MIT and Princeton Face Off in Second Life

Chilling indeed – keep fighting the good fight!

It would be good to focus on writing that communicates and has valid content, rather than writing that is technically correct. The Internet demonstrates every day that thoughtful people with things to say can communicate well even if they mistake “effect” for “affect” or misuse “who.”

Hear, here!

And this is only verbs. Imagine how teachers feel when the whole US Department of Education is run by people with no experience in schools. They claim we teachers are responsible for the economy. . . and a whole lot more.

I would cancel my subscription to the Times if my dogs weren’t so fond of it.

Yes, whistle is an intransitive verb. It also has (like most intransitive verbs) occasional transitive uses, with direct objects denoting tunes. But although I shouldn’t be responding to unimportant facetious nitpicking like this, let me just report that I couldn’t rein in my habit of checking things, and I did a quick experiment on frequency.  In 44 million words of Wall Street Journal prose I found that the intransitive instances of whistled constituted 100 percent of the occurrences. With whistling it was almost 100 percent, the lone exception being the fixed phrase whistling Dixie.  That confirms my characterization of its normal use to a degree that I found quite surprising.  Perhaps the most important thing, though (I only mentioned intransitivity in passing), is that whistle is surely an odd pick for a prototypical example to illustrate “dynamic” verbs of dramatic action.

I definitely agree that what qualifies a person to be a grammarian or writing expert doesn’t necessarily correlate with their program of study, or that their talented writing abilities entails their grammatical prowess.  If the latter were the case, we would have no need for editors.  As for the former, at the university where I work, English majors volunteer at our academic writing services centre to act as consultants, proofreaders, and editors on their peers’ essays.  It is unclear to me as to how someone that studies English literature is any more or less competent than a student majoring in political science or sociology, among other majors, that require substantial writing skills and abilities.  Students are studying a subject, analysing information within that subject, and writing about it, whether it be contemporary American literature or political theories of the 19th Century.  Unless one actually studies grammar, regardless of one’s major or whether through formal or informal means, I would say that very few people could really consider themselves grammarians.

@what4, I think the point in this article may have had more to do with the fact that someone claiming to be a grammar whiz was giving out grammar advice and that the information was completely incorrect.  I think most people would agree that people can write well without being the greatest spellers or experts on technicalities of the language, but neither should they then claim that they are grammar experts.  I am frequently appalled at Charles Dickens’ poor and incorrect usage of syntax, but I could never say he was a terrible writer ;o)

Here hare here.

Gee, I’ve been called “a barbarian at the gate,” “Marian the Librarian on a Harley,” and even “E. B. White on acid,” but I’ve never been called “scary.” A new epithet to add to the list!

For the record, I’d like to make clear that I am not a prescriptivist, not a grammarian, not a linguist, and certainly not a professor. I am a journalist, and I have spent many years teaching wonderful writers and editing prize-winning journalists. It has taught me a few things I certainly would not have learned in the academy. It has made me ever more committed to finding ways of explaining things that are both accurate and helpful to writers.

Do we see the world of words differently? Vive la difference!

She clearly has no clue as to what an ignoramus (ignorama?) she is.

Thank you for writing about the self-serving drivel with which Ms. Hale defiled the English language.
When I read her article, I was appalled. The Times? Really?

I don’t think that you should add the epithet ‘scary’ to your list: it is your blunders that are scary, not you.

It is good, though, to hear that you are ever more committed to finding ways of explaining things that are both accurate and helpful to writers. Might we look forward to a column where you do just that?

All of Hale’s examples are intransitive verbs that don’t even have passives.

I assume you are referring to her examples of so- called “dynamic” verbs. But although ‘wonder’ can be used in a dynamic sense (“Now (all of a sudden) I’m wondering what I’m going to do next.”), its typical use patterns like other stative verbs: e.g., “I wonder what the answer will be.” It’s an individual situation (not generic), present time reference (situation surrounding the act of speaking) and the verb doesn’t have -ing in this context, comparable to ‘know’ or ‘want’. The other set (‘be’, etc.) we wouldn’t regard as the typical stative verbs because they don’t occur in the transitive/intransitive schema, as ‘know’ and ‘want’ do, but are they not “copular” verbs occurring in the schema with predicate nominals, adjectives and prep phrases? So, ‘become’ provides the dynamic verb for this schema and behaves like other dynamic verbs in taking the prog inflection when describing a situation involving change, with the “simple” form typically indicating a generic situation rather than a present state.

As for intransitive verbs not having passives, although intransitive clauses without complements would not have passive counterparts, and no doubt the vast majority of uses of verbs like ‘whistle’ occur in intransitive contexts, it would seem that expressions such as, “James stomped on the fallen Bryant’s elbow before the play was whistled dead, and so he was called for a technical” are not ruled out by the rule system. (By the way, I was going to say “charged with”, but “called for”, if you accept it, gives us a passive where the passive subject comes from the prep phrase, not from the DO (“They called a technical on James.” vs. “They called James for a technical” (?)). Or, “I was hoping for an enlightening discussion on Universal Grammar, but the issue was waffled by an incompetent panel”. What about contexts with intransitive verbs and oblique objects or prepositional complements, such as, “His jokes were laughed at by most of the people there” or, “What happened to this book?  Oh it was rained on (by all the storms) last week”? The “at” and the “on” are not part of a verb- particle construction, as “out” is in “ruled out” above. Now I wonder how best to try to understand the rule governing the occurrence of passive constructions: with reference to lexemes or to syntactic schemata. I know there are some verbs that only occur in the passive constructions and without an active counterpart…. Oh blast! I knew I shouldn’t have written this. I’m tired and sleepy and I need some coffee. My bed hasn’t been slept in in weeks. BTW I never read that column; I started to read the first one and quickly saw that it was utter rubbish, of the sort written by freshmen at the absolute beginning of their intellectual journey, etc. But what scares me, I know the Times, the public and all, but I’m afraid to ask, what about the literary people in my dept., your dept.– do they think that column is OK?

I loved this article because I cringe at the grammatical errors popping up in even my graduate students’ papers. We have a LOT of work to do if we want to preserve the precision and beauty of English grammar – especially among students who somehow got through grade school, high school and college without learning even the basics.  SIGH!

When my cousin was on the editorial board, the NYT was not truthful but it was literate.
Now it is neither.

What ever happened to ‘er’ and ‘est’?  As in wide, wider, widest.

I’ve seen the NYT and many others drop the ends, and instead use more & most – as in ‘wide,’ ‘more wide,’ and ‘most wide.’

I was sad to see hippopotami and platypi go, but this is too much for me.