Ask the English Teacher

Resistance to changes in grammar is futile, say researchers

As the speaker and writer of an archaic dialect known as mid-20th century Standard English, which I faithfully taught for 40 years, I can confirm the truth in this Guardian article: Resistance to changes in grammar is futile, say researchers. Excerpt:

When it comes to changes in language, there’s no point crying over spilt milk: researchers charting fluctuations in English grammar say the rise of certain words, such as spilled, is probably down to chance, and that resistance is futile. 

Comparisons have long been drawn between evolution and changes in language, with experts noting that preferences such as a desire for emphasis can act as a type of “natural selection”, affecting which words or forms of grammar are passed on between generations. 

But a new study shows that another evolutionary mechanism might play a key role : random chance.

The authors of the study say that the work adds to our understanding of how language changes over centuries.  

“Whether it is by random chance or selection, one of the things that is true about English – and indeed other languages – is that the language changes,” said Joshua Plotkin, co-author of the research from the University of Pennsylvania. “The grammarians might [win the battle] for a decade, but certainly over a century they are going to be on the losing side.”  

Writing in the journal Nature, Plotkin and colleagues describe how they tracked different types of grammatical changes across the ages. 

Among them, the team looked at changes in American English across more than one hundred thousand texts from 1810 onwards, focusing on the use of “ed” in the past tense of verbs compared with irregular forms – for example, “spilled” versus “spilt”. 

 The hunt threw up 36 verbs which had at least two different forms of past tense, including quit/quitted and leaped/leapt. However for the majority, including spilled v spilt, the team said that which form was waxing or waning was not clearly down to selection – meaning it is probably down to chance over which word individuals heard and copied. 

“Chance can play an important role even in language evolution – as we know it does in biological evolution,” said Plotkin, adding that the impact of random chance on language had not been fully appreciated before.

For just six of the 36 verbs, the rise of one form over another was clearly not only down to chance, but was largely a result of active preference – akin to natural selection.  

Specifically, “woke” is increasingly preferred over “waked” and “lit” more popular than “lighted”, while “weaved” and “snuck” are on track to eventually overtake “wove” and “sneaked”, respectively.

Eleven rules of writing: Common mistakes [& fixes]

Via the website Top-notch study tips for A+ students: 11 Rules of Writing – Common Mistakes [& Fixes]. This is a smart, concise guide to plain English style. Highly recommended.

Lack of Oxford comma could cost Maine company millions in overtime dispute

Via The New York Times: Lack of Oxford Comma Could Cost Maine Company Millions in Overtime Dispute. Excerpt:

A class-action lawsuit about overtime pay for truck drivers hinged entirely on a debate that has bitterly divided friends, families and foes: The dreaded — or totally necessary — Oxford comma, perhaps the most polarizing of punctuation marks.  

What ensued in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and in a 29-page court decision handed down on Monday, was an exercise in high-stakes grammar pedantry that could cost a dairy company in Portland, Me., an estimated $10 million.  

In 2014, three truck drivers sued Oakhurst Dairy, seeking more than four years’ worth of overtime pay that they had been denied. Maine law requires workers to be paid 1.5 times their normal rate for each hour worked after 40 hours, but it carves out some exemptions. 

A quick punctuation lesson before we proceed: In a list of three or more items — like “beans, potatoes and rice” — some people would put a comma after potatoes, and some would leave it out. A lot of people feel very, very strongly about it.

The debate over commas is often a pretty inconsequential one, but it was anything but for the truck drivers. Note the lack of Oxford comma — also known as the serial comma — in the following state law, which says overtime rules do not apply to:  

The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:  

(1) Agricultural produce; 

(2) Meat and fish products; and 

(3) Perishable foods.  

Does the law intend to exempt the distribution of the three categories that follow, or does it mean to exempt packing for the shipping or distribution of them?  

Delivery drivers distribute perishable foods, but they don’t pack the boxes themselves. Whether the drivers were subject to a law that had denied them thousands of dollars a year depended entirely on how the sentence was read. 

If there were a comma after “shipment,” it might have been clear that the law exempted the distribution of perishable foods. But the appeals court on Monday sided with the drivers, saying the absence of a comma produced enough uncertainty to rule in their favor. It reversed a lower court decision. 

In other words: Oxford comma defenders won this round.

Is English a dying language? Of course (it's been dying for over a thousand years)

The Tyee has published my article Is English a Dying Language? Of Course. Excerpt:

The 2016 list of banished words is out, and they certainly deserve banishment. But the English language — at least the English I learned in the mid-20th century — has much graver problems.  

Webster’s Third Dictionary came out in 1961 and triggered huge disputes in the print media — not to mention newfangled radio and TV. Webster’s Third was descriptive, not prescriptive. That is, it said this is the way people speak and write, instead of saying this is the correct way to speak and write. It even included the expression “ain’t.”  

In hindsight, that dictionary may have done more to bring on the 1960s and the “Me Decade” of the 1970s more than LSD or the Vietnam War. The principle of Webster’s was “Do your own thing,” not “Do what I tell you to do.” While it scandalized prescriptivists, it liberated everyone else.  

But it didn’t quite liberate me or my generation. We’d gone to school in the 1940s and 1950s, when “correct” English was drilled into us. By Grade 8 or so, I could diagram a sentence on a blackboard like any other junior-high grunt. Breaking down a sentence into its parts was just a necessary skill for a mid-century kid, like dissecting a frog or stripping down a rifle. 

But when I stumbled into teaching English in Vancouver’s early community college system in 1967, I found myself at a loss. My students were just a few years younger than I, Canada’s first baby boomers. But they seemed innocent of “correct” English as college students should understand the term.

So I spent the next 40 years or so teaching adults what I’d learned in junior high, and watching their eyes glaze over as I tried to explain pronoun case, subject-verb agreement, and the difference between “lay” and “lie.” 

English under siege  

I was not alone. Twentieth-century English was under siege from 1970 on. Usage experts like William Safire and Edwin Newman fought side by side on the battlements against the barbarians. I stole their stuff to use as handouts, and it seemed to work. 

I also used Chaucer with my students to show how spelling and pronunciation had changed since the 14th century. Chaucer’s English became the standard, I told them, because it was the dialect of London, where the money and power were. Now the money and power were on this side of the Atlantic, and various American dialects were contending to become the standard.  

“Correct” English has always been the language of the rulers. Mark Twain shocked the world by writing good fiction in the dialect of small-town Missouri in the 1840s; in effect, like John the Baptist, he was prophesying who the new rulers would be.

How however almost kicked but's butt: Linguistics study

Via Scienmag.com: How however almost kicked but's butt: Linguistics study. I spent 40 years trying to get students to use "however" and "but" properly. No luck.

However you're using the word however, be aware you might be getting it wrong. 

A new analysis of more than a century of books, newspapers, magazines and online writings has revealed the life and journey of the word however, but particularly its common misuse as a synonym for but. 

University of Melbourne researcher Dr Andrew Hamilton has dubbed the erroneous trend Conjunctive Howeveritis, a phenomenon that peaked in the 1980s and 1990s.  

His study shows that instead of correctly using however as an adverb, it is often misappropriated as a conjunction.  

For example, according to the Cambridge English Dictionary: "My teacher is very nice but a bit strict" not "My teacher is very nice however a bit strict". 

Dr Hamilton is a renowned ecologist and an Honorary Principal Fellow with the University's Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, but has had a long-standing interest in linguistics.  

He pored through more than 100 years of literature with the aid of trends-tracking software to analyse how the word has been used from 1900 to 2008.  

"I personally noticed this trend after having to stop and re-read sentences like 'however the cat walked down the street'," he said. "This has the reader thinking that the author meant 'in whatever manner the cat walked down the street'."  

Dr Hamilton analysed the misuse of however both at the beginning of a sentence (sentence-initial conjunction) and in-between (within-sentence conjunction).  

Looking at however as a sentence-initial conjunction, Dr Hamilton said its incorrect use has risen roughly since World War II, and has been mirrored by a decrease in the use of but.  

Dr Hamilton suggested the trend is a result of the common misconception that sentences shouldn't start with but.

'However sounds much more impressive, he said. Dr Hamilton's study has been published in the journal, English Today, of Cambridge University Press.

Comma Queen: The singular “their”

Via The New Yorker, a definitive judgment from Mary Norris, the Comma Queen: The Singular “Their”. Click or tap through for a short video.

Last year, at the convention of the American Copy Editors Society (ACES), in Pittsburgh, everyone was talking about “the singular ‘their.’ ” It is the people’s choice for the gender-neutral third-person-singular pronoun that the English language sadly lacks. 

Many ACES stalwarts—copy editors, journalists, grammarians, lexicographers, and linguists—stand ready to embrace the singular “their.” But not us. We avoid it whenever we can. 

Today, March 4th, the only date of the year that forms a full sentence—March forth!—we wish everyone (and his or her brother and/or sister) a Happy National Grammar Day!

Robert Fisk on 2014 resolution: Stop using these clichés

In today's Independent, Robert Fisk has a good column on the ever-stranger state of Middle East politics. But he adds a New Year's appeal: Let there be an end to all these clichés: 

Linguistic resolutions for 2014: an end to clichés, to invented words and to verbal lies. 

Please may we have no more guns that “fall silent”, not a single politician “on the campaign trail”, no more “deadly” ambushes/riots/wars, diseases and – please – no more “iconic” paintings or personalities. And no more “eponymous” events. Nor “dystopian” narratives. I fear I’ve committed a few of these sins in my past (I distinctly remember “iconic”). But no excuse. 

Let me never have to read again of “negativity” or “positivity” or – most ghastly of all – “suicidality”. A close second: “gendering”. Let us have done with politicians, families and villages which have to “come to terms” with grief, who “seek closure” or need to “move on” (the latter an officially declared – and understandable – desire of the Labour Party over Iraq). 

Please, less “shuttle” diplomacy”, fewer “tit-for-tat” killings and no more cities “under lockdown”. And no more bloody “space”: editors should ban all references to “theatrical space”, “psychological space” and “public space”. 

The same goes for television listings: let there be an end to “festive” events/programmes/editions/spirits/giggles (I kid thee not)/games/songs/food. 

Please don’t talk about “issues” when you mean “problems”. And if there are any real issues, don’t “prioritise” them. Suffocate any “spokesperson” who, after hours of airport delays, announces that he apologises “if anyone has been inconvenienced”. 

And let me croak if I ever have to read again that oldest of clunkers which appeared in last week’s Irish Times, which announced the engagement of a regional sports star: “Clare captain pops the question”. Aaaaaaaaaagh, indeed.

I second the Master's motion.

The banished words for 2014

Lake Superior University has published its Banished Words List for 2014.With some of them I happily agree: "____on steroids" is long past its best-before date, and suffixes like "-ageddon" and "-pocalypse" deserve to be blown out the airlock to follow "-gate." 

With others, I beg to differ. "Selfie" is at least shorter than "self-portrait," and the "-ie" tells us we need not take it too seriously. "Hashtag" is convenient as a term for "specific news and opinion reported via Twitter." "Twittersphere" has the advantage of being instantly understandable to anyone who understands the term "blogosphere."

The expressions that still drive me crazy are now clearly too evil to die: "beg the question" for "raise the question," for example, and "going forward" for "in future" (both from 2001). And may the next journalist who uses the term "under the bus" (2008) be thrown under the next three buses.

Do we need a phonetic English alphabet?

The Tyee has published my article: Do We Need a Phonetic English Alphabet?. Excerpt:

I spent my teaching career in large part trying to train Canadian college students to spell their own language. (Those were 40 years I'll never get back.) 

My own high school had done a pretty good job of teaching us how to spell in the 1950s, so I was surprised, less than a decade later, to find myself teaching students innocent of grammar as well as spelling. 

It took a while to realize that I'd been "streamed" into relatively intensive courses -- my English 3A wasn't as good as the super-brainy English 3XL, but it too was designed to prepare me for college. And it was far ahead of English 3, where working-class and minority students usually ended up. 

The North American surge into post-secondary, which had begun just as I was starting college, had by 1967 carried a lot of unprepared kids into universities and community colleges, where we instructors were shocked and appalled by their subliteracy. Little did we know that teachers have for centuries expressed the same despair about their students, including us.

This Friday or next Friday?

Timo asks:

Quandary - Some friends and I were talking about a day in the future (Friday, say, when we go for our weekly lunch) and we ended up in nice discussion about next versus this.

On Wednesday we might say "Let's do this this Friday".

On Saturday we might say "Let's do this next Friday".

But, on Thursday if we said "Let's do this next Friday I would think it's the week Friday and not tomorrow."

Shouldn't we have day limits on "next" and "this"?

We probably should, but we don't. As a general rule, "this Friday" should be the immediate Friday in our future, whether we're talking about it on Saturday or Thursday. "Next Friday" should be the following Friday. In practice, however, many people use the terms interchangeably, and confusingly.

The British and some Commonwealth countries have a useful expression: "Let's meet for lunch on Friday week"—that is, one week after the coming Friday. I have no idea why Canadians and Americans prefer the longer "a week from Friday."