Lavengro

Gwynglish - a new grammar of English

I have mentioned Nevile Gwynne of Gwynne’s Grammar before. Now The Stroppy Editor has gained a new insight to his work.

‘Gwynne’s Grammar’ is a deft piece of wordplay. It appears to announce that this is a book by Gwynne about grammar, but of course the author’s name appears on the cover too. A careless reader might therefore deem this redundancy or even vanity, but the truth is more subtle.

The title ‘Gwynne’s Grammar’ conceals a deeper meaning: that the book is about the grammar of Gwynne’s own language, a distinctive idiolect of formal standard English known as Gwynglish. It follows many of the rules of English, but rejects some and adds others; the result is a grammar unique to Gwynne.

He continues with a fascinating, detailed analysis of Gwynglish.

Pedantry rides again

It seems to be an iron law that when pedants make their pronouncements on the English language they succeed in parading their own ignorance before the world. The Guardian today offers us these joys:

I am appalled that your Guardian style guide author David Marsh advocates dispensing with elements of grammar that have been sacrosanct among the educated classes for centuries. His disregard for rules on split infinitives, the subjunctive tense (1) or the ending a sentence (2) with a preposition made my blood boil. Is the grammar of today’s schoolchildren, already so influenced by the need to keep their missives (3) down to a paltry 140 characters (4), not bad enough, (5, 6) that Mr Marsh should wish to encourage such sloppiness (7) by recommending a general dumbing-down of our beautiful language? Whatever next? Would he be so bold as to suggest we no longer use (8) words such as referenda or formulae (9)? Why not go the whole hog and say that there is no difference between less and fewer? (10)

May I propose that the Guardian, which has an unfortunate history of committing a number of famous typos and clangers (11) over the years, to the extent that it has often been lampooned by the likes of Private Eye among others (12), be (13) not the most authoritative organ to bid that we rewrite our grammar books? (14) Please stick to things at which you excel, such as current affairs and great news articles, rather than dabble in things about which you have shown yourselves to be defective (15).
Tristán (sic) White
External examiner, University of London (16)

1) The subjunctive is a mood, not a tense. Moods are indicative, subjunctive and imperative; tenses are present, past etc.

2) Wrong. This must be either ending a sentence with a preposition (ending is a participle) or the ending of a sentence with a preposition (ending is a gerund).

3) Missive: formal or humorous a letter (COED).

4) It is not clear that all schoolchildren use Twitter, certainly not in all their written communication. David Crystal says: “On Twitter, you don't get the range of texting abbreviations you get in text messaging. It's a more sophisticated kind of communicative medium. You get semantic threads running through it. When you start counting thousands and thousands of messages, you suddenly realise that on the whole it's a new art form in the making.”

Of text messaging itself he says: “Children could not be good at texting if they had not already developed considerable literacy awareness. Before you can write and play with abbreviated forms, you need to have a sense of how the sounds of your language relate to the letters. You need to know that there are such things as alternative spellings. If you are aware that your texting behaviour is different, you must have already intuited that there is such a thing as a standard. If you are using such abbreviations as lol and brb (“be right back”), you must have developed a sensitivity to the communicative needs of your textees.”

5) I am not sure about the phrase [adjective] enough that. I have not investigated the matter but to me it seems American; I first met it as a tic of Tom Clancy’s style. I would prefer so [adjective] that but I do not insist.

6) This comma is certainly incorrect. Removing the subordinate clause we have: Is the grammar of today's schoolchildren … not bad enough, that Mr Marsh should wish to encourage such sloppiness. Either the writer has got hopelessly mixed up or he has used a comma rhetorically to mark a pause in speech.

7) The writer has certainly got his negative concepts confused here. He is implying that the level is not yet sufficiently low for Mr March to wish to encourage it.

8) This is surely intended as a subjunctive use of use but it is ambiguous. I would recommend should use for clarity’s sake.

9) The writer assumes that referendum is a Latin second declension noun like bellum. It isn’t; it is a gerundive form meaning something to be discussed. It is more like the referendum question itself or an agenda item. Anyway, it is firmly established as an English word with its plural referendums. Here we have not only the etymological fallacy but also fallacious etymology. The COED has mathematical and chemical formulae but formulas as methods or ways of doing something.

10) Quite enough has been said about this.

11) I do not think that commit is really the right collocation for a typo or clanger-

12) The likes of and among others are synonymous. This is an example of tautology, regarded as poor style.

13) Clearly intended as a subjunctive but it is referring to a present state, not to a hypothetical future. If you propose that something be … you are saying how you think that it should be in the future. Here the writer is making a proposition that starts from what he regards as a present situation. It should be is.

14) The two subordinate clauses, one nested inside the other, are correct but make for a pompous style that is not immediately easy to follow.

15) Turning this sentence round we have You have shown yourselves to be defective about these things, which is not the best style.

16) Mr White does not say which subject he examines but I can only hope that it is not the English language.

I did consider the possibility that this letter was written ironically. On balance I fear that it was intended seriously.

The second letter is this:

I must defend the imperfect subjunctive where meaning is at stake. I have regularly been alarmed by such statements as “England may have lost the match without Rooney” when what was meant was “England might have lost the match without Rooney”. I'm sure Wayne would agree.
Janet Sturgis
Tunbridge Wells, Kent

I sympathise with the writer’s sentiments. I have made the same point myself here. However, this is nothing to do with the subjunctive; it is the use of the present and past tense of a modal auxiliary verb with the perfect infinitive. True, may is sometimes used to express a subjunctive idea, as in:

I fear that we may have been deceived.

But that is not what we have here.

More about split infinitives

In his latest Language Log post Geoff Pullum has mentioned my recent post on split infinitives. I have added the following footnote to my post:

Geoff Pullum has mentioned this post here. He says:

What [Harvey] shouldn't do is tell students or clients that "split infinitives" should be avoided for reasons having to do with respecting English grammar, because that's simply false.

Pullum will no doubt be pleased to have my categorical assurance that I don’t do that; my position is after all only implicit in my above comment:

nobody who has studied the English language professionally … can see anything wrong with split infinitives.

Apostrophe ambiguity

At lunch today a friend started a sentence by saying ‘My father’s French …’ One person expressed interest in this fact but the rest of us were surprised because we knew that he came from an old Scottish family and had in fact mentioned his father on previous occasions. It turned out that he was intending to comment on his father’s knowledge of the French language: ‘My father’s French was rather good.’

Curiously, amid all the silly invented examples of apostrophe confusion to be found on the internet, a real-life example caused only a moment’s confusion and was a bit of a joke.

What’s more, the apostrophe serves no useful purpose here in removing the ambiguity, which is often claimed to be its chief advantage..

Purism, the Economist and split infinitives

On the Language Log Geoff Pullum inveighs against

the fact that writers in The Economist are required to write unnatural or even ungrammatical sentences rather than risk the wrath of the semi-educated public by "splitting an infinitive" (putting a preverbal modifier immediately before the verb in a to-infinitival complement clause). The magazine published a sentence containing the phrase publicly to label itself a foreign agent where clarity demanded to publicly label itself a foreign agent.

He quotes the Economist’s own style guide

Happy the man who has never been told that it is wrong to split an infinitive: the ban is pointless. Unfortunately, to see it broken is so annoying to so many people that you should observe it.

and describes it as

A pointless ban on a natural syntactic possibility that has never been authoritatively declared to have anything wrong with it in grammatical terms, but you should observe the ban anyway. Is this a sensible way for a great magazine (my favorite magazine) to make its decisions about how its writers should phrase things in their native language?

Obviously, the Economist disagrees and thinks that it is sensible. Of course, nobody who has studied the English language professionally (including explicitly the author of the Economist’s style guide) can see anything wrong with split infinitives. But equally, nobody who has studied popular opinion on the language can deny that split infinitives raise hackles across a wide swathe of public opinion. What we see here is the classic difference of viewpoint between an academic working with theory and a practical newspaper that needs to sell copies without offending its readers. Teachers have the same dilemma; in my Guide to English Language Usage I write:

… 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.”

My job is to teach and advise people who need to use English for their business and professional purposes. I also translate texts, sometimes for publication, for people who are demanding in their requirements. I simply cannot afford to have a student come back to me with a complaint that something that I have taught or tolerated has been criticised in no uncertain manner as a grammatical solecism by a native speaker; nor can I afford to have an argument with a translation client on the same matter. As a result, I play it safe just as the Economist does.

And I would have expected an arch-descriptivist like Geoff Pullum to have noticed, recorded and accepted that very many people choose to use the language in just that way rather than laying down the law and, ahem, prescribing how the language should be used by those who teach and write to satisfy the public taste.

I have a post on split infinitives here.

(Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Note (17 June 2013): Geoff Pullum has mentioned this post here. He says:

What [Harvey] shouldn't do is tell students or clients that "split infinitives" should be avoided for reasons having to do with respecting English grammar, because that's simply false.

Pullum will no doubt be pleased to have my categorical assurance that I don’t do that; my position is after all only implicit in my above comment:

nobody who has studied the English language professionally … can see anything wrong with split infinitives.

The Ballad of the Amateur Grammarian

After what we’ve been through lately it’s surely time to revisit the Ballad of the Amateur Grammarian:

I am the very model of an amateur grammarian
I have a little knowledge and I am authoritarian
But I make no apology for being doctrinarian
We must not plummet to the verbal depths of the barbarian

The Stroppy Grammarian has the rest of this splendid poem here but as a tribute to Nevile Gwynne I will also quote these two lines:

When you crusade for good English, it’s not all doom and gloom you sow
The secret of success is: it’s not who you know; it’s whom you know

(Image – Wikimedia Commons)

…up with which we should no longer be required to put

The BBC has got in on the act and has published a grammar quiz of its own.

Read this sentence carefully. “I’d like to introduce you to my sister Clara, who lives in Madrid, to Benedict, my brother who doesn’t, and to my only other sibling, Hilary.” Which of the following is correct?

1) Hilary is male.

2) Hilary is female.

3) It’s impossible to know from the context.

The correct answer is 1), though what purpose is served by such a question is anybody’s guess – as is the likelihood of anybody ever uttering such a dreadful sentence naturally.

Though the BBC doesn’t say so, this is an adapted version of the notorious one published by Nevile Gwynne in the Telegraph:

“I should like to introduce you to my sister Amanda, who lives in New York, to my brother Mark who doesn’t, and to my only other sibling, Evelyn.”

I have explained why the answer male is wrong for this version.

Question 5

“This is the kind of tedious nonsense up with which I will not put!” Which grammar rule was Winston Churchill supposed to have objected to?

seems to imply that the rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition is valid. It is not!

Question 6

Sometimes you should use “that” and sometimes “which”.

Which sentence here is wrong?

1) The car which ran me over was speeding

2) The car that ran me over was speeding

3) The car, which ran me over, was speeding

brings us back to the that/which fallacy, which I dealt with here just the other day. Briefly, the notion that 1) is incorrect is quite mistaken. The explanation that is given:

“That” defines something, whereas “which” adds new information in a separate clause, often needing commas.

misses the point. A non-restrictive relative clause, which 3) is, adds new information; it must have which, it cannot have that, and it must be set off in commas. That does define something in a restrictive or defining relative clause but which can also be used correctly in such clauses. Sentences 1) and 2) are both correct. Sentence 3) is grammatically correct as an example of a non-restrictive relative clause, but precisely because it adds new information it presupposes that we know which car we are talking about. Without a context to define the car it is not a logically valid sentence.

Question 8

Which of the following is not correct?

1) I was sitting in the chair.

2) I sat in the chair.

3) I was sat in the chair.

Of course, the answer that they require is 3), its incorrectness being explained thus:

To use “was” requires the participle “sitting” after it.

Well, it does if we are talking about verbs used in the continuous aspect but in fact there is nothing objectionable about this sentence. Sit can be transitive as well as intransitive and as such can be used quite correctly in the passive voice. As the COED says (my emphasis):

sit

v. (sitting; past and past part. sat /sat/)

1 be or cause to be in a position in which one’s weight is supported by one’s buttocks rather than one’s feet and one’s back is upright.

This discussion is developed with reference to the BBC’s other questions in the comments below.

The biter bit

Between them Caxton, David Crystal and Mark Liberman have said almost all that needs to be said about the letter sent to Michael Gove (British education minister) about English teaching. I would just comment on what Nevile Gwynne (whom I have mentioned before) says on his own website:

Interestingly, the only people in the room who had been completely “unphased” by how I had treated the children were the children themselves!

It should indeed be unfazed not unphased as Caxton points out, but more than that he uses a sentence adverb (interestingly), something that is usually a taboo for such pedants. The controversy about hopefully typifies this attitude. Fortunately, when such pedants let themselves loose (they are never let loose) on the language it is simple enough for knowledgeable people to find their own blunders and hoist them with their own petards.

Pedantry, the Telegraph and relative clauses

The British Daily Telegraph, as I have mentioned before, is the natural home of the language pedant who knows what’s right because he remembers (or thinks he does) what he was taught at school about the English language; and knows too that as a freeborn, educated person he can lay down the law on the subject. As Anthony Burgess said almost half a century ago in Language Made Plain.

In quarrels about words, people seem unwilling to see reason. Mercury, the rogue-god who presides over language, renders them blind to dictionaries and to experts. There is a general conviction that language is not a matter for experts. We all know about language because we all use language. No similar conclusion is drawn from the fact that we all use kidneys, nerves, and intestines.

Now, as the Stroppy Editor informs us, the Telegraph chooses to educate and amuse its readers with an English test compiled by ‘Nevile Gwynne, a self-taught teacher whose book on grammar and slot on Radio 5’s Up All Night have earned him a cult following which includes Prince Charles.’ It asks:

Which of these sentences is grammatically correct?
A) “Do you see who I see?”
B) “Do you see whom I see?”

While native speakers who do understand language goggle in astonishment, I have found that Google Ngram shows no records for “Do you see whom”. And for my readers who are not native speakers I can mention that while whom is indeed the object case of who, it is never used as the object of a question, being reserved essentially for use in relative clauses with prepositions – and even there its use is declining.

This mention of relative clauses brings me on to the main point of this post. The test also asks this question. (I should point out again for the benefit of non-native readers that Evelyn is a name that can be used equally for men and women.):

“I should like to introduce you to my sister Amanda, who lives in New York, to my brother Mark who doesn’t, and to my only other sibling, Evelyn.”
· Evelyn is male
· Evelyn is female
· Impossible to know from the wording of the sentence whether Evelyn is male or female.

According to Gwynne, the correct answer is male. This is purely and simply wrong. The rule, or convention if you prefer, is that a non-defining relative clause is marked off with commas to indicate the parenthesis that it actually is, whereas defining relative clauses have no commas. In this example the speaker has three siblings:

· A sister called Amanda. She lives in New York.
· A brother called Mark. He doesn’t live in New York.
· A third sibling called Evelyn. It is not stated whether Evelyn is a brother or sister, or where he or she does or does not live.

The absence of commas in

my brother Mark who doesn’t [live in New York]

makes it a defining clause, implying the existence of at least one other brother. The case is slightly complicated because it could be written

my brother, Mark, who doesn’t [live in New York]

with commas to indicate the apposition of Mark; but even so the comma after Mark is not, or at least not necessarily, indicative of a non-defining clause. By omitting the name we read:

my brother who doesn’t [live in New York]

That is clearly defining. Mr Gwynne has tripped up over his own rule. Although the brother Mark doesn’t live in New York we have no information about whether Evelyn is a brother or sister. He might be a brother who does live in New York.

The Telegraph writes of Nevile Gwynne:

It is astonishing that an elderly former businessman who has never been to teacher training college, worn an academic gown or taught in a school should be creating such a commotion.

If only it were astonishing that such a person could become known and respected as a teacher and usage guru! It’s the sort of thing that gets professional teachers and usage guides a bad name.

It also demonstrates the absurdity of relying on punctuation to make a subtle difference in meaning, not least because punctuation is only noticeable in writing; in speech – and this example is obviously spoken and is presented as such with inverted commas – the intonation provides the necessary information for clear understanding. It is of a piece with the silly, invented examples of apostrophes and commas that allegedly change meaning; it is not the way in which anyone would ever express themselves naturally. A sentence that relies on punctuation to make its meaning clear is badly written, not because punctuation is too weak to carry that burden but because it is not designed to do so. Punctuation is a guide to ease the reader’s path through what should be a clearly designed and well-constructed sentence. It is no more responsible for structure and design than a guide book to a city can be expected to ensure that the buildings don’t fall down on top of you if you take a wrong turning.

I have mentioned the Guardian’s disastrous attempt to publish a language quiz.

Footnotes.

In 1928 the British author Evelyn Waugh married a woman called Evelyn Gardner. They were known to their friends as “He-Evelyn” and “She-Evelyn”.

The link above to Nevile Gwynne leads to a Telegraph article entitled ‘The glamour of grammar’. It is not widely known, and will come as a shock to many who have struggled at school, that these words are doublets – that is, they are variations on the same word, as the COED says of glamour:

glamour (US also glamor)
· n.
1 an attractive and exciting quality, especially sexual allure.
2 archaic enchantment; magic.
– DERIVATIVES glamorous adj. glamorously adv.
– ORIGIN C18: alt. of grammar, with ref. to the occult practices assoc. with learning in medieval times.

The Cambridge comma

Louise at Glossophilia describes the Cambridge comma. It is an April Fool’s Day joke, 1 April being the day when people in Britain and some other countries play practical jokes, and newspapers and blogs join in.

The joke is based on the Oxford comma, also known as the serial comma, which is a well-established aspect of English punctuation. It is the comma placed before the last item in a list; it takes its name from Oxford University Press, where it is the house style. It is also an extraordinarily controversial matter for reasons that I totally fail to understand. In my own style I use it if it seems appropriate. I would write that someone bought yoghurt, cereal, sausages, bacon, eggs and fruit, there being no need for a comma before fruit, but in a hotel brochure I would recommend writing that the breakfast menu includes yoghurt, cereal, bacon and eggs, and fruit. Pragmatic clarity seems to be the appropriate guide. I also tend to use it when dealing with phrases rather than one-word list items:

I spent the afternoon writing a complicated blog post, translating a publicity brochure for Megacomputers plc, and preparing material for tomorrow’s classes.

Sadly, however, nonsense like this pervades the internet.

 

It is an affront to common sense to suggest that there is any ambiguity in the sentences that omit the Oxford comma and, as is always the case, intonation makes the meaning perfectly clear (either way if you insist) in speech.

It is worth noting too that the ‘without’ example on the right is false. The list now has only two items (eggs, toast and orange juice), which must clearly be joined by and. To state that idea clearly, the sentence should be:

I had eggs, and toast and orange juice

or

I had toast and orange juice, and eggs.

Either way, however, the comma must be considered as an Oxford comma, coming as it does before the last list item.

I have already discussed the Oxford comma here. Unlike many people I am not dogmatic about it.

 

The Cambridge comma is a different matter. To quote Louise:

the Cambridge comma introduces a punctuated pause AFTER the word “and” in lists — i.e. before the final list item … An example of the new Cambridge comma illustrates the unexpectedly belated verbal interruption that it offers: “He packed up his books, cigars, teddy bears and, slippers.”

As a Cambridge man myself I have an interest to declare, but it seems to me that this is a remarkably useful way of indicating in print both the emphasis that the and has when it is spoken as a way of introducing a surprising element at the end of a list and also the pause that follows it. Commas are used to guide a reader in understanding a text; they are rarely necessary or incorrect grammatically though they are conventionally used to mark parentheses, non-defining relative clauses for example, in conditional sentences when the if clause (protasis) precedes the consequence (apodosis), in other cases where a subordinate clause preceding the main clause, and in lists. The tendency in English seems to be to minimise punctuation; Spanish, on the other hand, is heavily punctuated in comparison. In particular, it is very common in Spanish to find a comma between subject and verb. Though this is not approved of, it follows the common Spanish system of using commas for rhetorical purposes, representing pauses in speech.

Long live the splendid Cambridge comma! I look forward eagerly to seeing the University Press adopt it formally as part of Cambridge University’s continuing quest for wisdom, intelligence, research and, novelty.