Author: Joe McVeigh

Direct object or prepositional object?

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This sentence is in the exercises for one of my grammar classes:

My wife always has a good cry over a wedding.

For the assignment, students need to analyze the syntactic elements of the sentence (subject, predicator, objects, etc.). The answer key has Subject(My wife) Adverbial(always) Predicator(has) Direct object(a good cry) Locative complement(over a wedding). But recently a student analyzed the last clause (over a wedding) as a prepositional object. This got me interested. It turns out the answer key is wrong (maybe you already knew that), but the student might be right. Here’s why.  Continue reading “Direct object or prepositional object?” →

Real OGs know how to spell than and then

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It’s spelled thn, homies. Or it at least it should be. Hear me out.

I know a lotta people hate when they see someone use than in a place which calls for then (and vice versa). There are even memes about it:

than then meme
Is this how you dank?

But the thing is, there wasn’t always a difference between than and then. “What the what?!” I hear you saying. The OED lays it out:

OED than

Ok, so people made the distinction a looong time ago. But still, it’s interesting to know that these words come from the same place. Maybe all those people on the internet (the ones that you think are a bunch of dinguses because they misuse than and then) are just keeping it OG.

And really, it’s only spelling that people are complaining about. Sure, they have different meanings (than is a conjunction and then is an adverb), but they sound the same when in spoken language. Complaining about spelling is pretty lame sauce. I mean, of all the things to complain about with language, spelling is waaay down the list. We should be complaining about how supposed grammar professionals don’t follow their own advice.

Speaking of spelling, these two words were almost spelled the same. The OED explains:

When the adverb was reduced to þen, from the 15th cent. spelt then, there was a strong tendency to spell the conjunction in the same way, which during the 16th cent. nearly triumphed; but in the 17th cent. the tide turned, and by 1700 or a little later the conjunction was differentiated from the adverb as than. As the latter was, and is, pronounced /ðən/, it is manifest that it might be written either then or than with equal approximation to the actual sound.

Now, aren’t you glad English doesn’t make a spelling distinction between the voiced and voiceless dental fricatives, ð and θ? (These are the different ways you say the th sound in the words than and thin) We all know the internet doesn’t need more reasons to complain.

What the heck is an action verb?

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Here’s an interesting post on transitive verbs by the website Grammar Bytes. The author, Prof. Robin L Simmons, says that:

A transitive verb has two characteristics. First, it is an action verb, expressing a doable activity like kick, want, paint, write, eat, clean, etc. Second, it must have a direct object, something or someone who receives the action of the verb.

That first characteristic is news to me, especially since five of those six verbs can also be intransitive (kick, paint, write, eat and clean). But let’s back up a second. A transitive verb is indeed a verb that requires an object. So want is a transitive verb because we can’t just say I want. We have to say I want (something).

But why does a transitive verb also have to be an “action verb”? Lose is a transitive verb in the sentence I lost my keys, but can we say that I’m doing something by losing my keys? Or that losing my keys is some “doable activity”? Another example is have in the sentence He has an inheritance. Not really something he’s done, no action undertaken by him, he just has that inheritance. Or how about I don’t have many clothes? The verb have doesn’t sound very action-packed in that sentence, but it’s still transitive. I’m starting to think that maybe “action verb” is not a very useful grammar term. Some more action-free transitive verbs (underlined):

Lord, it’s the same old tune, fiddle and guitar. Rhinestone suits and new shiny cars, it’s been the same way for years. We need a change.

This type of shit happens all the time. You got to get yours but, fool, I got to get mine.

I float like gravity, never had a cavity, got more rhymes than the Wayans’ got family.

If everybody had an ocean across the USA, then everybody’d be surfing like California.

Which hunting on Grammarly

Joe McVeigh1 Comment

It’s that time again! Time to see what’s going on in Crazy Grammar Town! Let’s visit our old friends, Grammarly. They have a post on relative clauses which is not bad, until they get to talking about that and which (yeah, I know this is more about style than grammar, just stay with me):

Confusion about when to use that and which has arisen for good reason: British and American English have different rules for them. In American English, that is used to introduce restrictive clauses, and which introduces nonrestrictive clauses.

The lamp, which was given to me by Aunt Betsy, is on the bedside table.

The lamp that Aunt Betsy gave me is on the bedside table.

In British English, it is often acceptable to substitute which in restrictive clauses.

The lamp which Aunt Betsy gave me is on the bedside table.

Of course, that could also be used acceptably in British English, which makes it safer, by default, to follow the American rule when in doubt. It also makes it easier to decide whether to insert commas, because if you follow the American rules, you can remember that commas should not precede that, but they should precede which.

Sounds easy, right? Sure… But you’re probably wondering if Grammarly, a company based in San Francisco, US of A, follows their own advice. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Of course, they don’t, silly.

In their post on nouns, there are four instances of the word which. How many of these appear in restrictive clauses – the kind of clause that Grammarly specifically states should be introduced by that? Let’s count them:

One…

Grammarly which 1

Two…

Grammarly which 2

Three…

Grammarly which 4

Four!

Grammarly which 3

That’s all four! Congratulations, Grammarly! You hit for the cycle! *Applause*

Why is Grammarly so bad at this? Grammarly can’t follow their own advice because either:

  1. They are an editing company that apparently can’t even edit their own writing
  2. Their claim about US English is a hot pile of garbage
  3. They prefer you’d do as they say and not as they do
  4. All of the above

I’ll take Door #4, Monty.

Read more about which hunting and the that/which distinction from Jonathon Owen here and Stan Carey here.

Every kind of language has rules

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Yes, even the ones that you don’t like. Here’s a quote from Spoken Soul by John Russell Rickford and Russell John Rickford (2000: 92). It’s perfect in expressing the point that all language varieties have rules:

Every human language studied to date – whether loved or hated, prestigious or not – has regularities or rules of this type [i.e. conventional and systematic ways of pronouncing, modifying, and combining words]. A moment’s reflection would show why this is so. Without regularities, a language variety could not be successfully acquired or used in everyday life, and this applies to Spoken Soul, or Ebonics, as much as to the “Received Pronunciation,” or “BBC English,” of the British upper crust. Characterizations of the former as careless or lazy, and of the latter as careful or refined, are subjective social and political evaluations that reflect prejudices and preconceptions about the people who usually speak each variety.

That is so good. The book that it appears in is about Black English (also called African American Vernacular English), so of course Rickford and Rickford had to address the (uninformed) idea that Black English is just “English without rules.” It’s not and it never was.

You don’t get to claim that some specific group(s) of people don’t have any rules to the way they speak. Because if you claim that, it will say more about your judgment of those people than it will about your assessment of their language. (Well, it will also say that you’re not very good at making assessments about language.)

Every language variety follows systematic rules. Every single one. Not some. Not most. All of them. They may not follow the same rules as each other, but they follow rules nonetheless.

#Themself all the way

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Oxford Dictionaries has a great blog post called “Is ‘themself’ a real word?” After showing that themself is indeed a really real word, they note that it’s still not quite acceptable in Standard English. I really wish it was though. It’s so perfect. Check out the post to see more!

https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/01/15/themself/

#TeamThemself

Grammarly also sucks at subjects

Joe McVeigh1 Comment

Hey, remember when I wrote about the YUNiversity and their crazy ideas on what a subject is? Remember how they said the subject of sentence is ALWAYS a noun? Well, they’re not the only ones in crazy grammar town. Grammarly also likes to play fast and loose with grammatical subjects. Check it:

Grammarly subjects

First off, not every sentence needs a subject. Most do, but not all. For example, imperative sentences do not have subjects because the subject is often implied:

Just do it.

Don’t worry, be happy.

Get to the choppaaaaaaaa!

What’s a little crazy is that Grammarly uses an imperative sentence as an example to show that nouns can act as objects. Do they think that Give is the subject of their example sentence? (Narrator’s voice: It’s not. The sentence doesn’t have a subject.)

Grammarly imperative object

Second, like I said in the YUNiversity post, the subject of a sentence in English is not always a noun. It often is, but not always. The following can act as the subject in English:

Dummy it – It’s hot.

Unstressed/existential there – There’s plenty of time.

Prepositional phrase – Up in the front will suit me fine.

Adverb phrase – Gently does it.

Adjective phrase – The comic told some funny jokes.

All types of clauses – That he failed his driving test surprised everybody.; What Grammarly wrote online shocked me.

And more!

The rest of the info on the Grammarly blog post is pretty good, so that’s nice. I don’t know if Grammarly is copying stuff off of YUNiversity or if it’s the other way around. But somebody is cheating off somebody.

Call them what they want

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There was an op-ed by Abigail Shrier in the Wall Street Journal (it’s paywalled, but no need to click, I’ve copied the relevant bits below) on August 29, 2018. It’s about what a terrible thing it is to make public employees use the preferred pronouns of the public individuals that they are serving. Basically, it’s about how people should be able to call others “he” or “she” even if the person that they are talking to prefers a different pronoun, such as “they”.

I only want to point out two problems with this person’s argument. First, the writer says:

Typically, in America, when groups disagree, we leave them to employ the vocabularies that reflect their values. My “affirmative action” is your “racial preferences.” One person’s “fetus” is another’s “baby boy.” This is as it should be; an entire worldview is packed into the word “fetus.” Another is contained in the reference to one person as “them” or “they.” For those with a religious conviction that sex is both biological and binary, God’s purposeful creation, denial of this involves sacrilege no less than bowing to idols in the town square. When the state compels such denial among religious people, it clobbers the Constitution’s guarantee of free exercise of religion, lending government power to a contemporary variant on forced conversion.

But that’s not how it works. If you work for the government and you want to use slurs to refer to people, too bad. You can’t do that. I’m sure Richard Spencer (the head racist du jour) or David Duke (your parents’ racist du jour) would argue that it is part of their “worldview” to call black and brown and gay people all the horrible things that they call them. But fuck that nonsense. We don’t let them use the words that they want. We shun them for it. And if they work for the government, we penalize them for it (yeah, I know, things are pretty bad right now, but if you’re arguing that the racists currently in the US government should be allowed to keep on being racist, then you’re wrong).

Second, the writer backs up a linguistic argument* by referencing Locke. Philip Locke, you ask? The linguist who wrote University Grammar: A University Course? Haha. No. John Locke, the [checks notes] philosopher from the [checks notes again] 17th century. I wonder if anything has changed in linguistics since then. Guess not!

Here’s what it boils down to: you don’t get to call anyone anything you want without any repercussions. Sorry! (not sorry) Can’t bring yourself to use a person’s preferred pronoun because of your bigoted worldview? Change your worldview. Or just call them by their name FFS. This isn’t that difficult and you don’t need to write an op-ed about it, Abigail.

Ok, one final point. The writer says:

In most contexts, I would have no problem addressing others in any manner they chose.

That sounds an awful lot like “I’m not a racist, but…”

 

*Sure, the argument is about culture and worldviews and society – but wrapped up in all of that is language. And the article is specifically about words.

Word Fails Me #8: You’re welcoming

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Word wants me to write you’re welcoming to have a look. I mean, Word is sort of right here. If welcome was a verb, then it wouldn’t work in its plain form in the spot right after you’re. But it’s not a verb. Because no verb in any form would work in that spot. :/

MSWord - youre welcoming

This is an entry in a series of posts I’m calling Word Fails Me, in which I highlight the strange ideas that Microsoft Word has about English grammar. Each post will be a screenshot with a short comment. The intention of this series is to amuse you and make you wonder where Word is getting its ideas. I’m not trying to be condescending to Word’s grammar checker or the people behind it. Word is a fascinating program and the grammar checker can be a lifesaver, even if it leans prescriptivist sometimes. If I come across interesting research into MS Word’s grammar checker, I’ll share it here. You can find all of the entries under the Word Fails Me tag. Enjoy!