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a little something for pedants and... (profanity)
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Subject: a little something for pedants and langu From: Hollowfox Date: 27 Dec 00 - 06:02 PM I was inspired to track this down for the "thee/thou/thy" thread, but it didn't quite fit there. The book is called "The Lost Art of Profanity" by Burges Johnson, 1948, Bobbs Merrill Company; a fine and readable book on the subject, complete with a foreward by H.L. Menken. In the chapter "The Oath Interjectional (or exclaiming)" , well, I'll let the author speak for himself."...the phrase, "What the hell are you up to?" is not seemly for social puropses because it ends with a preposition. A more seemly arrangement would be "To what the hell are you up?" or better sitll "Up to what the hell are you?" But it is hard to make a purist of a man in the midst of ejaculation, though I have known this to happen in a really vicious game of croquet." Enjoy. In service to variety in language, Mary |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Zebedee Date: 27 Dec 00 - 06:11 PM Good language = Understanding, no more, no less If you want to be pedantic, at least spell all the words correctly... Ed |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Rizla the Green Date: 27 Dec 00 - 06:12 PM Hell the what going on about are you? |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: katlaughing Date: 27 Dec 00 - 06:18 PM Off My Ass Laughing! Brill, Rizla Green! Thanks to you, Hollowfox, for the posting. katlaughing |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Hollowfox Date: 27 Dec 00 - 06:18 PM I pselled them correctly, I just mis-typed. |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: okthen Date: 27 Dec 00 - 06:28 PM this, more of I beg, prithee cheers bill |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Rizla the Green Date: 27 Dec 00 - 06:50 PM Wintson Churchill is quoted as saying..."This is something up with which I will not put". |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: catspaw49 Date: 27 Dec 00 - 06:53 PM Ya' know 'fox, it sounds like a book right down my alley....or gutter as the case may be. Now don't let Zeb there bother you, but thinkin' of his response, I was wondering if that book had any suggestions for responding properly to him.........I mean which is more correct?
A) Blow Me Just wonderin' Spaw (Think I'll ask Kendall this on another thread too) |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Haruo Date: 27 Dec 00 - 07:17 PM "Fuck off" seems to me to be the less grammatically defensible, inasmuch as it is missing both its direct and its indirect objects. I.e., fuck whom off what, e.g. fuck me off my horse. Liland Admitted pedant, and quite possibly a langu to boot*, whatever that is... Wherewith (and wherefor[e]) one booteth a langu I leave it unto thee to discover |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: catspaw49 Date: 27 Dec 00 - 07:22 PM Thank you Liland! I am forever in your debt. Now, Zeb............BLOW ME ! ! ! Spaw |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Cobble Date: 27 Dec 00 - 07:26 PM What about leave in little jerky movements. Cobble. |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: wildlone Date: 27 Dec 00 - 07:58 PM Well bugger I backards, What be all e' goin' on about then |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: John Hindsill Date: 27 Dec 00 - 09:03 PM That quote of Winston Churchill was in response to being told that one should not end a sentence with a preposition. It was his way of showing how awkward the sentence could become by following that silly rule. I first heard that line in my senior thesis class, lo those many years ago, by a professor who gainsayed being pedantic (in the worst sense of that word)...but he was. |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: katlaughing Date: 27 Dec 00 - 09:57 PM From Dr. Language at the www.yourdictionary.com: Will I be Arrested if I End a Sentence with a Preposition? A Southerner stopped a stranger on the Harvard campus and asked, "Could you please tell me where the library is at?" The stranger responded, "Educated people never end their sentences with a preposition." The overly polite Southerner then apologetically repeated himself: "Could you please tell me where the library is at, you jerk?" While editing the proof of one of his books, Winston Churchill spotted a sentence that had been clumsily rewritten by the editor to eliminate a preposition at the end. The elder statesman mocked the intention with a comment in the margin: "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put." These two anecdotes reflect an intolerance on both sides of the Atlantic for the rule prohibiting sentence-final prepositions. So where did the rule come from, anyway? Before the science of language, linguistics, schools and universities taught what is known as 'prescriptive grammar'. Prescriptive grammar is not grammar (the rules of spoken language) at all but a list of "do's and don'ts" prescribing the way those in or striving for the upper class should talk. Because all upper-class private schools of the time emphasized, if not required Latin, 'good' grammar was presumed to be grammar that emulated Latin grammar. The problem is, English is not Latin, an insight lost on prescriptivists. Latin has cases and every Latin preposition is associated with a case. For example, the word for "wine" in Latin is vinum. However, the prepositional phrase corresponding to "in wine" is in vino (as in 'in vino veritas'; 'wine brings out the truth') ending on the Ablative case marker, -o, because in was associated with the Ablative case. So the suffix of vin-o identifies the noun vin-um as the object of the preposition in and not the object of any other preposition in the sentence; in short, they go together. Because sentences usually contain several prepositional phrases like this (e.g., "A relative of the fruitfly was doing something like the backstroke in the wine on the table in the library."), it is important to keep up with which noun goes with which preposition. The easiest way to do that is by a rule that prepositions are never separated from their object noun (or noun phrase if the noun is modified by adjectives). Latin has that rule. Believing that Latin grammar represents grammatical perfection and unintimidated by the onerous task of molding English in the image of Latin, prescriptive grammarians proscribed the use of prepositions anywhere other than immediately before their object noun. For example, one should not say "the prescriptivist John clashed with," but rather "the prescriptivist with whom John clashed", not "the rule John laughed at," but "the rule at which John laughed". The fact of the matter is, however, English simply does not have case endings on nouns that are objects of prepositions, so the reason for keeping prepositions and their object nouns together is wholly irrelevant to English. You may keep them together or not. You'll never spend a night in jail either way. However, because of the upper-class bias in the rule's history, its use now makes you sound pretentious: "the chap in whom I invested my trust". (Is that you? It isn't me; nor was it Winston Churchill.) This example teaches us two important lessons about language. First, each and every language has its own set of grammatical rules and everyone who speaks that language knows what they are in his or her region. (They do vary slightly from region to region--big deal.) That is what speech is: the use of grammatical rules to express oneself. Second, prescriptive grammar is based on misconceptions about language and causes far more mischief than good.
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: ddw Date: 28 Dec 00 - 12:12 AM Wow, Kat — best refutation of that silly rule I've ever run into. I've known for years it came from Latin grammar, but your answer was complete and understandable. Now if we can just get people to sort out the difference between "bring" and "take" we might be getting somewhere. On the other hand, I run into phrases all the time that make no sense because writers put things down the way they're said by most people. One of my bugaboos is: John Doe was sentenced to five years in the penitentary Tuesday. Which makes it either the shortest five years or longest Tuesday in history. Changing that to: John Doe was sentenced Tuesday to five years in the penitentary. makes a lot more sense, don't you think? Yeah, yeah — it may be pedantic, but this is what I do for a living..... david |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: katlaughing Date: 28 Dec 00 - 01:35 AM Or, "On Tuesday, John Doe was sentenced to five years in the penitentiary." (Late night, David? I'll bet that doesn't slip by too often:-) Also, your first example could be read to mean the penitentiary was named "Tuesday." LOL! Thanks, I am glad you enjoyed the explanation; it's made me worry much less about such things. That is a really neat website which I enjoy a lot. kat |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Terry K Date: 28 Dec 00 - 01:38 AM Never use a preposition to end a sentence with........ |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: katlaughing Date: 28 Dec 00 - 01:48 AM LOL |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Seamus Kennedy Date: 28 Dec 00 - 01:57 AM Yez are gettin' into the difference between English, Irish, and American. There are more, but I'll let yez sort it out among(st) yerselves. Seamus |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Murray MacLeod Date: 28 Dec 00 - 07:12 AM Kat , that was a brilliant explanation. The other great taboo in English grammar is the split infinitive. What do you think, is it correct to ever split an infinitive ? Murray |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: paddymac Date: 28 Dec 00 - 08:17 AM Kat's fine discovery gave me pause to ponder: is a prescriptivist proscription prophyllactic, a prophyllactic prescription proscriptive, or a proscriptive prophyllactic prescriptive? Alternatively, are prescriptive prophyllactic proscriptions problematic? :>) |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: catspaw49 Date: 28 Dec 00 - 08:39 AM Paddy, you're a pip! Spaw |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Peter T. Date: 28 Dec 00 - 11:57 AM Sorry. Dr. Language, whoever he or she is, is completely wrong. The very fact that English does not have case endings means that the order of words is often critical. In Latin, almost any order can work, as anyone who has ever read any Latin poetry would know, because the case endings identify the parts of speech. In English, this is done in a number of ways, of which word order is among the most important. This is in fact the reason why having a final preposition appears so odd in English. It doesn't make it wrong, but Dr. Language's reasoning why is ridiculous. yours, Peter T. |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 28 Dec 00 - 11:58 AM Rizla the Green said: "Wintson [sic] Churchill is quoted as saying..."This is something up with which I will not put". I believe the correct quotation is, "This is the sort of errant pedantry up with which I will not put!" Dave Oesterreich |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Hollowfox Date: 28 Dec 00 - 11:58 AM Now 'Spaw, don't get your knickers in a knot over ol' Zeb. After all, I never said *I* was a pedant, he said he was. He told me how to be pedantic if I so desired (no worry there, what with my spelling abilities). Kat, are you prepositioning ddw right here in front of all of us?!? |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: katlaughing Date: 28 Dec 00 - 12:11 PM Not unless I can see his dangling participle first! Thank you, Peter! Always love to hear your knowledge on these things, too! Ah, I was Brill for 15 minutes....sob, sob...LOL!! |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: katlaughing Date: 28 Dec 00 - 01:21 PM Murray, I forgot to address your question. My reply: As I will, after sometime, be going to heft my massive volume on grammar off of the shelf sometime soon, I expect to, once I've read through it, answer your question quite thoroughly. (Oh, gawd! Mrs. Worcester must be turning over in her grave by now!) Paddymac, would you please restate your question?*BG* kat |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: MarkS Date: 28 Dec 00 - 06:11 PM Word order is indeed most critical in English, just see the difference between "house cat" and "cat house" for example. Anybody think of any others? MarkS |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: katlaughing Date: 28 Dec 00 - 06:30 PM Mud Cat and Cat Mud?**BG** |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Gary T Date: 29 Dec 00 - 03:39 AM Word order in English is of generally greater importance than it is in Latin. Many Latin sentences could have their meaning unchanged no matter how the words were jumbled around, whereas most English sentences (and even phrases) change or lose meaning if the word order is altered. However, not ALL of English is slavishly dependent upon word order. I have to disagree with Peter T. His point about word order is generally true of the language as a whole but is not applicable as the final word on placement of prepositions. Is there really anyone here who does not understand, "That's a toy I used to play with?" Is there any improvement in saying "That's a toy with which I used to play?" I think not. I think you'll find, Murray, that the proscription of split infinitives is also based on obsequious deference to Latin grammar. Latin infinitives are single words and thus CANNOT be split. English infinitives, being two words, lend themselves readily to splitting. Sometimes this can enhance clarity by eliminating any doubt as to which word in a sentence is modified by a particular adverb. And consider "He agreed to always call before visiting." The placement of "always" anywhere else in that sentences either changes the meaning or makes it come across as terribly stilted and awkward. There's really no good reason to disallow spit infinitives in English. |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Peter T. Date: 29 Dec 00 - 11:03 AM I don't think we disagree, Gary, I did say "often critical", not always. I pointed out why ending a sentence with a preposition occasionally sounds odd -- one is haunted by what seems to be missing because of the influence of the usual pattern. Speaking of always, one problem your note elides is that the written language is trying to cope with things that can be handled without difficulty in oral speech through emphasis -- He ALWAYS agreed to call before visiting, and He agreed ALWAYS TO CALL before visiting work quite happily in speech, but less well in writing (depending on whether you are American or English as well), because written English doesn't capture voice emphasis unless you are very careful in your poetics. To prevent the ambiguity you mention, you have to move the "always" around (a true pedant might say that you are actually creating a new infinitive -- "to always call" -- I always call, you always call, etc.) I have posted this before, I think. The longest string of prepositional endings in the language (with some cheating). The irritated query of the child at bedtime when his father for the umpteenth time decides to read about the history of Australia: "What did you bring that book I didn't want to be read to out of about "Down Under" up for?" (8). yours, Peter T.
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Little Hawk Date: 29 Dec 00 - 02:00 PM What a delightful thread this is... Okay, everyone knows (or at least everyone should know) that Bob Dylan is the world's foremost authority on the use of proper grammar. Now, he said in at least one song "no one was ever sure where he was really at". Therefore, it is perfectly all right to end a sentence with "at". Case closed. Now that we've got that one behind us, I think it's time to consult the Holy Scriptures (Dylan's writings) for further revelations in the proper use of language. Consider this line "with unseen consciousness I possessed in my grip, a magnificent mantlepiece, though its heart being chipped". If everyone had a mastery of grammar like that, think where we would be today... Admittedly it was in a song (about Suze Rotolo and her sister Carla) that even Bob himself has said of..."I must have been some kind of schmuck to write that one", but he wasn't criticizing the grammar, mind you, but rather the general theme of the song, in that it was totally unfair and nasty toward Carla...but I'm getting off topic here. Sorry! Now, where were we? Oh yes, the Bob Dylan grammatical mastery discussion. Well, I could give innumerable examples, but why bother? All you have to do is read his lyrics. Ah, yes, and SPAW...are you listening??? C) Bite me, fuckface! I think that one deserves consideration before making a final decision on the matter. - LH
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Peter T. Date: 29 Dec 00 - 02:30 PM And what of Paul McCartney's classic: "And in this ever-changing world in which we live in"? (Live and Let Die). yours, Peter T. |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Little Hawk Date: 29 Dec 00 - 03:36 PM Yeah! McCartney's written some pretty wretched doggerel in his time...but that one bites the big one! EEEE-YUCK! He should have taken lessons from Bob. - LH |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Mrrzy Date: 29 Dec 00 - 06:19 PM Ah, I love these threads. Think of "embedding" - the man the dog bit died. Then think of multiple embeddings - the man the woman the dog the cat bit knew married died. Even OK rules can lead to un-OK solutions if misapplied. What is possible is not always feasible, to use Jargon. And while I'd heard "what did you bring that book I didn't want to be read to out of up for" I hadn't heard it with the added Down Under, which unfortunately are grammatically, I believe, nouns in that sentence... still, very good updating! |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Richard Bridge Date: 29 Dec 00 - 07:13 PM If you carefully read all of the examples given above, you will find that the rules of "prescriptive grammar" give the only unarguably precise meanings. |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Bill D Date: 29 Dec 00 - 07:59 PM "I believe the correct quotation is, "This is the sort of errant pedantry up with which I will not put!" *sigh*...I have seen 27 different formulations of what Winnie might have said...he probably DID say something close to one of them...but I doubt there was anyone with a recorder there...the was I remember it is "....sort of 'arrant'nonsense up with which".... arrant connotes a different sense than 'errant',
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Snuffy Date: 29 Dec 00 - 08:07 PM Didn't Saint Bob write "Lie, Lady, lie, lie upon your big brass bed"? |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 29 Dec 00 - 08:35 PM Anyone reading this thread should know that Fowler's is online
The 1908 edition - later editions are a bit more flexible. But he's a very sensible bloke about things like this anyway. |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 29 Dec 00 - 08:38 PM Now that wasn't the right link - this should be |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Haruo Date: 29 Dec 00 - 09:09 PM Now if I may point out an oddity in Latin word order... It is true that in English it is if anything more important than in Latin to keep a preposition right up against its object (since in Latin the case may, I'm not saying will, clarify matters), and it's true that nonetheless English more often than not goes ahead and dangles the preposition off the far end of the clause, usually without great damage to the sense and usually with a net profit in colloquiality, and it's also true that Latin rarely if ever even contemplates much less consummates the like dangling, yet Latin hath his (taking it as sermo Latinus, not lingua Latina) own funny ways with words. Note for example Lucretius' famed title, De rerum natura ("On the nature of things", but even a nonpedant can tell at a glance that it actually says "On of things the nature"), and then there's the old Christmas chant (now usually sung to Divinum Mysterium), Corde natus ex parentis ("Of the Father's love begotten", but it looks to me more like "Heart born of the Parent's" and the -e on "corde" strongly suggests to me that it's the object of the "ex"...) Of course, by the time Englishmen got around to aping Latin, Latin itself had settled down into imitating Italian in its sentence structure, ... How's that for pedantia? (I would make more of my pedantry, but I'm always afraid people will think it's a fancy word for child molestation...) Liland |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Peter T. Date: 30 Dec 00 - 10:53 AM Yes, Medieval Latin already shifted drastically in that direction. Speaking of pontificating, I remember a Professor at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies who was somewhat renowned for doing his thesis on word order in Thomas Aquinas. Can't remember his name. One of his students (in a parody moment, but it may have been reflecting a real argument) said that he argued that the whole dispute between the Western and Eastern churches over the Trinity was about the weight and order in which you took the possessives -- Son of God. To quote the parody: "Of course, the arrival of the barbarian hordes across Europe somewhat loosened the grammatical rigour of the times....." yours, Peter T. |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 30 Dec 00 - 12:57 PM Well, if it's Mediaeval Latin you're after, here are some good songs. |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Lanfranc Date: 30 Dec 00 - 06:10 PM Did you hear the sad story of the Latin scholar, who, on his honeymoon, was asked by his wife if he would like to conjugate, but declined? Not the kind of anecdote any true pedant would give credence to.
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: GUEST,leeneia Date: 31 Dec 00 - 12:38 AM I think y'all are forgetting that English has two parent tongues, the Germanic and the Latinate. Some of the words you have been calling prepositions are actually Germanic seperable prefixes. Examples: "on" in "Turn the light on." "Off" in "He's a show-off." And "up" in "put up with." These are not prepositions, they are adverbs that come late in the sentence. If I change "turn the light on" to "turn on the light" I invoke a vision of a tiny ballerina en pointe, spinning atop a light bulb. Is that what we want to see happening to our mother tongue? Logically speaking, a true preposition must precede its nous, because it's a "pre-position," a thing which goes in front. Those old scholars weren't so dumb.
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Haruo Date: 31 Dec 00 - 01:08 AM (leeniea) I think y'all are forgetting that English has two parent tongues, the Germanic and the Latinate. (Liland) I think it's safe to say the "Latinate", as you put it, is at best a domineering stepparent. (leeniea) Some of the words you have been calling prepositions are actually Germanic separable prefixes. Examples: "on" in "Turn the light on." "Off" in "He's a show-off." And "up" in "put up with." These are not prepositions, they are adverbs that come late in the sentence. (Liland) That's true, though I'm not sure they are "actually Germanic separable prefixes". "Are descended from" perhaps, but not "are." "Adverb" is a better term, though still an attempt to make modern English grammar conform to the categories of the grammar of some other, older tongue. (leeniea) If I change "turn the light on" to "turn on the light" I invoke a vision of a tiny ballerina en pointe, spinning atop a light bulb. Is that what we want to see happening to our mother tongue? (Liland) Actually, I rather like it. A vision of my mother tongue transformed into a tiny ballerina en pointe... It would certainly remove one of the barriers to the final victory of Esperanto. ;-) (leeniea) Logically speaking, a true preposition must precede its noun, because it's a "pre-position," a thing which goes in front. Those old scholars weren't so dumb. (Liland) True again, and there are many languages that have, instead, "postpositions" (nothing to do with equestrianism), which equally sensibly follow after the nouns they refer to. Often they are SOV languages (that's Subject-Object-Verb, not Single-Occupancy Vehicle), like Hindi and Japanese. Latin is basically SOV, too, but has more prepositions than post-. Though it does have some post-style items, like the "-cum" in "Pax vobiscum" as well as similarly postpositional conjunctions like the -qve in SPQR (SENATVS POPVLVSQVE ROMANVS). Incidentally, and quite tangentially, when I was learning Hindi (which is an Indo-European tongue, thus related to English) I found that its word order was so frequently identical to that of Japanese, that if I was trying to adlib a Hindi sentence and needed a vocabulary item I didn't know, I was apt to fill it with the Japanese word, rather than English or Esperanto or something, because in the sentence structure it just "felt right". And since my Hindi professor knew no Japanese it was a bit confusing at times (I wasn't always aware I'd done it....) Liland |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: Peter T. Date: 31 Dec 00 - 12:21 PM I used to have a Japanese neighbour, who was working on her linguistics Phd., and she used to ask me all these weird questions about prepositions in English, and I would have to make up rules. My favourite: she once asked me if she could "topple things." After a few seconds, I suggested that in English the only thing you could topple transitively was a throne. Everything else "toppled over (buildings, vases). If she hadn't asked, I would never have noticed. You could have toppled me with a vase when I realized it! yours, Peter T. |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 31 Dec 00 - 07:54 PM A pot of the confusion about prepositions is sorted out once you start thinking in terms of "phrasal verbs" - here is a tutorial about them (They never talked about them when I was at school either...) |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: katlaughing Date: 31 Dec 00 - 09:54 PM Kevin, you forgot to paste in the addy. If you put it in the next message, I can fix the one above to make it work and delete this message to you and your subsequent one, if you'd like, if it is just the addy. Thanks, kat aka -el joeclone - |
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Subject: RE: a little something for pedants and langu From: catspaw49 Date: 31 Dec 00 - 10:36 PM Right kat! Sure!!! And if you take cranberries and stew them like prunes, they taste much more like applesauce than rhubarb does............... Spaw (delete this one too) |
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