Friday, June 20, 2003

Get Off My Case!

Something we don't talk about much when we're discussing grammar over cappuccino alfredo (whoever he is) is the subject of case. Case refers to the relationship of a noun or a pronoun to the other words in a sentence. Sound a bit too much like Transactional Analysis? Nahhhh--let's take a look.

The boy hit the ball.. Boy is the subject of the sentence, because he's the one doing the action, i.e., hitting, right? Ball is the direct object, because it's the hittee. Whether a noun is the hitter or the hittee is all we're talking about when we refer to case, at least in this simple sentence.

As English speakers (more or less), we know who's doing the hitting because of the placement of the nouns in the sentence. Boy comes first, then the verb (you do know that "hit" is a verb, don't you?), then ball. If I wrote, The ball hit the boy, the whole sentence changes meaning--instead of the boy smacking a homer, he's being carted off to the emergency room. But what if we wanted to create a language where it didn't matter where the nouns were placed in the sentence?

Let's play a game. Let's say that, when we want a noun to be the subject of a sentence, we add "-us" to the end. When we want a noun to be the direct object, we'll add "-um". Check it out:

The boyus hit the ballum.
The ballum hit the boyus.


Hey, those two sentences are saying the same thing! Under our funny little rule, the placement of the nouns doesn't matter anymore. From the endings, we know who's doing the hitting, and what's getting hit. But wouldn't that be a goofy way to talk?

Wellsir and ma'am, that's just the way those ancient Romans did it. Latin uses endings like "-us" and "-um" to designate case. And speaking of dead languages, Old English did the same thing.

See, when those Anglo-Saxons stepped off the boat onto the British Isles, they brought a language that added endings to their nouns, so they wouldn't get confused about whether Beowulf was hitting Grendel, or vice versa. We call that language "Old English" (We refrain from calling it "Ye Olde Englishe," lest we welcome accusations of acute dippiness).

So what? So didn't you ever wonder where the heck those endings went? After all, we don't use 'em anymore. Where'd they go? Here's one theory:

The Angles and the Saxons (and the Jutes, too!) got off the boat in what would later be called England (from Angle-land, don'tcha know. Hmmm, the Saxons got short-changed--too bad it didn't become Sexland), and beat up the Celts that were already there, and drank mead and pillaged and whatever the hell you do when there's no baseball. They did that for a couple hundred years, and then another wave of Norsemen floated in, speaking the same language--almost.

Language evolves, as long as it's "living." Read something written two hundred years ago, and you'll notice lots of differences, even though the invention of the printing press has slowed things down quite a bit. But imagine what it was like with a bunch of barbaric, illiterate mead-swillers! (God, help me stay away from Republican jokes) Changes would occur much more rapidly, because there was nothing to standardize the language.

Anyway, the "old" Old English had changed so slowly that it was imperceptible to the generations of speakers who spaekethed it. And the "new" Old English that the new wave of Norsemen brought in had changed, too, from the original language that had been in existence when that first crew of Anglo-Saxons left town. And the endings of the nouns--the things that let everyone know who was doing what to which--had changed the most. The forms of the cases had changed.

So what's a smelly bunch of barbarians to do? The two different versions of the same language sounded a lot alike. They could understand each other--almost. But not quite. When that happens, a process called creolization occurs (no, they didn't start making gumbo), whereby the languages converge into a new language. That "new" language is what we call Middle English. As the old Norsemen and the new Norsemen assimilated, they began to drop the endings that were causing so much confusion.

But how did they know who was hitting whom anymore? You're right--they started placing subjects and direct objects in their sentences so they'd be able to discern hitter from hittee.

Anyway, that's the story as told to me by my linguistics professor about a hundred years ago. I understood what he was saying--almost.

Monday, May 19, 2003

Plurals and Back-Formation

Did you know that pease is the singular form of the plural peas? You didn't? That's because it isn't, although it was, once upon a time, although there wasn't a plural back then...oh, heck, as the advertising world would say, "Let me explain."

Pease was once singular. Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, blahblahblah. In the English language, the use of "s" added to the end of a word to make a plural is so pervasive that people heard the word pease and thought it referred to more than one pea! In fact, there was no such word as pea, until the "s" sound was dropped. Then, of course, to talk about more than one pea, we had to add an "s" and make peas the plural, when logically, it should have been peases.

So much for logic. The process I've just described is called back-formation. It occurs when the ending of a word is mistaken for a suffix (the "s" sound in pease was dropped when most of the English-speaking population was illiterate, so they never saw how it was spelled) and dropped, frequently to make a new word. For instance, one may burgle a house, only because people who used the word burglar thought it meant "one who burgles". Which it does...now, anyway.

See the difference? We add a suffix (-er, -ar, -s) to a word to make a plural, indicate the person doing the action, etc. When we mistake an ending for a suffix, we take it away and inadvertently make a new word! We who are language purists frown on that, naturally, until you insufferable laypeople stuff the new word down our throats, at which point we nod judiciously and say, "Ah ha! Back-formation!" Like it was our idea all along.

Speaking of which, I'd like to add a post-mortem to the singular nature of the words kudos and gyros. Both come from Greek, and both are singular. Until the day I die, kudo and gyro are going to sound goofy to me. And I ain't even Greek.

Thursday, May 08, 2003

I Beg Your Question?

Herbert: Government must ensure that every schoolchild, no matter how impoverished, gets a hot meal for lunch at the school cafeteria.

Alfred: That begs the question, should government be responsible for the dietary needs of every citizen?

Curmudgeonly Writer: Uh, Alfred (*tap*tap*tap*)....b-z-z-z-z-z-z! Wron-g-g-g-g-g-g!

Begging the question does not mean "suggest the question". When Herbert said what he said, Alfred decided to demonstrate his highbrow literacy, and, instead, earned himself the dunce cap for the day.

No, begging the question is a form of faulty logic in an argument. When you reach a conclusion that is based on premises that presume the conclusion is true, you've begged the question. One of the most widely used examples of begging the question is the "Master Designer" argument for the existence of God (please, theists, no rotten tomatoes--I'm just talking logic here, not theology).

The "Master Designer" argument goes like this: (1) The universe is an orderly place. For example, the earth is just close enough to the sun to warm our planet and enable life forms to exist, yet not too close to burn us up. Some animals eat plants, other animals eat animals, and it all eventually goes back into the ground as plant food. (2) Nothing so orderly is imaginable without the existence of a creator, which we call God. (3) Therefore, God must exist.

So we have two premises (statements #1 and #2) and one conclusion (statement #3). But take a look at #2. It's already assumed the existence of God, right? So it's not a premise, it's a conclusion, right? Right. That's called begging the question, also known as circular reasoning.

Now let's go back to Herbert. There's nothing wrong with arguing in favor of using government resources (i.e., tax dollars) to provide for needy children. In fact, doing so will probably get my vote, because, curmudgeonly or not, I'm a card-carrying Bleeding Heart Liberal. But if Herbert had said: (1) There are children who go through the schoolday without a nourishing meal at lunch; (2) one of the roles of government is to help children whose families are too poor (or stupid, or lazy) to give their kids a proper diet; therefore, (3) we must install government programs that fund hot meals in every school in the country, then Herbert just begged the gol-darned question, because #2 assumes that government programs that fund hot meal programs (#3) is one of the roles of government (#2). Which is sort of what Alfred was getting at, albeit half-assedly.

Recognizing question-begging may help you the next time an elected official says something that sounds right, yet leaves you scratching your head, wondering, "what the hell did I just miss?"

By the way, the premise-premise-conclusion method of logical argument, when correctly done, is called a syllogism, not to be confused with the psylocybin that Alfred took.

Thursday, April 24, 2003

Implied Inferences

If I said, "When Ross wiggles his ears, a stiff breeze seems to come up," and you said, "Are you inferring that Ross has big ears?", would it hurt if I laughed in your face?

No, dear reader, I wouldn't (a) laugh in your face, nor (b) use the word infer when I mean imply.

When I imply something, I suggest it without actually stating it, a la joking about Ross's wiggled ears and the stiff breezes that follow. When you hear me make such a heartless yet accurate remark (apologies to all the small-eared Rosses out there, who aren't reading this blog anyway, so, on second thought, who cares?), and you believe that what I've said means that Ross has big ears, you infer the big-earedness of Ross. Synonyms for infer are deduce and conclude, but not imply.

In other words, if I make Statement A and it suggests Fact B, I'm implying Fact B. If you hear me make Statement A and it sounds suspiciously like I'm making a case for Fact B, you're inferring Fact B.

Yes, there are those who say that infer has become so widely used as a synonym for imply that we must accede to the advances of such rampant Philistinism. To that I say, why get rid of a perfectly good and useful distinction between imply and infer when it serves us so well? Why? Why? Because there's television? Because elected officials speak to us as if we were third graders? Because we like being dumb?

If I took that last sentence out of the preceding paragraph, could you have inferred my meaning from the two sentences that it followed?

Monday, April 21, 2003

Whom Do You Trust?

Back in the days of yore, and even before yore, there was a game show hosted by a young upstart named Johnny Carson. Johnny went on to The Tonight Show immortality and, fortunately, left behind a phrase that drove English teachers crazy. The name of the game show was Who Do You Trust, and the use of "who" in that sentence is wro-o-o-o-o-o-o-ng! Let's talk about why that's so, shall we?

Who is used as the subject of a sentence. The subject of a sentence, as we all know, is the noun or pronoun that performs whatever action takes place. Who cut the cheese? <--- That's correct, because cut is the verb, and who is doing the cutting. Okay, this is starting to sound like an Abbott & Costello routine with flatulence, so let's move on.

Whom is used as the direct object of a sentence. The direct object of a sentence is also a noun or pronoun, but it is the object on which, or to which, the action is being directed. In our malodorous example above, cheese is the direct object, because, if we note that the verb is cut, we may ask, "what or who is being cut?" And the answer, of course, is the cheese.

Whew! Let's stop all the cheese cutting and talk about the reasons why, in The Curmudgeonly Writer's completely biased opinion, who and whom get mixed up.

Who and whom are usually involved in a sentence that's in the form of a question, right? We don't write, "whom do you trust." (i.e., with a period). We write, "whom do you trust?" Right? And, as we are all subliminally aware, a question usually inverts the order in which the subject and direct object appear in the sentence.

What's the action taking place, i.e., the verb? Trust. And who or what is doing the trusting? You. Hey, you must be the subject of the sentence! Put as a declarative statement, the sentence reads, You (do) trust whom. (We stick those "dids" and "dos" in questions, and take them out in declarations, 'cause we're English speakers and we like to unnecessarily complicate things, y'know? But I digress, parenthetically). Soooo, whom is the direct object, because it's the person, place, or thing that's being trusted.

Whom is also used as the object of a preposition (do you see a pattern? Whom...object...whom...object...ohhhmmmm). The classic Hemingway title, For Whom the Bell Tolls (taken from a classic Donne poem, of course, but you knew that, didn't you?) illustrates the use of a preposition (for) and the object of the preposition (whom). If Ernest had called his book For Who the Bell Tolls, one might have wished he'd wielded his shotgun much earlier in life, mightn't one?

If you end a sentence with a preposition (a naughty no-no among purists, but we'll let our hair down just this once), you can get all screwed up with who and whom, because you separate the preposition from its object, and you might be tempted to say, for example, Who did you give the book to?

Which would be--you guessed it---wro-o-o-o-o-o-ng!

Because to is the preposition, and its object should be whom, not who: To whom did you give the book? Or, Whom did you give the book to?

I'll complicate things just a bit further, and then leave you alone. The verbs is, are, was, and were aren't action verbs. I usually call them "verbs of being," because that's what my fourth grade teacher called them, but who cares? The point is this:

Verbs of being don't take direct objects!

Ack! So in the sentence, Herbert is my teacher, what's the word teacher doing? It's describing or renaming Herbert. The five dollar name for the word teacher in that sentence is predicate nominative. That just means that Herbert and teacher refer to the same person (or place, or thing, as the case may be). So if you mumbled, "Herbert is mfpmffmmfmm," I would correctly ask, "Herbert is who?" If I asked, "Herbert is whom?," you could justifiably put on a wry grin and chide me gently for using whom incorrectly, or you could reveal your true colors and say, "You blithering idiot! Don't you know anything? Whom isn't a predicate nominative, it's a direct object or the object of a preposition!"

Trust me.

Friday, April 04, 2003

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

We've all recited that prayer a time or three, haven't we? Especially when we were kiddos. Too bad we didn't pray for understanding about the difference between lay and lie!

The sentence, now I lay me down to sleep is grammatically correct. So is the sentence, now I lie down to sleep. Notice the difference, other than the fact that one sounds more poetic than the other?

Lay needs a direct object. In the classic child's prayer, the direct object is me. You have to lay something or someone (okay, let's all get our prurient snickering out of the way right now!). If you were to say, now I lay down to sleep, you'd be wro-o-o-o-o-o-ng-g-g-g!

Now I lie down to sleep, as I said, is correct. Lie doesn't take a direct object (a direct object is a noun or a pronoun, and down is an adverb telling us where we're going to lie, isn't it?). I wouldn't lie me down to sleep, now would I?

Well, no, I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to embarass myself.

The same rule applies for sit and set. I sit down is correct. I set down is not. On the other hand, I set the cup down is correct, because I'm setting something down (the cup! the cup!).

By the way, lie, sit, and set are irregular verbs. We call them that, not to give them an inferiority complex, as they so richly deserve, but because they don't follow the usual rule when we use them in the past tense: we don't add a "d" or "ed" at the end of them, as we do with most verbs. So the past tense of sit is sat, not sitted. And the past tense of lie is...lay. Yesterday, I lay down to sleep is correct, because it's the past tense of lie, not the present tense of lay. Maddening, huh? That's part of the beauty of the English language---breathtakingly complex and a royal pain in the patoot.

Tuesday, April 01, 2003

In a Subjunctive Mood

What's subjunctive? What's mood, grammatically speaking? And why isn't there a suprajunctive mood?

I don't know the answer to that last question, but if you do, gitcher own blog!

Mood is a property of verbs. The verbs we use most often are in the indicative mood, i.e., they state a fact (in the mind of the speaker, anyway): I went for a walk. She is the teacher. The italicized verbs in those sentences indicate that I went for a walk and she is the teacher. But what if I hadn't, and she wasn't, but we'd like to think about the possibilities?

If she was the teacher, I'd study harder. bz-z-z-z-z! Wrong-g-g-g-g!

The word if tells us that we're about to hear something that's contrary to an actual fact. Obviously, she isn't the teacher, right? So we can't use the indicative mood, because we're not talking about facts, right? So....

If she were the teacher, I'd study harder. <-----exactamundo!
Were is in the subjunctive mood. Ordinarily, we think of "were" as a past tense form of the infinitive "to be", but obviously, that isn't the case here, because the word if tells us that we're not dealing with reality (and for some of us, this is an ongoing problem). When we're not dealing with reality, but a possibility, we need a subjunctive form of the verb. Unfortunately, the Official Verb Makers ran out of ideas, so were functions either as past tense or as subjunctive mood, depending on which task it's performing.

Hey, are you still reading this?

On the other hand, we're fortunate that our Verb Makers didn't get too fancy-schmancy with the subjunctive, so were is the Official Subjunctive Mood Verb For All Occasions: I were, you were, he were, we were, they were. You can use it as a "to be" verb, or as part of a verb phrase (no, I won't get into that now): If I were walking, I'd be out of breath.

The subjunctive comes into play when we wish something, too: I wish I were a fish (and if you remember The Incredible Mr. Limpett, my condolences---so do I).