Language Log

In the spirit of Geoff Pullum's lyrical prescriptive poppycock offering, I can offer some Raymond Chandler in verse and letter. And this being Language Log, I will follow it with a light dessert of cheap science. Here's a small sample of Chandler's 1947 poem Lines to a Lady With an Unsplit Infinitive for your edification:

There ain't no grammar that equals a hammer
To nail down a cut-rate wit.

And the verb 'to be' as employed by me
Is often and lightly split.

A lot of my style (so-called) is vile
For I learned to write in a bar.

The marriage of thought to words was wrought
With many a strong sidecar.

In 1917, The Nation's book reviewer objected to "the inexcusable irregularity of the style" in Helen Marie Bennett's Women and work: the economic value of college training, listing a number of specific "blunders" as evidence. One of these "blunders" can be found in the following passage:

College girls may not realize why it is that many of them are so anxious to secure at once a position that will "pay a good salary" without taking further training. Their brothers do not expect it, for they are choosing their profession, because it is the one of all others which they desire and because they expect to follow it all their lives. But because the girl expects to marry, she does not choose her occupation with the care which a man bestows upon his. Unless she is a genius or has within her an intensely strong urge towards some form of self-expression, she lapses into the easy choice by means of which she can lope along until her wedding day. She does not phrase it thus ignobly; but such is the status of her choice.

Can you identify the problem?

Helen Sword, "Zombie Nouns", The New York Times 7/23/2012:

Take an adjective (implacable) or a verb (calibrate) or even another noun (crony) and add a suffix like ity, tion or ism. You’ve created a new noun: implacability, calibration, cronyism. Sounds impressive, right?

Nouns formed from other parts of speech are called nominalizations. Academics love them; so do lawyers, bureaucrats and business writers. I call them “zombie nouns” because they cannibalize active verbs, suck the lifeblood from adjectives and substitute abstract entities for human beings.

Indeed, strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto an approved part-of-speech mixture. Having learned from Strunk & White to "write with nouns and verbs, not adjectives and adverbs", the apprentice writer is now confronted with a new dogma damning many nouns, along with a reminder that only "active verbs" are free of sinful taint.

… at least about the use of  "summative that" in certain contexts. Thus one of Paul Brians' Common Errors in English Usage is "Vague Reference":

Vague reference is a common problem in sentences where “this,” “it,” “which” or other such words don’t refer back to any one specific word or phrase, but a whole situation.

Arnold Zwicky calls these things "summatives" ("Why are some summatives labeled 'vague'?", 5/21/2008), and I've been publicly skeptical of blanket prohibitions against their use, since it's often clear in context what the referent is meant to be, and excellent writers from the authors of the King James Bible to Bertrand Russell have been fond of them ("Poor pitiful which", 5/23/2008;  "Clarity, choice, and evidence", 5/23/2008).

But a recent political development has led me to re-evaluate my position.

The Queen's English Society (QES), mentioned only a couple of times here on Language Log over the past few years, is no more. It has ceased to be. On the last day of this month they will ring down the curtain and it will join the choir invisible. It will be an ex-society. Said Rhea Williams, chairman of QES, in a letter to the membership of which I have seen a facsimile copy:

At yesterday's SGM there were 22 people present, including the 10 members of your committee. Three members had sent their apologies. Not a very good showing out of a membership of 560 plus!

Time was spent discussing what to do about QES given the forthcoming resignations of so many committee members. Despite the sending out of a request for nominations for chairman, vice-chairman, administrator, web master, and membership secretary no one came forward to fill any role. So I have to inform you that QES will no longer exist. There will be one more Quest then all activity will cease and the society will be wound up. The effective date will be 30th June 2012

(Quest is the society's magazine.) Is this a sad day for defenders of English? Not in my view. I don't think it was a serious enterprise at all. I don't think the members cared about what they said they cared about. And I will present linguistic evidence for this thesis.

We've had some discussion lately about the sports subjunctive/baseball conditional/bare paratactic conditional. I'm going to stay out of any naming controversies, but I do want to pick up on the fact that this construction typically involves using a present tense verb form to describe a future event. Like this:

We've also been discussing Keith Chen's controversial proposal that the grammatical marking of future tense leads to unwise spending and eating habits—allegedly, these behaviors are curtailed when the same form is used for both present and future time, since people are encouraged to perceive a stronger continuity between their present and future interests. (Commentary on the subject has been offered by Geoff Pullum, Mark Liberman and myself.)

It only seems right, then, to point out to proponents of Chen's hypothesis that perhaps they should consider that the construction in question offers some excellent potential for persuasive applications. You want to cut the deficit, you know how to address your colleagues in Congress. You want your patients to stop smoking, you avoid the future tense. You want to cut back on your credit card debt, you walk around talking like this all day.

The Prologue of Martin Dugard and Bill O'Reilly's new book (Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever) begins like this:

The man with six weeks to live is anxious.

He furls his brow, as he does countless times each day, and walks out of the Capitol Building, which is nearing completion. He is exhausted, almost numb.

Yesterday in the New York Times, Dwight Garner took on two revisions of classic books of advice (by Dale Carnegie and Emily Post) — updated for the digital age. "Classic Advice: Please, Leave Well Enough Alone" starts by placing the Carnegie book in its cultural context:

Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” which turns 75 this year, has sold more than 30 million copies and continues to be a best seller. The book, a paean to integrity, good humor and warmth in the name of amicable capitalism, is as wholesome as a Norman Rockwell painting. It exists alongside Dr. Spock’s child-rearing guide, Strunk and White’s volume on literary style and Fannie Farmer’s cookbook as a classic expression of the American impulse toward self-improvement and reinvention.

Yes, Strunk & White, which comes up here with some regularity, and not in a good way.

Housepets for 9/23/2011:

(Click on the image for a larger version.)

Reader KR asks:

How can I prove to an acquaintance that the word "truck" in English is standardly pronounced with an intial "ch" sound?

KR presupposes a conclusion that's a bit over-simplified. There's some variation here, and I don't think we have very good evidence about the distribution and relative frequency of the variants. But he's basically right: the initial consonant of "truck" in American English is often (usually?) palatal or at least post-alveolar rather than alveolar, and its release is often (usually?) strongly affricated.  And in some pronunciations at least, the /t/ and the /r/ are completely co-articulated as a sort of labialized retroflex affricate.

I got a message from a former teacher who said her friend had sent her my article about Strunk and White and it had stimulated her to ask me the following question:

For 31 years, this is the rule I taught to all of my elementary school students: do not put a comma before "because." Since I noticed that you did so at least twice in your article, I am wondering if I taught the students incorrectly (I hope not) or rather if Scots follow another rule (I hope so). I'd really like to know.

Oh, dear. The problem was not how to answer the question; the problem was how to do so kindly and gently. I did not do well enough

A web page about songs referring to God, pointed out to me by James Kabala, makes a critical remark about the grammar or style of one of the song titles:

11. New Order – 'Touched by the Hand of God'
Though it's guilty of one of the most heinous journalistic crimes – that of 'passive voice' (it should technically be "Touched by God's Hand," although it wouldn't be nearly as catchy) – this song is one of New Order's finest.

I have been collecting boneheaded usage advice on passives for a long time, but I am truly staggered at this one. The writer thinks touched by the hand of God is a passive clause, and is correct about that, but also thinks that "technically" it should be changed to touched by God's hand, which is not!

Yesterday's SAT "question of the day":