Beautiful English Online

Nuns fret. Not.

In 1806, when William Wordsworth composed his sonnet, "Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room," it was perfectly acceptable to say "nuns fret not," but not anymore. Now we would be obliged to say, "Nuns do not fret at their convent's narrow room." This is because, in order to transform a positive, declarative sentence into a negative, interrogative, or emphatic form, we need to insert a "do" when there is no other auxiliary to signal the tense.

The linguistic process at work is called "analogy." We want rules to apply across the board, and when they don't, we often try to change them. Most verb forms have auxiliaries. For example, we can easily transform "Nuns are fretting" to "Nuns are not fretting" without introducing a "stand-in." There are only two verb forms that have no other auxiliary and therefore need "do," the simple present and the simple past, as in "fret" or "fretted." Because we wanted these forms to match up with the others, we began to use "do" as a substitute for the "missing" auxiliary. 

There is only one modern way of saying "Nuns fret not."

Pied Piping

There is a phenomenon in linguistics called "pied-piping," but to understand how it works, you first have to understand "wh-movement."

Wh-movement is a basic characteristic of the English language (and many other languages as well). Words beginning with wh, such as what, why, when, where, and which, are generally  "pulled to the front" of a phrase or clause when they stand in place of another word in a different kind of formation. For instance, we would say "He wants it," but if we turn this into a question, the "it" becomes a "what" and moves to the front: "What does he want?" We would say, "I love him," but the "him" becomes "whom" and moves to the front of its clause in the formation "This is the man whom I love."

Pied-piping occurs when the wh-word brings another word or phrase along with it. For instance, in "This is the man to whom I owe my life," the word "to" has been dragged up front with "whom." In this case, the pied-piping is optional. You could also say, "This is the man whom [or who] I owe my life to," but that involves ending a sentence with a preposition and many people prefer not to do this for stylistic reasons. Pied-piping is always necessary in the left-branch condition -- which is way too complicated to explain, but can be illustrated with the transformation from "I like this book" to "Which book do you like?" Book has to go with which . . . no matter what. No one would say "Which do you like book?

What's your grammar IQ?

Your Language Arts Grade: 100%

 

Way to go!  You know not to trust the MS Grammar Check and you know "no" from "know."  Now, go forth and spread the good word (or at least, the proper use of apostrophes).

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Via Miss Cellania

Later in the day, I'll post the correct answers.

"The Story of Yo"

Dennis Baron tells the "story of yo," a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun generated in the Baltimore school system. My pick for such a pronoun is naturally more retro. I like the story of the generic pronoun a, as chronicled in the OED:

1. He.

1250 LAYAMON . . . .  I. 59 at a lond a verde sechinge ware he mihte wonie [1205 he ferde sechinde]. . . .  1604 SHAKES. Ham. III. iii. 74 Now might I doe it, but now a is a praying, And now Ile doo't, and so a goes to heauen. . . .

    2. She.

1205 LAYAMON III. 127 Ne beo ich nauere blie, a wile a [the queen] beo aliue. . . .

    3. It (for he).

1387 TREVISA (in Morris Specim. 334) Yn is ylond growe a ston at hatte gagates; ef me axe hys feyrnessea ys blak as gemmes bu..a brenne yn water & quenche in oyle..if a ys yfroted & yhat, a holde what hym neyhe; ef me axe hys goodnes, hyt heele e dropesy & hyt be ydrongke . . . .

They.

1205 LAYAMON I. 149 Ouer se a icomen; hauene sone a nomen [1250 Ouer see hii comen, and hauene hi nomen]. . . . 

    ¶A still retains all these meanings, and especially that of he, in southern and western dialects, where it appears as (, (r)). . . .

1864 TENNYSON North. Farmer But Parson a comes an' a goos, an' a says it eäsy an' freeä. Ibid. Doctors, they knaws nowt, for a says what's nawways true: Naw soort o' koind o' use to saäy the things that a do.

Singular "They"

The generally accepted rule is that a pronoun must agree with the word it refers to (the antecedent). In the case of an "either . . . or" phrase, agreement is determined by the word closest to the pronoun. For example, "Either John or Mark is right in his opinion." However, this solution occasionally sounds awkward when the gender or the number of the options doesn't match up, as in "Either the prince or the princess would like to visit her friend" or "Either the dogs or the cat turned over the garbage can in a search for its food." In this case, it is usually considered acceptable to use "they" to avoid confusion, although some strict grammarians (known as "prescriptivists") are very much opposed to this solution.

Mark Liberman at Language Log has found an excellent example of "they" being used to refer to an "either . . . or" antecedent in which both options are singular. It comes from the King James Bible, so Liberman argues (humorously) that the use of the singular "they" to avoid awkwardness could well be seen as "verbally and plenarily inspired of God" *:

Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die. Deuteronomy 17:5

*Some Christian denominations believe that the King James Bible is the only English translation of the Bible to have been inspired in this way.

Can you fix this with commas?

Marco found this sentence online and wondered if there was any way to fix it:

There's a part about Mr.Vitters saying that God, and his wife, Wendy had forgiven him . . . .

What do you think? First, do you see what the problem is? And second, can you fix it with commas? If not, what would you do?

P.S. I wrote, "If there was . . . ." Was I correct or should I have written "If there were"?

Whether or whether or not

Style mavens are often a little too quick to condemn the "or not" in the phrase "whether or not" because they claim that it is redundant. But that is only sometimes the case, and even when the phrase is redundant there may be a good stylistic reason for using it. The English language often uses what appears to be a logical redundancy as an intensifier. In choosing between "whether" and "whether or not,"
you may decide to put more emphasis on the positive option and use "whether" by itself, but you may also decide to put an equal emphasis on the negative option and use "whether or not."

When you have no preferred emphasis, you can use your discretion -- up to a point. You can safely omit "or not" when the phrase is acting as a noun, either subject or object. But sometimes the "or not" is absolutely required. You must retain the "or not" when it appears in an adverbial phrase.

Here's a case when the phrase acts as a noun (the object of the verb "care"):

I don't care whether he likes it.
I don't care whether or not he likes it.

Either option is correct, although the "or not" phrase puts a stronger  emphasis on the negative option.

Here's a case when the phrase acts adverbially:

We are going whether or not he agrees to come along.

I think you'll agree that the alternative makes no sense:

We are going whether he agrees to come along.

Can you spot the error(s)?

Image from Cool Business Ideas, which is not responsible for the grammar.

Dorkafork and Ann were both right. The problem is with "or touches you." As Dorkafork suggests, the best way to see where the sentence has gone wrong is to read it with each "touch" clause separately:

"Everything you touch matters" makes sense.
"Everything touches you matters" is extremely ambiguous to say  the least.

Simple explanation: When you put a subject and a verb together, people are going to read them as subject and predicate.

Less simple explanation: When a relative clause splits the subject and predicate of the main clause, it cannot begin with a verb, because the noun-verb pairing signals the beginning of a false predicate. Without the "that" to show that a descriptive clause is beginning, the subject is paired with the wrong verb -- in this case, "everything" is paired with "touches" rather than "matters" and the sense becomes jumbled.

Case: A Grammar Lesson from the Bible

Does this passage make you uncomfortable -- not morally but grammatically? Do you have the sneaking urge to change "him" to "he"?

Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

I'll be the first to admit it -- "him who" sounds funny to me. Yet if we remove the relative clause (who is without sin) in the middle of the sentence, look what happens:

Let him cast the first stone.

Here it seems so obvious. You would never say "Let he cast the first stone"; but when we place the who next to the him, we feel awkward. That is because who and him are in different cases, and we want them to match up. The reason they don't match up is that they serve different functions in the sentence: him is an object, so it is in the objective case; who is a subject, the subject of is, so it is in the nominative case.

Like Latin, English used to have a system of cases for nouns and pronouns. That is, the noun or pronoun took a different form depending on its function in the sentence. In Latin, for example, homo, meaning man, is in the nominative case to show that the word is the subject of a verb; hominem, also meaning man, is in the accusative case to show that the word is the object of a verb; and hominum is in the genitive plural case to show that the word is a plural possessive. There were more cases in Latin and in Old English, but you don't need to know them to understand how case works in modern English. If you would like to read more about the evolution of English, George Boeree's site is an excellent resource.

English now uses case to distinguish singular, plural, and possessive nouns, but other noun cases have faded away; however, we still use a full array of case markers in pronouns:

For singular subjects: nominative singular  I, you, he, she, it, who
For singular objects: objective singular me, you, him, her, it, whom
For singular possessives: genitive singular mine, yours, his, hers, its, whose

For plural subjects: nominative plural  we, you, they, who
For plural objects: objective plural us, you, them, whom
For plural possessives: genitive plural ours, yours, theirs, whose

It is important to remember to give pronouns the case that defines their function in their own clause. In the clause who is without sin, who is the subject, so it takes the nominative case. The easiest way to tell in the case of who and whom is by substituting he or him. You would never say, him is without sin, so you can't say whom is without sin. In this instance, who relates back to an object, him, but within its own clause it is a subject.

Relative pronouns always take the case that reflects their function in their own clause, not the function of the word they refer to (the antecedent) in another clause.

Memorize FANBOYS

Seven simple words -- for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so -- are the only words you can combine with a comma to separate independent clauses. It is much easier to remember these words than it is to remember all the other words you might mistakenly use instead (like however, although, though, nonetheless, etc.).

These seven simple words are called coordinating conjunctions because they join elements of equal importance. They can join words to words, phrases to phrases, and clauses to clauses. They can also act as transitional words between sentences.

One way to remember the coordinating conjunctions is by memorizing FANBOYS, which stands for the first letter of each conjunction: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so.

I learned them in this order: and, or, nor, for, but, yet, so. This is also an easy method because of the repeating sound patterns.

Whichever way you choose to memorize them, I strongly urge that you make the effort. In the long run, it will save you considerable time and confusion.