with its objects; it is not easy to tell a direct object from an indirect object. For example, if you say, "Introduce me", "me" is the direct object, that which is the object of the action, that which is to be introduced. If, however, you say "Tell me", there is an implied direct object, "the secret", "the problem", that which is to be told, and "me" becomes the indirect object, the one who benefits from the action. It could be expanded and clarified to "Tell the secret to me", where the other would be expanded to "Introduce me to your friend".

My problem is that in the expression "arrange me to go", "me" is not the direct object (you are not the one being arranged), but does not seem to be the indirect object either. I would correct that to "arrange for me to go", although I could see someone changing it to "arrange me going", where "me going" becomes a participial clause that serves as the direct object together. Why you can't do that with an infinitive clause I'm not sure, but it seems that you can't.

I'm making an assumption that when you said "going to arrange" you were speaking in the present, that you were thanking him that he went somewhere to arrange something. That may be that you made a mistake in an effort to use the future tense--in English we often use "going" with an infinitive such as "to arrange" to express the future, but when we do so it is always also supported by the verb to be, "that he is going to arrange". It has the same meaning as "that he will arrange" but points more toward the future tense.

So those are the problems I see. I hope that this helps, and that someone can tell me why what you wrote doesn't work.

--M. J. Young

Thu Feb 12 2009 9:23 pm #
Nikolaj
Member

I was thinking of switching back to present, but as for storytelling satisfaction, I found it more satisfying to write in the past, as if, ages from now, I would be narrating y story (by a campfire to a fellow verser or something). At RPOL, with Eric, it seems to work well that way. Here not so, perhaps it is the way you provide feedback. I think Eric is more of a storytelling GM while you provide me with the facts needing to go on. Which isn't bad.

But this thread is welcome. I'm sure even this post is full of mistakes, as my own computer is at the shop and this browser's settings are in Dutch, including spellcheck, while on my computer's browser spellchecks in English.

Thu Feb 12 2009 10:13 pm #
Nikolaj
Member

I have to revise my review as to style, I think you're a great story-teller too. It's just a different approach. I'm not sure how.

Wed Feb 25 2009 9:56 pm #
M. J. Young
Moderator

This might be one you know, Nikolaj, but it's a mistake a lot of people make in writing, and I saw you make it in your most recent post. You wrote, "he is higher then me." The correct word is than. Then identifies sequence or temporal relationship, "It happened then," "We did this, then we did that." Than is the comparitive, "This is better than that," "my brother is younger than me."

As I say, a lot of native speakers of English get that wrong in writing, and it may be simply that you missed it. They are not exactly homophones (words that sound alike), but they are in the idiolects of many speakers, who don't make a difference in the sounds of the two words and so fail to realize which is which when they write them.

--M. J. Young

Sat Mar 14 2009 6:00 am #
Nikolaj
Member

aha, I mix them up all the time. Thanks! I'll try to keep it in mind!

Sat Mar 14 2009 8:04 am #
JohnA1nut
Member

I gotta give you props Nikolaj. At least you're trying to improve your English and grammar. Some people outright refuse to even try.

(And giving props is a good thing)

Sat Mar 14 2009 2:48 pm #
Nikolaj
Member

:)

Thank you John. I happen to like languages and words and all :)

Sat Mar 14 2009 11:09 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

How many languages do you speak Nikolaj? I have a friend who speaks 5 languages fluently, and can read and write 10 others fluently. (Difference being, reading and speaking are two very different things) I bet you would enjoy talking to Steven. What's your email address? Or, if you prefer, set up a Myspace account. I'm http://www.Myspace.com/A1nut.

In fact, I think everyone involved in this should set up a Myspace page. Think of the advertising potential.

Edit:(Doing Therapy)

Sun Mar 15 2009 12:05 am #
Nikolaj
Member

I don't seem to have the discipline or motivation to push through with languages all that much.

I'm raised in Dutch, being Flemish I got French in school starting from age 11, getting English at age 13 and German at age 15. I had to drop to an intellectually lower class, so I got the same amount of German again at age 18. In the mean time I got interested in Manga's and Anime's, prompting me to learn Japanese, but that didn't last long, so I only know a few words of that. And recently I started learning Russian because I visited an orphanage in the Ukraine and could see myself living there as a humanitarian helper/missionary for at least two years. But my life got too busy and it seems God want's me to go another route. So I dropped Russian class after six months.

Now it seems as if I'll be learning some Swahili words, since my new student is Rwandan and his Dutch is bad, and since religious terms aren't commonly used he doesn't know a lot of them yet, but my previous housemate was Kenyan, so I asked him to translate some terms from English to Swahili for me. The only thing I know in Swahili right now is Djambo, which means as much as hello. :)

Sun Mar 15 2009 12:37 am #
JohnA1nut
Member

Steven is a cool guy, and he speaks German, Russian and French, that I know of.

He's also a devout Atheist. I've been witnessing to him for years. Perhaps you know of some techniques I haven't tried.....

Anyway, setup a Myspace account. I think we all should get one. I wonder if we could set up a forum for Multiverser on Myspace......

(Doing Therapy)

Sun Mar 15 2009 1:25 am #
Nikolaj
Member

If he's a devout Atheist, my words and your words won't affect him, unless the Spirit decides to use them. He'll have an intellectual defense that I'm not going to be able to pierce through with words. It's like I've heard someone say (I think Leonard Ravenhill), we don't need a new definition of Christianity, we need a new demonstration of Christianity.

But that's off topic, and I'm not very compatible with myspace. I think it does not like Mac, which would be only normal since it's part of Microsoft :)

Again, that's off topic.

Thanks for all the tips, I'm going to use them and then I will be writing better than before, right? ;)

And I can always use Larry the cucumber's advice and example concerning homophones :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0J-T2lr0Ms

Sun Mar 15 2009 12:51 pm #
Nikolaj
Member

I also noticed that most people here don't put end quotes on paragraphs that are spoken and thus quoted. Is it a rule that only the final paragraph gets the end quote but all 'spoken' paragraphs begin with a quote?

My reaction would be to only open a quote at the first paragraph and to close the quote on the last, or to give every paragraph an opening and closing quote.

Sun Mar 15 2009 1:58 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

Nikolaj wrote:

If he's a devout Atheist, my words and your words won't affect him, unless the Spirit decides to use them.

I noticed here that you did something correct with your grammar. To affect means to cause change. Different from effect which means the end result of the change.

I used to date an English major, and she would harp on me for using it wrong all the time. The way we finally put it is "I would affect you by hitting you with a baseball bat, and the effect would be that you were laying unconscious on the floor."

Good word use Nikolaj!!!!!

Sun Mar 15 2009 5:13 pm #
Nikolaj
Member

tnx :)

Sun Mar 15 2009 9:02 pm #
M. J. Young
Moderator

In effect, when you affect something, you effect an effect.

Effect is used as a verb only when it refers to initiating something; affect is the verb for altering something. Thus I could affect you by hitting you with the baseball bat, in which case the effect might be that I effected a crack in your skull.

I also noticed that most people here don't put end quotes on paragraphs that are spoken and thus quoted. Is it a rule that only the final paragraph gets the end quote but all 'spoken' paragraphs begin with a quote?

To answer specifically, when a quotation continues from paragraph to paragraph it is considered proper to open the quote with each no paragraph but not to close it until the speaker stops speaking. You might notice that I sometimes close quotes on a paragraph and open them again with the same speaker, but only if my intent is that this person said the second thing later, or in response to something else said by the other person in the thread.

Note that this makes a significant difference between:

"We close quotations when the speaker changes, but not when the speaker doesn't change.

"What is the difference?

"The difference is that we can tell whether or not the speaker changed."

And:

"We close quotations when the speaker changes, but not when the speaker doesn't change."

"What is the difference?"

"The difference is that we can tell whether or not the speaker changed."

In the first block, one person was speaking, preaching almost, and asked a rhetorical question in the second paragraph which he answered in the third. In the second block, the second paragraph appears as a question raised by another speaker, which is then answered in the third paragraph, either by the original speaker or by a third party. The surrounding context would suggest whether there were a third party present or not, and in such a case the writer should give some clue as to who is which speaker.

Does that clarify things?

--M. J. Young

Sun Mar 15 2009 9:18 pm #
Nikolaj
Member

Yes it does. I'd seen it in books to(o)(?). So I wondered about it. Now I know it. Thanks!

Sun Mar 15 2009 9:31 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

Yes it does. I'd seen it in books to(o)(?). So I wondered about it. Now I know it. Thanks!

To and Too.

To (one o) means an action is being performed "Go to McDonald's at 9pm"

Too (two oo) Means the same (basically) as also. So that would be "I'd seen it in books too."

(Why not?)

Your, possessive, to show ownership. "Is that your coat?"

You're, contraction of You Are. "Miss, you're very pretty."

There, a location "Go over there."

Their, showing ownership "This is their house."

They're, contraction of They Are. "They're (They are) in that room."

These things used to drive me nuts in school.

(Doing Therapy)

Sun Mar 15 2009 9:39 pm #
Nikolaj
Member

There is a logic in it, so it isn't too hard for me. (this too isn't an also, but still a double o right?)

Sun Mar 15 2009 9:48 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

Right, it can also mean very, as in your example. I don't remember the rules, just the proper usage.

(Doing Therapy)

Sun Mar 15 2009 9:50 pm #
M. J. Young
Moderator

There is logic in it, but the logic is rather obscured by details often overlooked by native speakers.

The word "to" is not one word, but two words spelled and pronounced the same way. Both words are found in the statement "I want to go to the store."

The second of those is a preposition, and this is the word most people recognize. "To the store" shows direction and destination, in this case literally, but it can also be used figuratively, as in "to the top of the class" or "to the maximum output".

The first is what I think is properly called a particle. It has no meaning in itself, and cannot easily be given a definition, but exists for a grammatic purpose: it marks the infinitive form of a verb. English grammars tend to use the infinitive as the base or unmodified form, "to be", "to go", "to do". (Greek and Latin grammars tend to use the first person singular present active indicative, "I am", "I go", "I do". I don't know why English does it differently.) We commonly use infinitives for secondary actions in a sentence, that is, "I want to go" has the primary action of wanting and the act of going that which is wanted; "I am going to write" uses the primary verb "going" to create a future intention, "to write" that which is intended.

We use the word "too" in many of the same ways other languages use the word "and": "also", "even", "additionally", "greatly". It functions as an adverb, modifying other words but not nouns or pronouns.

Of course, the word "two" is limited as the designation of the second cardinal whole number ("second" being the second ordinal whole number). It is related to the words "twice", "twain", "twelve", and "twenty", but also "duo". I'm guessing that the cardinal traces from the French "dos" and the ordinal from the French "dusieme", as Anglo-Saxons mangled a great deal of Norman French into their own pronunciations (mansion from maison, for example).

--M. J. Young

Mon Mar 16 2009 9:39 pm #
Nikolaj
Member

cool thanks. I dutch, infinitives are without the to. So they would be go, do, practice, ... more like German (it is a Germanic language, but there are French influences)

Mon Mar 16 2009 9:57 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

If it makes you feel any better Nikolaj, English is said to be one of the most difficult languages to learn to speak properly. For example, I'm sure you've said something like this.

"I still haven't found what I am looking for." (To quote U2)

For is a preposition. Ending a sentence with a preposition is grammatically wrong. In proper English, that would be (Bulky as it sounds)

"I still haven't found that for which I am looking."

Which leads us to the famous Winston Churchill quote:

"Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put."

Believe it or not, that is grammatically correct.

Mon Mar 16 2009 10:18 pm #
WilliamTWodium
Member

"Grammatically wrong" is stating the case too strongly, I think. The majority of the time, no one will notice if you end sentences with prepositions in spoken English. In writing, you might find people who will tell you you're wrong, but I would bet money that at least half of those very same people do it themselves when they're talking aloud and never notice.

In my book, a preposition is a perfectly fine word to end a sentence with. (Though I'll still say "with which to end a sentence" from time to time, because it's fun.)

Tue Mar 17 2009 12:35 am #
JohnA1nut
Member

Well, as Archie Bunker so eloquently put it, "I say any bloke what ain't got enough sense to speak absolutely poifect* English ought to be de-exported the hell outta here."

*poifect, bastardization of perfect

Tue Mar 17 2009 1:02 am #
M. J. Young
Moderator

Of course, there are several levels to the problem.

The first is whether it is possible for something to be "grammatically wrong" at all. This question arises because of the pervasive relativism that has infected modern thought. Rules of grammar are, by some definition of the word, arbitrary. They are not like scientific laws or mathematical theorems, but are agreed conventions. For some, the notion of enforcing any set of rules is itself anathema, the violation of the fundamental rule that people ought to be able to speak as they wish. This, of course, ultimately leads to Babel, the world in which none of us can communicate with each other because we do not know the same language. However, the "rules" concerning French or German or Chinese are entirely different (or largely different) from those concerning English, and thus to say that any rules are absolute is nonsense. France has a government agency that determines which words are legitimate French words (and I believe they have a maximum number of words, which means that if they wish to add new ones they must remove old ones). English has no such authority overseeing it. No one can say that what someone says is wrong in any authoritative sense--only that it does not follow the rules as he understands them.

The second is the degree to which rules ought to reflect usage versus usage following rules. For Noam Chompsky, linguistics is an observational study: the rules are a description of what speakers do. It follows from that that speakers of the language never break the rules; rather, they express variants in the language that those who wrote the rules failed to recognize. That those who use the same name for their language cannot communicate with each other is irrelevant; they need only communicate with those with whom they wish to communicate, and if that involves creating their own dialects, this is perfectly acceptable.

Which opens the third level of the problem. Language evolves. The vocabulary, pronunciation, even the sentence structure of Elizabethan English is markedly different from ours today. It got this way because speakers mangled it into a new shape, and writers followed what was spoken. It may well be that people were more sensitive to sentence-ending prepositions, split infinitives, plural pronouns with singular antecedents, and other formally incorrect usages a century ago than we are now. That desensitization gradually results in the rules changing. That is not always good; it does not usually lead to clearer language. I observe in my article A Crisis in Linguistics: Johnny Can't Spell, editors of dictionaries have decided that pronunciation guides should no longer distinguish vowel sounds in many syllables--"fir" and "fur" are the same in the mouths of most speakers (not all), and so should have the same indicated pronunciations. I do not think that the sound at the end of "doctor" is quite the same as that at the end of "farmer". I also think that were children to pronounce the words distinctly, they would recognize the spelling distinction quite naturally. The majority of speakers do not do so, however, and the majority of ears are not attuned to hear the differences when they are spoken. However, enforcing rules locks language into a form that is vanishing, and modern linguistic scientists are more interested in how it changes than what it is at any given moment. Thus we cannot really say that any grammatical structure is "wrong" because it may only be that it is the rising replacement for the old one that will be discarded by future generations.

A fourth level is that there is some argument concerning whether the rules we are given are correct descriptions of English, or whether they are imposed on English by academics who are following the forms of other languages. There are languages in which prepositions can end sentences. Latin and Greek do not permit that. For centuries, Latin and Greek were the standard languages studied by all scholars, and even through the mid twentieth century there were fields in which proficiency in these languages was fundamental to academic discourse. Some have theorized that sentence-ending prepositions are natural to English, but that academics schooled in Greek and Latin disdained the form and so taught that it was wrong because it violated the grammatical rules of those languages from which ours are derived. I do not know whether Chaucer or Shakespeare or Dickens (the three great writers viewed as the great norms for the language of their time) would have ended sentences with prepositions, so I do not know the merits of the argument. However, there is certainly a problem with whether our rules are truly descriptive or fundamentally prescriptive, and that's a problem with stating the rules.

I know that I have become sensitized to sentence-ending prepositions and to split infinitives. They annoy me, and when I find them tripping out of my mouth I often attempt to pull words back and restate what I was saying. At the same time, as a writer I find it necessary to shift between what I see as correct structure for the narrative and the actual usage by people like my characters. Bob Slade will end sentences with prepositions, and split infinitives, and maybe dangle the occasional participle. If I don't do that, it doesn't sound like him. I don't have to follow the same forms in the narration, though, which (unless it is trying to reflect his thoughts more closely) attempts to maintain a "more correct" usage.

--M. J. Young

Wed Mar 18 2009 11:46 pm #
JTM
Member

(Greek and Latin grammars tend to use the first person singular present active indicative, "I am", "I go", "I do". I don't know why English does it differently.)

I'd dispute that latin works that way. The first person singular present active indicitive tends to be used for itself and dictionary lookups, while the infinitive is used as the stem for every other person and singular/plural combination in three tenses.

Thu Mar 19 2009 12:27 am #
WilliamTWodium
Member

James, I'm pretty sure he means "grammars" in the sense of books on the subject ("I checked out several Latin grammars from the library, but none of them had the information I was looking for"), so you're really in agreement. The point is that speakers of Latin cited verbs in isolation in the first person singular and speakers of English cite words in isolation in the infinitive.

Thu Mar 19 2009 6:24 am #
JohnA1nut
Member

This is getting just a wee bit more advanced than I can get. I don't even know what a split infinitive is. In the 8th grade, we had to take a test on prepositions. I was the only student who never managed to pass that test. The quote was just a favorite of that English major girlfriend of mine.

I admit, I don't use proper English, especially when I'm speaking. "I ain't got nothing." would be a typical John sentence. In writing though, I try to be more grammatically correct.

Something that I found interesting when I discovered it, double negatives. To say "I ain't got nothing" means, grammatically, "I do have something." I used to use double negatives to lie to people. Mom would ask me what I was doing, I would respond "I ain't doing nothing Mom." She would take it to mean "I am not doing anything." However, the actual meaning was "I am doing something." As far as I was concerned, I told the truth, mom just misunderstood me. That's wrong, and I don't try to do that anymore, but I am very literal sometimes when I speak. When I was driving the taxi, I had 2 guys that just rubbed me the wrong way. They asked if I had made any money. (That's always bad) I said "Nope, I haven't made a dime all night." (It was true!! All I had gotten was dollar bills. No one had given me a DIME!!!) It's a way of lying without really lying. The other person just misunderstood you. Probably wrong, but it's something interesting about language, nonetheless.

(Doing Therapy)

Thu Mar 19 2009 7:00 am #
M. J. Young
Moderator

Yes, Scott is correct. I haven't seen a lot of Latin grammars, so perhaps I spoke out of turn, but I know that it is standard in Greek grammars to put the first person singular (present active indicative) form as the form by which it is identified--to speak of the verb eimi, which is the form that means "I am". I was under the impression that this was also the case in Latin Grammars (which follow the same pattern in declensions of nouns, that the nominative singular is used to designate the word). If you're looking up a verb in a Greek or Latin dictionary, I think you have to look it up under that present active indicative first person singular form.

John, if you said, "No one gave me a dime all night," you would not be lying. If you said, "No, no one gave me a dime all night," you would be, because you first answered their question in the negative when they asked whether you made any money, and you had made money. Now, whether "I haven't made a dime" is lying is a much more difficult question. After all, I could pay you "a dime" by credit card, and that would constitute you having "made a dime" even though you never touched it. Thus if I gave you paper money, you would have "made a dime" plus a bunch of other dimes.

Now, had you said, "I haven't made a single dime all night," that would probably have been true, since you usually made them in bunches.

As to splitting infinitives, the self-breaking rule is:

Remember to never split infinitives.
The most egregious violation of this rule is the very familiar line:

To boldly go where no man has gone before.
The infinitive is the helper particle "to" plus the active verb that defines it. Patrick Stewart has complained about having to make that speech, because it ought to be "boldly to go" or "to go boldly"; putting the adverb in the middle splits the infinitive. It is common particularly in American English to do that. However, you can run into particularly egregious versions, such as

to boldly and swiftly, with all courage and all deliberate speed, holding our heads up and our weapons at the ready, preparing our hearts and minds for the battle which lies ahead of us, mindful that we may be facing death and destruction, yet hopeful that we may bring victory to our cause and be recorded in the annals of history, go
It is also more awkward if in splitting the infinitive you split it with another infinitive:

to boldly but not wanting to greatly hurry go.
The more junk you pack between the particle and the root verb, the more difficult it is for the reader or hearer to parse. The point is that the particle to marks the attached root verb as an infinitive (a form that expresses the state or action without reference to the actor or object, and thus the infinite expression of that state or action), and to detach the verb from the particle is to remove the cue that clarifies the sense.

--M. J. Young

Thu Mar 19 2009 8:13 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

Found on Google:

Tips for Proper English

1. Avoid alliteration. Always.
2. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. Remember to never split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren't necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate
quotations. Tell me what you know."
12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
13. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's
highly superfluous.
14. Be more or less specific.
15. Understatement is always best.
16. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
17. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
18. The passive voice is to be avoided.
19. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
20. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
21. Who needs rhetorical questions?
22. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
23. Don't never use a double negation.
24. capitalize every sentence and remember always end it with point
25. Do not put statements in the negative form.
26. Verbs have to agree with their subjects.
27. Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
28. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal
of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
29. A writer must not shift your point of view.
30. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
(Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word
to end a sentence with.)
31. Don't overuse exclamation marks!!
32. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences,
as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
33. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
34. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
35. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
36. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
37. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun
with singular nouns in their writing.
38. Always pick on the correct idiom.
39. The adverb always follows the verb.
40. Dammit!! Profanity sucks!!!
41. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague;
They're old hat; seek viable alternatives.

Fri Mar 20 2009 1:07 am #
JohnA1nut
Member

There was something that I listened to about the F word, and its many grammatical uses. (MJ, feel free to delete if you feel this is inappropriate, it's just meant to be funny)

It can be a verb:
"I want to F you right now."

It can be a noun:
"That was a good F."

It can be an adjective:
"Where the hell is my F-ing car?"

Or almost every word in a sentence:
"F the F-ing F-ers."

Fri Mar 20 2009 8:28 am #
JTM
Member

It is true that the present active indicitive first person singular is used to refer to the verb in isolation in latin, but only partially. Usually, verbs are refered to by present active indicitive first person singular, infinitive, perfect active indicitive first person singular, and sometimes past participle. Each of those is needed to properly conjugate the verb. That is because of the verb fero, ferre, tuli, latus and others like it, where the parts seem like they should be completely different words.

Fri Mar 20 2009 7:27 pm #
M. J. Young
Moderator

Yes, but if you were looking it up in a dictionary, would you not look it up under the PAI-1S form? That's the case in Greek, except for words which have lost that form and are only found in some other mood or voice or (in at least one case) do not have a 1S form.

Some of those Tips for Proper English are actually rules of grammar, and some are merely suggestions. I've got a list of (9) self-breaking rules of grammar at the end of A Crisis in Linguistics: Johnny Can't Spell which includes a couple not on that list. I note, too, that some of those which are supposed to be self-breaking (such as the one on dangling participles and the one on subject/predicate agreement) have been corrected such that they do not break the rules they are stating.

--M. J. Young

Fri Mar 20 2009 8:23 pm #
JTM
Member

It's alphabetized by PAI-1S, but only because that is the first in the list. fero, ferre, tuli, latus appears precisely that way in the dictionary, followed by the part of speech and definition.

Mind, that's the modern way of doing it, original roman dictionaries may have used a different format.

Fri Mar 20 2009 8:32 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

I know a double negative means the opposite "I don't have nothing" means "I do have something." What about a triple negative? I was just thinking that I gave a friend of mine a gift, and later, he asked me if I wanted it back. I said "No, I ain't no Indian giver." (Typical John Speech) I just realized that's a triple negative.

Oh yeah, and once upon a time, Ain't was acceptable speech. Now it's a sign of stupidity. It's a contraction of "Am Not" if I ain't mistaken.

Sun Mar 22 2009 6:38 pm #
JTM
Member

Even negatives are the same as a positive, odd negitives are the same as a single negative.

Sun Mar 22 2009 8:38 pm #
WilliamTWodium
Member

But only if you assume that each piece of negative morphology (no, not, nothing, un-, etc.) marks a distinct negation, which we find in many languages across the world is not the case. In many languages, for example, "I will give him nothing" is incorrect - since you are giving nothing, you must include a negative particle near the beginning of the sentence to agree with that negative (similar to how nouns and verbs in English agree in tense and number). The sentence comes out something like "I won't give him nothing," and it does not mean that something is being given. It's a negative sentence whose negativity is marked in two places.

That's why it makes perfect sense for these so-called "double-negative" sentences to encode single-negative meanings. People who say things like "I ain't got nothin'" understand basic logic just as well as the rest of us; they also understand the grammar of their dialects on an intuitive level, and unfortunately overzealous grammarians and logicians who cry "double negative!" do not share that understanding.

Mon Mar 23 2009 12:00 am #
M. J. Young
Moderator

Indeed, in Koine Greek it is perfectly possible to use two negatives not to counter each other but to make the negation emphatic.

It makes it more difficult to say some things--but there are some things that are difficult to say in any language. I was looking at a statement earlier this evening, which in the Greek word order says "Not for [they should] the children (to) the parents amass (money), but the parents (to) the children". [Braces] indicate multiple words represented by a single word in Greek; (parens) indicate words that are inferred from the declension of a noun or conjugation of a verb. The question here is, is Paul saying that children have an obligation never to save up their money to support their parents, but parents always have the obligation to save up to for their children? Is he saying that it is not the case that children are obligated to save for their parents, but rather it is the case that parents are obligated to save for their children? Or is he saying that we don't normally expect children to have some obligation to care for their parents, but we do normally expect parents to have that obligation toward their children? As John observed earlier, "I am not doing nothing" has real affirmative meaning. It means "I am doing something", but it means it in a very pointed way, that you cannot say I am doing nothing because I am actually not doing nothing but something.

There are a lot of other quirks to negations in English. In the Alice books, the central character somewhere states, "I see no one on the road," and one of the adjunct characters replies, "You must have very good eyes to see no one, and at that distance, too." Because of the peculiarities of our negatives, the statement "I do not want to go" is ambiguous. It can mean "I have no particular desire to go," or it can mean "I have a strong desire not to go," and there is nothing in the statement itself that can tell you which is intended.

All languages say some things well and some things poorly. In Greek, as another example, the negation of an imperative verb is ambiguous. In some cases "Not go" should be taken as "do not go", and in others as "stop going", but there is nothing in the structure itself to tell you which is meant. On the other hand, Greek is very good at a lot of things that are difficult to render in English, and we wind up struggling to bring the sense across, making choices between which of several nuances are the most important for the translation.

--M. J. Young

Mon Mar 23 2009 4:21 am #
JohnA1nut
Member

Ya know what? I just realized that language changes very subtly in usage. For example, which sentence "sounds" more immediate?

"I immediately thought of you."

of

"I thought of you immediately."

They both mean the exact same thing, but I think the first sentence, puts more immediacy on the immediately. If that makes sense....

Or how about:

"Nearly a quarter of a million pounds."

or

"Over two hundred thousand pounds."

They both mean the same thing, more or less, but the first sentence seems to convey a heavier weight than the second sentence. At least I think.

Any other thoughts?

(Doing Therapy)

Thu Apr 9 2009 8:20 am #
WilliamTWodium
Member

"I immediately thought of you." or "I thought of you immediately."

They both mean the exact same thing, but I think the first sentence, puts more immediacy on the immediately. If that makes sense....

Yup! We call that "topicalization" - moving something that wasn't originally at the beginning of the sentence to the front in order to give it more prominence. Another example: if I say "John has lived here for three years," I'm telling you how long it's been, but if I say "For three years, John has lived here," I'm stressing how long it's been. It's the same phenomenon you've noticed with 'immediately.'

This is the sort of thing they teach in my classes. (Well, one of the sorts of things.)

Thu Apr 9 2009 4:15 pm #
M. J. Young
Moderator

What's really strange is when I read "Nearly a quarter million pounds" and "Over two hundred thousand pounds", I thought, "That's a lot of money." And I've never been to England.

I did hear Michael Caine last night say that his mother asked how much he makes per movie. He told her "A million pounds." She asked him, "How much is that?"

I also use to joke, in a British accent, that I'd enrolled in a diet program, and lost twenty pounds but was actually heavier.

But you're right--using the larger increment makes it seem bigger, as long as the fraction isn't too small. I remember calling my eldest and saying that I wanted to let him know that he was at that moment a quarter of a century old to the nearest minute. I don't think it has the same impact if you tell a ten year old that he is a tenth of a century old--that fraction is too small, and a tenth of a century seems a very small piece as compared with ten whole years.

--M. J. Young

Thu Apr 9 2009 9:52 pm #
KellyKeck
Member

Another interesting thing about double negatives is that English used to have them. Old English, specifically the West Saxon dialect, used multiple negatives to express a negative thought, and this became more common in Middle English. At some point (I'm not sure when) it became less common, and then it came to be considered incorrect.

I get the impression that the "rule" where two negatives should really make a positive is an attempt to explain a change that had already happened. Double negatives stopped being used, or at least stopped being used in the prevailing dialect. And at some point, when someone was asked to explain *why,* they explained it in terms of mathematics--just as subtracting a negative gives you a positive, two negatives cancel each other out in language.

Sun Apr 12 2009 4:00 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

What's really strange is when I read "Nearly a quarter million pounds" and "Over two hundred thousand pounds", I thought, "That's a lot of money." And I've never been to England.

Which is really funny, because originally, I was going to say "A quarter of a million dollars" but I wanted to leave out the reference to money.

Sun Apr 12 2009 4:25 pm #
M. J. Young
Moderator

I agree about double negatives. It's one of the problems of grammar that it is essentially descriptive but taught as prescriptive. That becomes a problem because if we recognize it as descriptive we lose any "force" to the rules, but if we maintain that it is prescriptive we struggle with the fact that language does change. On the other hand, if we give up teaching it as prescriptive, we face the hazard that a rising generation will abandon the "rules" and create their own language, and then will become unable to communicate with each other. We have some of this already, with Valley and 133+.

(I just saw a cartoon panel in which a kid at a 133+ spelling bee is saying, "2morrow. Could you please use that in an incomplete sentence?")

I note that in Greek double negatives are almost always intensifying. I was just reading in II Corinthians 13 this afternoon, where Paul literally writes that he prays "you will not do nothing evil." In his language, that means he is putting a lot of emphasis on negation, what we would have to render "you will not do anything evil at all" to get close to the same emphasis.

On the other hand, this intensification of negatives makes it more difficult to say some things which cancelling negatives make possible. We can say, for example, "I do not want you not to go." That expresses something distinct from "I want you to go;" it states quite specifically that it is not the speaker's desire that the hearer be restrained, but it does not express a specific desire on the part of the speaker for the hearer to leave, which the alternative does.

So cancelling negatives do not really eliminate the meaning of each in every case; they create unique meanings sometimes, which cannot be so easily created in languages which have intensifying negatives.

--M. J. Young

Sun Apr 12 2009 9:47 pm #
WilliamTWodium
Member

Which is really funny, because originally, I was going to say "A quarter of a million dollars" but I wanted to leave out the reference to money.

And I didn't realize you weren't talking about money until just now. I suppose I expect to hear "tons" when it's that much weight under discussion.

Mon Apr 13 2009 12:53 am #

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