Why Grammar Matters: A Place To Discuss Matters Of Grammar

[shapeshifter]

16 minutes ago, meowmommy said:

Ah, but then, you get into the "can" vs. "may" debate.  "Yes, you are physically able to talk to my supervisor, but I'm not putting you through."  🤔

--often not verbally conveyed--just put on hold

[Milburn Stone]

10 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

--often not verbally conveyed--just put on hold

Back in the day when people actually called airlines to book flights, I got one agent who was so bad I asked for his name again, and he replied, "Why would I tell you my name?!?"

[Lugal]

On 10/30/2020 at 4:01 PM, Kromm said:

This is very entertaining. Note this is from 1958.

 

You should check out the International Dialects of English Archive.

On 11/12/2020 at 5:44 PM, shapeshifter said:

I wonder if 50 years from now accessing and assessing will have become confusingly interchangeable like inflammable and flammable, and, if so, what the meaning will be.

There's a certain amount of semantic overlap (if you want to assess something, you have to access it), so I could see it happening.

[shapeshifter]

Perhaps also like flammable and inflammable are credible and incredible?

 

[Zella]

[shapeshifter]

Please, just decide where you want “with,” and delete the other one.

Quote

Her music caught the attention of Josh Fountain, a producer and member of the band Leisure, with whom she worked with for both her 2017 debut single "Tough Guy" as well as her 2018 single "Soaked".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benee

Edited November 18, 2020 by shapeshifter
decided on a comma

[Bastet]

That reminds me of a line in the first X-Files movie (one fans have had much fun mocking over the years):

Quote

Then you must take away what he holds most valuable. That with which he can't live without.

 

Edited November 18, 2020 by Bastet

[Milburn Stone]

On 11/18/2020 at 3:59 AM, shapeshifter said:

Please, just decide where you want “with,” and delete the other one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benee

This error may be #1 on my most hated list. You see it all the time with "of" and "in," too.

You prompted me to go down a rabbit hole in which I found this ESL video. The instructor has a dialect that sounds Russian or Baltic Nation to me, although I'm no expert. In any case, if her students learn her lessons well, they'll speak and write better English than most American-born college graduates.

[shapeshifter]

On 11/18/2020 at 3:59 AM, shapeshifter said:

...with whom she worked with...

 

On 11/18/2020 at 3:52 PM, Bastet said:

That reminds me of a line in the first X-Files movie (one fans have had much fun mocking over the years):

Quote

Then you must take away what he holds most valuable. That with which he can't live without.

"That with which he can't live without" sounds more grammatically correct. 
Is "without" a preposition here, or might it be serving as a descriptor of some kind?

 

 

[supposebly]

Looks like a preposition for which to me.

That with which he can't live without --> That without which he can't live.

With preposition stranding: That which he can't live without.

One too many prepositions with that contradicts the other prepositions. 

I think that refers to Scully which makes it even worse. It makes it sound like she's a thing

To get so many things wrong in one sentence is almost an art. I don't doubt this is what Carter wrote but I wonder if a native speaker would have corrected it automatically when saying the line. Poor Armin Mueller-Stahl.

 

[ABay]

A question for those with larger vocabularies than I have: is there a collective noun for nieces and nephews? Brothers & sisters=siblings, nieces & nephews=collective noun other than my siblings' children.

[SuprSuprElevated]

39 minutes ago, ABay said:

A question for those with larger vocabularies than I have: is there a collective noun for nieces and nephews? Brothers & sisters=siblings, nieces & nephews=collective noun other than my siblings' children.

Gender neutral term is nibling.

[shapeshifter]

8 hours ago, SuprSuprElevated said:

nibling

A friend/former colleague uses "nibling" for her nieces and nephews, but I had thought maybe it was a made-up family term of endearment. 
I should've known better as she is a professor of sociology and anthropology who is very linguistically focused.

[Lugal]

I can say this is true.

[supposebly]

Funny, I just posted this to my Semantics course. And yes, it's true.

[AimingforYoko]

You'll never guess what Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year is.

[Milburn Stone]

On 11/29/2020 at 10:12 AM, Lugal said:

I can say this is true.

I maintain that what we're really doing is not treating language as an object of fascination, but trying to figure out what people mean when they tell us something. No one appreciates that it's really out of consideration for them that we do this. I bet the person in the hole is one of those ingrates.

[SuprSuprElevated]

My issues with poor grammar are based in curiosity (see also; judgement).  It's the simple errors that affect me the most, like saying "we was" and "I seen".  I'm unable to understand how anyone can graduate from elementary high school not knowing how these things should be communicated.  How is it that those grammatical errors grate on me like the proverbial fingernails on a chalkboard, but don't trigger a small seizure in the offender?  

I'm not nearly as accomplished as many of you on this subject.  There are probably several errors in this post, lol. 

Edited December 2, 2020 by SuprSuprElevated

[Milburn Stone]

3 hours ago, SuprSuprElevated said:

My issues with poor grammar are based in curiosity (see also; judgement).  It's the simple errors that affect me the most, like saying "we was" and "I seen".  I'm unable to understand how anyone can graduate from elementary high school not knowing how these things should be communicated.  How is it that those grammatical errors grate on me like the proverbial fingernails on a chalkboard, but don't trigger a small seizure in the offender?  

I'm not nearly as accomplished as many of you on this subject.  There are probably several errors in this post, lol. 

This is a great question. I don't have the answer, but I can share a realization I had at some point in my life (which must be elementary knowledge among linguists) which is indirectly related. Foreign-born people who speak "funny English" are not incapable of learning grammar--they are studiously applying the logic and rules of their native grammar to a different language. When the Asian lady at our dry cleaners (who has been living here a long time) says "I have ready for you on Tuesday, OK?," there can be only one explanation: There is no future tense in her native language! Now, the people who say "we was" and "I seen" are probably American-born, but maybe their parents, or their parents' parents, emigrated from a country in which that grammar was correct.

[Quof]

I am on a mission to beat out of every young person in my life the abuse of the verb "to be".

"And I'm like.."  "Then he was like..."  "She's like..."

No. What you mean to say is "And I said" "Then he did" "She thought".  

Once you realize how often people say it, you can't unhear it.  

[AimingforYoko]

56 minutes ago, Quof said:

I am on a mission to beat out of every young person in my life the abuse of the verb "to be".

"And I'm like.."  "Then he was like..."  "She's like..."

No. What you mean to say is "And I said" "Then he did" "She thought".  

Once you realize how often people say it, you can't unhear it.  

Charles Schulz had some thoughts on the matter 43 years ago.

[Llywela]

1 hour ago, Quof said:

I am on a mission to beat out of every young person in my life the abuse of the verb "to be".

"And I'm like.."  "Then he was like..."  "She's like..."

No. What you mean to say is "And I said" "Then he did" "She thought".  

Once you realize how often people say it, you can't unhear it.  

Language is evolving. This can sound grating, I agree, especially when overdone, but has become established as a new form of verbal shorthand which means something distinctly different than 'he said' or 'he did'. Saying 'he was like' conveys that whatever 'he' actually said or did is being paraphrased rather than quoted verbatim, without having to state as much in so many words, and as such can be extremely useful. It's a very new and evolving grammatical form, but these days is considered valid - and comprehensible.

[supposebly]

2 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

"I have ready for you on Tuesday, OK?," there can be only one explanation: There is no future tense in her native language! Now, the people who say "we was" and "I seen" are probably American-born, but maybe their parents, or their parents' parents, emigrated from a country in which that grammar was correct.

I would need a lot more info but if it's Mandarin or any other Chinese language, they don't have auxiliaries and no tense like English does. Most location in time happens through aspectual means.

Also, if someone speaks/learns a second language as an adult, after years of use, one reaches a fossilized state where no more improvement happens. In my case, I've been using English as my dominant second language for the last 20 years and the first few years saw some changes in pronunciation and grammar, but that has stopped.

And I'm a linguist and I know the rules of English grammar better than most English native speakers. So, simple knowledge of a rule doesn't automatically mean you apply it. And vice versa, most speakers of a language don't know the rules, they still apply them.

The we was (agreement change/absence) and I seen (auxiliary drop) forms are dialectal and exist in a lot of English dialects across the globe.

[SuprSuprElevated]

24 minutes ago, supposebly said:

I would need a lot more info but if it's Mandarin or any other Chinese language, they don't have auxiliaries and no tense like English does. Most location in time happens through aspectual means.

Also, if someone speaks/learns a second language as an adult, after years of use, one reaches a fossilized state where no more improvement happens. In my case, I've been using English as my dominant second language for the last 20 years and the first few years saw some changes in pronunciation and grammar, but that has stopped.

And I'm a linguist and I know the rules of English grammar better than most English native speakers. So, simple knowledge of a rule doesn't automatically mean you apply it. And vice versa, most speakers of a language don't know the rules, they still apply them.

The we was (agreement change/absence) and I seen (auxiliary drop) forms are dialectal and exist in a lot of English dialects across the globe.

It appears you're telling me that many who use ^these examples, are doing so because they have become accustomed to hearing them used by folks with perhaps a different regional background.  I can see how hearing words used a certain way over a long period of time, could override what one would be taught in a classroom setting.  If I'm misinterpreting, then I'm lost.

 

 

Edited December 2, 2020 by SuprSuprElevated

[supposebly]

26 minutes ago, SuprSuprElevated said:

It appears you're telling me that many who use ^these examples, are doing so because they have become accustomed to hearing them used by folks with perhaps a different regional background.

It really depends. If you grow up in a dialect area where I seen is used then that's how you do past tense in that dialect. It's just a different rule from the "standard". 

If you are a second language speaker, there are different reasons. Let's say you moved to the above dialect area and never learned English in a classroom, then you might have adopted this one. Maybe you're not literate.

If you have learned English in a classroom but your first language has no tense forms, then you just never quite get how it works. 

For example, my first language is German and has no progressive form: I am reading vs. I read. So, I and many Germans speaking English do not always use the progressive when appropriate. That doesn't mean I never learned, I just can't always apply the right rule in every situation.

My home dialect of German has different rules from Standard German. Those are just its rules, that doesn't make them wrong. Just wrong if I applied them in Standard German. Or vice versa applying Standard German rules to my dialect. That would be equally wrong.

Language variation has many different sources: social, historical, geographical, gender, age, socioeconomic class and these sources interact with each other.

And there is really no one English. In fact, more second language speakers of English exist today than native speakers. And the native speakers are of many kinds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Englishes#Kachru's_Three_Circles_of_English

 

[Lugal]

9 hours ago, SuprSuprElevated said:

My issues with poor grammar are based in curiosity (see also; judgement).  It's the simple errors that affect me the most, like saying "we was" and "I seen".  I'm unable to understand how anyone can graduate from elementary high school not knowing how these things should be communicated.  How is it that those grammatical errors grate on me like the proverbial fingernails on a chalkboard, but don't trigger a small seizure in the offender?

We was is often seen in Appalachian dialects.  Like others have said, they're dialectal forms and are perfectly acceptable in that dialect.  Some dialectal forms allow for shades of meaning that are not available in the standard.  An example is the habitual be, where I am here means "I'm here now," while I be here means "I'm usually here."  It's associated with African American dialects, but seems to come from Irish English.  And with both African Americans and Irish, it's important to remember that people have often been shamed for their dialects in the past (and unfortunately in the present), especially if they come from different racial/ethnic groups or socio-economic strata.

[shapeshifter]

52 minutes ago, Lugal said:

We was is often seen in Appalachian dialects.  Like others have said, they're dialectal forms and are perfectly acceptable in that dialect.  Some dialectal forms allow for shades of meaning that are not available in the standard.  An example is the habitual be, where I am here means "I'm here now," while I be here means "I'm usually here."  It's associated with African American dialects, but seems to come from Irish English.  And with both African Americans and Irish, it's important to remember that people have often been shamed for their dialects in the past (and unfortunately in the present), especially if they come from different racial/ethnic groups or socio-economic strata.

Years ago on this thread I posted and boasted about verbally taking down one college student who I felt was shaming another for using/pronouncing “axed” for “asked.” 
(I interrupted to point out that Shakespeare used “axed.”) 
At the time I succeeded in shutting up the grammar corrector and no doubt leaving them both befuddled (which was not a goal of mine as a college reference librarian). 
But worse, now, in hindsight, I realize I was also  white-splaining. 😟 
And I had put the kibosh on cross cultural communication between college students.

My only excuse is that students who were working at the reference desk were not supposed to be chatting with other students not at the desk for library business. But in hindsight (I’m retired) that was never warranted either. Even the student employee who was making out with his girlfriend wound up marrying her and they are now living happily ever after.

Now that none of this spontaneous socializing is happening because of the pandemic I am even more sorry. 
At least they have Zoom. 

[Brookside]

From my local public broadcasting station: "They also said vehicles have antagonized the perimeter of the blockade."

[praeceptrix]

31 minutes ago, Brookside said:

From my local public broadcasting station: "They also said vehicles have antagonized the perimeter of the blockade."

Can anyone translate that into English? I think it might mean that cars and/or trucks and/or horse-drawn buggies are being used to harass, or possibly threaten, people who are on the other side of a barrier, but it's really not clear.

Edited December 11, 2020 by praeceptrix

[AimingforYoko]

3 hours ago, Brookside said:

From my local public broadcasting station: "They also said vehicles have antagonized the perimeter of the blockade."

First thing they teach you in Boy Scouts is to never antagonize a perimeter. A circumference or a radius, maybe, but never a perimeter.

[Milburn Stone]

7 hours ago, AimingforYoko said:

First thing they teach you in Boy Scouts is to never antagonize a perimeter. A circumference or a radius, maybe, but never a perimeter.

There's no danger. Perimeters have seen it all.

[meowmommy]

22 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

There's no danger. Perimeters have seen it all.

Of course they have...

"Up, perimeter!" 

"Aye, aye, Captain!"

[Moose135]

On 12/11/2020 at 10:55 PM, Milburn Stone said:

Perimeters have seen it all.

Well, they have been around...

[legaleagle53]

39 minutes ago, Moose135 said:

Well, they have been around...

 UGH. One more bad pun like that and I will have the lot of you drawn and quoted!

[Brookside]

I just heard a BBC reporter ask someone whether she could "invent an idea".

Edited December 15, 2020 by Brookside
Heard not head - thanks shapeshifter

[shapeshifter]

13 hours ago, Brookside said:

I just hea[r]d a BBC reporter ask someone whether she could "invent an idea".

I really want more context for this, because I can’t imagine any. 

But it reminds me of a 1960s high school friend/college roommate whose parents’ first language was Latvian and who once told me that a teacher had commended her creative use of words. 
It’s taken 55+ years and this thread for me to realize she must have shared that comment after I had corrected or criticized her word usage.  
I was very clueless about the social niceties of language and communication. 
We split up as roommates mid-year, which is a long story with a lot of context. 

[Brookside]

Height-th.

There is no such word.  As you can see, I can't even spell it.

[xaxat]

Netflix has a show for you etymology/grammar nerds. (Very NSFW)

 

On 11/14/2020 at 11:29 AM, Lugal said:

You should check out the International Dialects of English Archive.

Last week, Saturday Night Live had a sketch featuring Kirsten Wiig as a WWII USO singer. The best part about it was their use of the theatrical Mid-Atlantic Accent.

 

Edited December 28, 2020 by xaxat

[Browncoat]

The History of Swear Words almost makes me want to sign up for Netflix.  Almost.

[meowmommy]

3 hours ago, Browncoat said:

The History of Swear Words almost makes me want to sign up for Netflix.  Almost.

We were watching an episode of The Great British Baking Show last night on Netflix and caught a shot of Noel's cartoon of a cat saying "Fuck."  I was surprised to see that on a show so sedate and prim, but as my daughter said, it's Netflix.

[Brookside]

On 11/19/2020 at 4:35 PM, supposebly said:

Looks like a preposition for which to me.

That with which he can't live without --> That without which he can't live.

With preposition stranding: That which he can't live without.

One too many prepositions with that contradicts the other prepositions. 

 

I don't know what you mean by preposition.  None of the above makes sense.

On 12/2/2020 at 8:35 AM, Quof said:

I am on a mission to beat out of every young person in my life the abuse of the verb "to be".

"And I'm like.."  "Then he was like..."  "She's like..."

No. What you mean to say is "And I said" "Then he did" "She thought".  

Once you realize how often people say it, you can't unhear it.  

I think your mission is to beat out the abuse of the word "like", not "to be".

[supposebly]

7 minutes ago, Brookside said:

I don't know what you mean by preposition.  None of the above makes sense.

prepositions are the little words before nouns or pronouns. with me, for Mary, to Detroit   

In the example:   It was a quote from the first X-files movie. Each preposition should go with one pronoun. In the quote, there are too many prepositions.

The quote: 

Strughold: Then you must take away what he holds most valuable. That with which he can't live without. (Cuts to show Scully)

That with which he can't live without --> I'm guessing what he wanted to say was:

That without which he can't live. (awkward but ok, I think)

With the preposition stranding at the end thus being separate from its pronoun: That which he can't live without.

I hope that helps. It's a terribly weird sentence and I often wondered if it was Carter's terrible writing or Armin Mueller Stahl adding some German flourish that doesn't work in English.

Why he couldn't just say: What he can't live without.  I'll never know.

[Quof]

1 hour ago, Brookside said:

I think your mission is to beat out the abuse of the word "like", not "to be".

Nope, the abuse is the verb "to be".  "I am (like)"  "She was (like)".  When the sentence does not speak to a state of being, but of an action - to say , to do, to think....

[shapeshifter]

1 hour ago, supposebly said:

prepositions are the little words before nouns or pronouns. with me, for Mary, to Detroit   

In the example:   It was a quote from the first X-files movie. Each preposition should go with one pronoun. In the quote, there are too many prepositions.

The quote: 

Strughold: Then you must take away what he holds most valuable. That with which he can't live without. (Cuts to show Scully)

That with which he can't live without --> I'm guessing what he wanted to say was:

That without which he can't live. (awkward but ok, I think)

With the preposition stranding at the end thus being separate from its pronoun: That which he can't live without.

I hope that helps. It's a terribly weird sentence and I often wondered if it was Carter's terrible writing or Armin Mueller Stahl adding some German flourish that doesn't work in English.

Why he couldn't just say: What he can't live without.  I'll never know.

It reminds me of Yoda speech, but I don't know German.

[supposebly]

54 minutes ago, Quof said:

verb "to be".  "I am (like)"  "She was (like)". 

It's called a quotative and has first been observed in American English in the 1980s. Apparently, it's spread as the most common quotative (overtaking uses of "I said", he thought, etc.) at least in age groups under 40. Granted, the last research I know of was in the mid/late 2000s. So, I don't know if people over 40 now use it more too since they got older, or if they use it less (something that happens with some linguistic features in middle age). 

A summary with examples that argues it's not used in the same context as say or think.

https://journals.openedition.org/aes/513

52 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

It reminds me of Yoda speech, but I don't know German.

It wouldn't work in German either. That's why I tend to blame Carter's weird writing instead of Mueller-Stahl's German possibly interfering.

That   with which he can't live without.
Das    womit        er  nicht leben kann.
that   with.which  he not   live     can. 

[isalicat]

I know this is entirely anecdotal, but I grew up in the San Fernando Valley in the Los Angeles area in the 1970s and was one of the original "Valley Girls", hanging out in the first shopping malls (what an archaic concept now!) at age 13-14 and popularizing a way of speaking that includes that whole "so, she was like..." and more importantly "Oh mah Gawd" drawled out continually. Thinking back on this (a long, long time ago clearly) I can't remember how this clearly affected way of speaking started but we all took it for granted and I was amazed ten years later to see it portrayed in mainstream culture.

No one I know continued to talk this way once we hit high school and I, for one, then acquired all sorts of peculiar turns of phrases from being immersed in the competitive chess world that have stayed with me to this day.

[Anduin]

3 hours ago, isalicat said:

I know this is entirely anecdotal, but I grew up in the San Fernando Valley in the Los Angeles area in the 1970s and was one of the original "Valley Girls", hanging out in the first shopping malls (what an archaic concept now!) at age 13-14 and popularizing a way of speaking that includes that whole "so, she was like..." and more importantly "Oh mah Gawd" drawled out continually. Thinking back on this (a long, long time ago clearly) I can't remember how this clearly affected way of speaking started but we all took it for granted and I was amazed ten years later to see it portrayed in mainstream culture.

No one I know continued to talk this way once we hit high school and I, for one, then acquired all sorts of peculiar turns of phrases from being immersed in the competitive chess world that have stayed with me to this day.

I once read that that way of speaking was made popular by Frank Zappa's song, Valley Girl. I can't cite that , but it was released in 1982. Lines up.

[shapeshifter]

2 hours ago, Anduin said:

6 hours ago, isalicat said:

I know this is entirely anecdotal, but I grew up in the San Fernando Valley in the Los Angeles area in the 1970s and was one of the original "Valley Girls", hanging out in the first shopping malls (what an archaic concept now!) at age 13-14 and popularizing a way of speaking that includes that whole "so, she was like..." and more importantly "Oh mah Gawd" drawled out continually. Thinking back on this (a long, long time ago clearly) I can't remember how this clearly affected way of speaking started but we all took it for granted and I was amazed ten years later to see it portrayed in mainstream culture.

No one I know continued to talk this way once we hit high school and I, for one, then acquired all sorts of peculiar turns of phrases from being immersed in the competitive chess world that have stayed with me to this day.

Read more  

I once read that that way of speaking was made popular by Frank Zappa's song, Valley Girl. I can't cite that , but it was released in 1982. Lines up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_Girl_(song)

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_girl#Valleyspeak

Edited January 25, 2021 by shapeshifter

[Milburn Stone]

10 hours ago, Anduin said:

I once read that that way of speaking was made popular by Frank Zappa's song, Valley Girl. I can't cite that , but it was released in 1982. Lines up.

Here's how I remember it. First the Valley Girl way of speaking happened, perhaps localized to the San Fernando Valley, perhaps not. Then the song came out, and was a sensation. The song caused all kinds of people of all ages and walks of life to talk that way on purpose ironically. (Kind of like how Bob and Doug Mackenzie caused everyone to start talking Canadian for a while, and Rob Schneider caused people to call each other "The Bobmeister," "The Girl from Joyce-stinia," et. al.) Then maybe "Valley Girls" (wherever in the country) who didn't even talk that way started talking that way.

[isalicat]

On 1/25/2021 at 1:54 AM, Anduin said:

I once read that that way of speaking was made popular by Frank Zappa's song, Valley Girl. I can't cite that , but it was released in 1982. Lines up.

I visited Frank Zappa's home in Laurel Canyon in the early 1980s and that was long after us valley girls did our thing. By the way, he had a very cool old school bowling alley in the basement of his house and weirder yet, an entire bank vault that he had purchased and had moved in. He let an all girl band live in the vault for some time (they were gone by the time I visited and I don't remember what they were called).