Once again the Guardian writes about the English language. What we have here is some great distance from its disastrous test of English competence and a world away from that of the egregious Nevile Gwynne. Indeed, as an editor at the London Review of Books Thomas Jones is a man after my own heart when he says:
… it’s still the case that some ways of writing are clearer and more elegant than others, and some of the shibboleths are worth following for the sake of clarity, elegance and consistency. They’re conventions not rules, however, and different conventions apply to different kinds of discourse: constructions that are unacceptable in so-called Standard English and wouldn’t find their way into the LRB or the Guardian – a reinforcing double negative, say – are more than fine in other registers (e.g. “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more”).
Nevertheless, there are some points in his article that need expanding and some where he seems to have half-remembered things that he has been told but has not explored in depth.
1. Dangling (or unattached) participle
Jones says:
Dangling participles are best avoided because they can change the meaning of a sentence. And while it’s true that most readers will be able to understand what you’re getting at, it’s still worth saying what you mean.
I fully agree. Surely there can be no argument at all in favour of unattached participles.
2. That/which
Jones says:
“Which is appropriate to non-defining and that to defining clauses,” HW Fowler wrote in his Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) [using defining where we now say restrictive. PH]. “The dog that ran in front of my bike had floppy ears.” “The dog, which had floppy ears, ran in front of my bike.” It’s often a fine distinction, and was very possibly invented by Fowler, but it can nonetheless be useful.
Up to a point Lord Copper. The precise quotation from Fowler in which)(that)(who, 2 [Fowler’s own eccentric use of brackets] is
Let it be stated broadly, before coming to particular dangers that: (A) of which and that, which is appropriate to non-defining and that to defining clauses.
The “particular danger” that he goes on to warn against is illustrated immediately after this by the use of a nonrestrictive clause with which where a defining clause with that is intended.
Fowler’s view is that the distinction that he makes is ideal. Under that, rel., however, he states his usual more tolerant view.
What grammarians may say should be has perhaps less influence on what shall be than even the more modest of them realize; usage evolves itself little disturbed by their likes and dislikes. And yet the temptation to show how better use might have been made of the material to hand is sometimes irresistible. The English relatives, more particularly as used by English rather than American writers, offers such a temptation. The relations between that, who and which, have come to us from our forefathers as an odd jumble, and plainly show that the language has not been neatly constructed by a master-builder who could create each part of it to do the exact work required of it, neither overlapped or overlapping; far from that, its parts have had to grow as they could.
He then goes on to discuss the use of who and that for people and things and the problems with the genitive forms of these defective pronouns, commenting that
Such peculiarities are explicable, but not now curable; they are inherent in the relative apparatus that we have received and are bound to work with. It does not follow that the use we are now making of it is the best it is capable of; and perhaps the line of improvement lies in clearer differentiation between that and which, and restoration of that to the place from which, in print, it tends to be ousted.
There follows a paragraph on the “supposed and misleading distinction … that that is the colloquial and which the literary relative.” Only with that out of the way does he turn to the point at issue here.
The two kinds of relative clause, to one of which that and to the other of which which is appropriate, are the defining and the non-defining; and if writers would agree to regard that as the defining relative pronoun, and which as the non-defining, there would be much gain both in lucidity and in ease. Some there are who follow this principle now; but it would be idle to pretend that it is the best practice of most or of the best writers.
To summarise: Fowler recognises that usage goes its own way whatever grammarians may say. On the general issue of relative pronouns he is strongly tempted “to show how better use might have been made of the material to hand” but accepts that the “peculiarities are explicable, but not now curable; they are inherent in the relative apparatus that we have received and are bound to work with”. On the issue of that and which as relative pronouns he again sets out his ideal and again shows that usage militates against its universal adoption.
Inevitably however, the internet has this from March 2008:
Happy Birthday, Henry Fowler: inventor of that/which rule is 150 today.
I have made plain my own view of this so-called rule.
But having said all that, we still have the question of why Thomas Jones chose the 1926 first edition of Fowler. Gowers's revision for the second edition leaves Fowler's words intact but Burchfield's much deeper revision for the 1996 third edition quotes Anita Brookner's A Family Romance (1993); with the ball-point pen which my father had bought for me … and comments that this
contains a restrictive clause led by which. It could have been replaced by that without change of meaning and without giving offence to any rule of syntax … the which clause defines and particularizes; and that would have done the work just as well.
This is put in the context of a second example of which used in a nonrestrictive (Fowler's non-defining) clause, showing that Burchfield rejects the that/which rule, accepting both for restrictive clauses.
To return to the Guardian article, while no-one would doubt that
The dog that ran in front of my bike had floppy ears.
is correct as a restrictive relative clause. But those of us who reject the rule about not using which in such clauses would also accept:
The dog which ran in front of my bike had floppy ears.
This example
The dog, which had floppy ears, ran in front of my bike.
is clearly a nonrestrictive clause, both from the punctuation with commas marking the parenthesis and from the intonation doing so in speech. But no-one doubts that restrictive clauses can have that and that nonrestrictive clauses must have which; Jones is dealing with an issue which is not a problem. I think that it is also worth mentioning that this sentence cannot stand independently; precisely because it is a nonrestrictive or non-defining clause (which does not “define and particularize”) the definition must be sought elsewhere. We must assume that the dog has already been defined and that we know from context which dog we are talking about.
In A Guide to English Language Usage I say that who and which are always correct (i.e. which is correct in defining clauses) but that that or zero pronoun may not be. While I accept that there may be certain stylistic objections to such usage in some cases, it is a helpful rule of thumb for non-native speakers, which will always avoid error.
3. Split infinitive
Jones says:
Split infinitives are worth avoiding to keep pedants at bay, but there’s nothing actually wrong with them, and a split infinitive is preferable to an inelegant alternative. “To boldly go” is resoundingly iambic, the alternatives – “boldly to go” or “to go boldly” – either flighty or leaden.
I agree. Indeed I make both points myself in A Guide to English Language Usage
… it must be said that there is still, rightly or wrongly, a considerable feeling among English speakers that a split infinitive is wrong. Sometimes it seems natural to do so but a decision to split an infinitive deliberately should never be taken lightly.
The reviewer in Modern English Teacher described this as “a sensible conclusion.”
I also make the point about the poetic rhythm of To boldly go.
4. Who/whom
Jones says:
Whom is on the way out, and won’t be much missed.
Agreed on both points.
5. Ending a sentence with a preposition
Jones says:
Like beginning a sentence with a conjunction, this is always completely fine. As Winston Churchill never actually said, it’s the kind of pedantry “up with which I will not put”.
The Churchill attribution is mentioned by Gowers in The Complete Plain Words with the introduction: “It is said that Sir Winston Churchill …” Whether this attribution had been made in print before that I do not know. The matter has been discussed and explained here.
6. Due to
Jones says:
The idea that “due to” is wrong, but “‘owing to” is OK is bogus. They’re both wrong if used to mean “because of” and both OK if used to mean “the result of”. “Due to unplanned engineering works, the train to Basingstoke has been cancelled” is a mistake. “The train to Basingstoke has been cancelled; this is due to unplanned engineering works” is fine. Still, “due to” is best avoided because it leads to formulations such as “due to the fact that”, which is a really clumsy way of saying “because”.
This is broadly in line with Burchfield’s Fowler though not with the 1926 edition, which says that due to is “often used by the illiterate as though it had passed, like owing to into a mere compound preposition.” The argument against using due to as a compound preposition is that due is a predicative adjective:
Then pay to Caesar what is due to Caesar, and pay God what is due to God. Matt 22:21 (NEB, 1961)
The train is due (to arrive) at 10.56.
and as such cannot stand alone to introduce a clause:
The cancellation of the barbecue was due to rain.
is acceptable but
Due to rain the barbecue was cancelled.
should be
Owing to rain the barbecue was cancelled.
Yes, well. Does it matter? As Burchfield says:
Hostility to the construction (due to used as a prepositional phrase in verbless clauses) is an entirely 20th-century phenomenon. Opinion remains sharply divided but it begins to look as if this use of due to will form part of the natural language of the 21st century.
As with relative clauses (above), my view as an EFL teacher is that the language is quite complicated enough and that any smoothing of its rough edges that does no harm to its capacity for fluent, stylish, subtle communication is to be welcomed rather than dismissed.
It goes without saying, I hope, that due to the fact that is a cumbersome circumlocution for because just as despite (or even in spite of) the fact that can and should be reduced to although or even though.
7. Greengrocer’s apostrophe
Jones says:
“Carrot’s” and “apple’s” are not so common, but almost everyone occasionally writes “who’s”, “it’s” and ”you’re” for whose, its and your. That’s the problem with following rules – such as the rule that possessives are distinguished from plurals by an apostrophe – sometimes they don’t apply.
Almost everyone? Well perhaps but who’s, it’s and you’re are not plurals. They are contractions where the apostrophe represents a missing letter. What he may be thinking of is that while nouns use an apostrophe to make the possessive form, pronouns don’t. The possessive pronouns are respectively: whose, its and your.
I have said that apostrophes in English are a menace and should be abolished. Little is heard now of the 18th-century firm of greengrocers called Johnson & Pope, yet a well-known and highly respected dictionary published at that time has this quotation from a famous author:
Comma’s and points they set exactly right.
8. Different from, not to or than
Jones says:
There’s no very good reason for following this rule, but then there’s no reason not to, either.
Indeed. Consistency, as an editor would surely agree, is important. My own style is to use different from but I don’t get excited about the matter. Some people point to the similar opposite to, which has no alternative preposition, and ask why different to should not be acceptable by analogy. The origin for preferring different from is presumably that the Latin differens implies movement away from something. While I find that interesting, I do not allow it to determine the use of modern English.
As for different than, I say in A Guide to English Language Usage:
It is sometimes used with a clause, probably because of the similarity to a comparative adjective as in The city is different than (it was) fifteen years ago; The city is bigger than (it was) fifteen years ago. It seems unnecessary to rewrite the sentence as The city is different from what it was fifteen years ago.
The Oxford Dictionaries website says:
There’s little difference in sense between the three expressions, and all of them are used by respected writers.
That’s good enough for me.
9. Using the subjunctive in conditional clauses
Jones says:
And finally, another one that’s worth paying attention to, because altering the mood alters the sense. The subjunctive is used to describe a state of affairs that isn’t the case. “If the dog were hungry, it would run to the bone shop.” This means the dog isn’t hungry, as we can tell because it isn’t running to the bone shop. “If the dog is hungry, it will run to the bone shop.” This means the dog may be hungry, we’ll have to wait and see.
He appears to be confused. If the dog is hungry … is a first conditional and does indeed relate to present time. If the dog were hungry … is a second conditional, implying that the dog is not hungry. While it is true that were is subjunctive, the point about the use of the subjunctive is that many people would say If the dog was hungry … Was is the past indicative and it is the use of this mood in second conditional sentences that leads to discussion, with some people arguing that the subjunctive should be used. It has nothing to do with the first conditional, where the indicative is the only from that is acceptable today. Shakespeare wrote “If music be the food of love, play on” (Twelfth Night 1:1) but things have changed since his day.
Recent Comments