A correspondent writes to ask: 'If there is a queue of 5 people, which person is second from last? person 3 or 4?'
If there's an uncertainty here, it must be because of a conflict between logic and language. I suppose logically it could be either, depending on how you 'see' the queue - whether the fifth person is included in the sequence or excluded from it. But linguistically, the weight of usage surely makes it person 4. Usual usage has such sequences as (in a race):
He came last
He came second last = second from the end
He came third last = third from the end
and so on. Note that we can't say:
He came first last.
The same point applies to second from last. There is no first from last, which we'd have to allow if person 3 was the interpretation.
On the other hand, there are two usages: second from last and second last. Is there a difference in meaning between these two?
We went to the beach on our second-last day.
We went to the beach on our second-from-last day.
The stress is on the second-last syllable.
The stress is on the second-from-last syllable.
For me, these are the same. The OED illustrates the first usage but not the second. Is there anyone out there who makes a distinction?
Sunday, 29 March 2009
Monday, 2 March 2009
On apologies
A correspondent writes to ask one of those annoying questions which I feel I should know the answer to, but then realize I don't, without a bit of research! Why do we say my apologies, in the plural?
The word apology has been around a long time. Shakespeare uses it half-a-dozen times, always with its sense of 'formal justification or explanation', and always in the singular. If Shakespearean characters want to apologise, in the modern sense of 'regret', they say such things as I cry you mercy. The OED has no examples of plural usage until quite modern times.
This suggests to me a pragmatic explanation, focussing on the 'century of manners'. The 18th century strikes me as being the time when people might have felt one apology wasn't enough, so they really went in for pluralizing it. The sense of 'regret' was strong by then, as can be seen several times in Boswell's Life of Johnson - 'Johnson walked away to dinner there, leaving me by myself without any apology; I wondered at this want of that facility of manners'. But there are no plurals in the Life.
An early instance of the plural use is in Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726): 'at last he plainly invited me, though with some apologies, to be surgeon of the ship'. By the time Jane Austen was writing, at the end of the century, it was common, as this example from Pride and Prejudice illustrates: 'Her ladyship, with great condescension, arose to receive them; and as Mrs. Collins had settled it with her husband that the office of introduction should be hers, it was performed in a proper manner, without any of those apologies and thanks which he would have thought necessary'. By the time Dickens was writing, fifty years later, it was found with ironic uses too. Bleak House, for instance, shows both the regular use and the ironic one. 'With all apologies for intruding...', says Mr Bucket. And we are told that Mr Weevle 'who is a handy good-for-nothing kind of young fellow, borrows a needle and thread of Miss Flite and a hammer of his landlord and goes to work devising apologies for window-curtains, and knocking up apologies for shelves'.
So, I'm putting my money on the 18th century as the time when this usage became fashionable. I'd be interested to hear of anything earlier.
We keep upping the ante today, of course. A hundred apologies. A thousand apologies - the most popular usage, which has appeared as the title of a TV show, a music album, and more. Even a million apologies. And (especially since the economic crisis) a billion or trillion apologies.
The word apology has been around a long time. Shakespeare uses it half-a-dozen times, always with its sense of 'formal justification or explanation', and always in the singular. If Shakespearean characters want to apologise, in the modern sense of 'regret', they say such things as I cry you mercy. The OED has no examples of plural usage until quite modern times.
This suggests to me a pragmatic explanation, focussing on the 'century of manners'. The 18th century strikes me as being the time when people might have felt one apology wasn't enough, so they really went in for pluralizing it. The sense of 'regret' was strong by then, as can be seen several times in Boswell's Life of Johnson - 'Johnson walked away to dinner there, leaving me by myself without any apology; I wondered at this want of that facility of manners'. But there are no plurals in the Life.
An early instance of the plural use is in Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726): 'at last he plainly invited me, though with some apologies, to be surgeon of the ship'. By the time Jane Austen was writing, at the end of the century, it was common, as this example from Pride and Prejudice illustrates: 'Her ladyship, with great condescension, arose to receive them; and as Mrs. Collins had settled it with her husband that the office of introduction should be hers, it was performed in a proper manner, without any of those apologies and thanks which he would have thought necessary'. By the time Dickens was writing, fifty years later, it was found with ironic uses too. Bleak House, for instance, shows both the regular use and the ironic one. 'With all apologies for intruding...', says Mr Bucket. And we are told that Mr Weevle 'who is a handy good-for-nothing kind of young fellow, borrows a needle and thread of Miss Flite and a hammer of his landlord and goes to work devising apologies for window-curtains, and knocking up apologies for shelves'.
So, I'm putting my money on the 18th century as the time when this usage became fashionable. I'd be interested to hear of anything earlier.
We keep upping the ante today, of course. A hundred apologies. A thousand apologies - the most popular usage, which has appeared as the title of a TV show, a music album, and more. Even a million apologies. And (especially since the economic crisis) a billion or trillion apologies.
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
On anacolutha
A correspondent writes to draw attention to this sentence:
The table was covered with objects, although once he removed the books, he was able to drag it to the centre of the room.
He asks: can a subordinating conjunction be used to connect the complex sentence beginning with once to the preceding simple sentence or can only a coordinating conjunction join compound-complex sentences? He suggests this alternative:
The table was covered with objects, but once he removed the books, he was able to drag it to the centre of the room.
The use of 'although', in cases like this, is certainly common in spontaneous speech. What we have is technically described as an anacoluthon, defined (eg by the OED) as 'a construction lacking grammatical sequence'. Such sentences work semantically, but at the expense of syntax, because they usually omit a required element. What's missing here is something like
The table was covered with objects, but this wasn't a problem because, once he removed the books, he was able to drag it to the centre of the room.
Anacolutha are able to occur because they rely on our semantic or contextual awareness to allow us to make short cuts in grammar. They're very frequent in spontaneous speech. There's no problem understanding such sentences, of course. There's no ambiguity. But they're frowned upon in formal writing, where (in the above example) the coordinate conjunction would be recommended. Many of the strictures in Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage are against anacolutha of this kind.
No traditional grammar handles them - and even linguistic grammars pay scant attention to them. The realization that the grammar of speech is very different from the grammar of writing has become a big thing, over the past 50 years, but anacolutha remain one of the neglected areas of grammatical investigation. This is a shame, as they're so common in speech. I've just spent a mind-numbing few days listening over and over to a series of lectures I recorded last year, in order to write a commentary on them for a book/DVD package which Routledge are publishing in May this year, called The Future of Language. Because these were spontaneous performances, without written notes or an Obaman autocue, they contain several anacolutha. I draw attention to them in the commentary. Interestingly, the firm contracted to add the sub-titles regularized many of them, so that they conformed to written English norms. I had to change them back. WYS (in the sub-titles) IWYG.
The table was covered with objects, although once he removed the books, he was able to drag it to the centre of the room.
He asks: can a subordinating conjunction be used to connect the complex sentence beginning with once to the preceding simple sentence or can only a coordinating conjunction join compound-complex sentences? He suggests this alternative:
The table was covered with objects, but once he removed the books, he was able to drag it to the centre of the room.
The use of 'although', in cases like this, is certainly common in spontaneous speech. What we have is technically described as an anacoluthon, defined (eg by the OED) as 'a construction lacking grammatical sequence'. Such sentences work semantically, but at the expense of syntax, because they usually omit a required element. What's missing here is something like
The table was covered with objects, but this wasn't a problem because, once he removed the books, he was able to drag it to the centre of the room.
Anacolutha are able to occur because they rely on our semantic or contextual awareness to allow us to make short cuts in grammar. They're very frequent in spontaneous speech. There's no problem understanding such sentences, of course. There's no ambiguity. But they're frowned upon in formal writing, where (in the above example) the coordinate conjunction would be recommended. Many of the strictures in Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage are against anacolutha of this kind.
No traditional grammar handles them - and even linguistic grammars pay scant attention to them. The realization that the grammar of speech is very different from the grammar of writing has become a big thing, over the past 50 years, but anacolutha remain one of the neglected areas of grammatical investigation. This is a shame, as they're so common in speech. I've just spent a mind-numbing few days listening over and over to a series of lectures I recorded last year, in order to write a commentary on them for a book/DVD package which Routledge are publishing in May this year, called The Future of Language. Because these were spontaneous performances, without written notes or an Obaman autocue, they contain several anacolutha. I draw attention to them in the commentary. Interestingly, the firm contracted to add the sub-titles regularized many of them, so that they conformed to written English norms. I had to change them back. WYS (in the sub-titles) IWYG.
Saturday, 31 January 2009
On not writing a book
There is a book reviewed in today's Guardian called Shakespeare on Toast, and if you look carefully you will see the paper says it is by me. Read on: 'a matey attempt to make Shakespeare relevant... Crystal, who is also an actor, paints in a lot of useful context... Crystal ends up admirably succeeding in his ambition to provide a toolbox for getting to grips with Shakespeare's plays'.
What a nice review. But people who know me must be a bit puzzled by this point. Matey? Actor? That doesn't sound quite right. And indeed, alas, no. The Guardian, once again, has lived up to its Grauniad reputation. The book was written by son Ben. You can see more about it at his website Shakespeare on Toast .
I know life is one long battle to stay ahead of your kids, but this is taking things a bit far. Ah well, maybe Ben will get his revenge one day. I expect the Guardian will assign my autobiography to him, in due course.
What a nice review. But people who know me must be a bit puzzled by this point. Matey? Actor? That doesn't sound quite right. And indeed, alas, no. The Guardian, once again, has lived up to its Grauniad reputation. The book was written by son Ben. You can see more about it at his website Shakespeare on Toast .
I know life is one long battle to stay ahead of your kids, but this is taking things a bit far. Ah well, maybe Ben will get his revenge one day. I expect the Guardian will assign my autobiography to him, in due course.
Sunday, 25 January 2009
On holding a speech
An English teacher from Germany writes to ask: 'Do you hold a speech or give a speech'. He adds: 'I could have sworn it was give, but people claim to have seen hold a speech in newspapers'.
Indeed you will - and on the internet too, as you'll quickly discover if you type hold a/the speech into a search engine. What's interesting about these cases is that an adverbial of place or time seems to be obligatory. It's usually a place adverbial:
Obama will hold acceptance speech at football stadium with more seats.
Students hold free speech rally at Danish consulate.
Canadians Hold Free Speech Rally in Toronto.
Merkel opposed the Obama campaign's initial plan to hold the speech at the Brandenburg Gate.
the decision to hold the speech at Invesco was made two months ago.
Sometimes it's a time adverbial:
Sayyed Nasrallah to Hold Speech on Resistance Day.
And sometimes it's both:
Professor David Ray Griffin will hold a speech on 8 September 2006 in the Tropeninstituut in Amsterdam.
By contrast, give a speech is the norm when the focus is non-specific or where the adverbial gives further information about the topic.
Mike gave an excellent speech.
She gave a speech on the environment.
And of course, we can add adverbials of place or time to this:
Mike gave an excellent speech on the environment on Friday last at the Planetarium.
So the generalization seems to be something like this: give a speech is the more general usage; but hold a speech can be used where the focus is explicitly on the event rather than on the subject-matter. Without this focus, I find the usage dubious:
Mike held an excellent speech.
I think I could only use this if I meant 'the arrangements Mike made for the speech were excellent' - analogous to 'Mike held a meeting to talk about the environment' , 'I held a party and nobody came' (The Bee Gees), and so on. I'd be interested to know if others share this feeling.
Indeed you will - and on the internet too, as you'll quickly discover if you type hold a/the speech into a search engine. What's interesting about these cases is that an adverbial of place or time seems to be obligatory. It's usually a place adverbial:
Obama will hold acceptance speech at football stadium with more seats.
Students hold free speech rally at Danish consulate.
Canadians Hold Free Speech Rally in Toronto.
Merkel opposed the Obama campaign's initial plan to hold the speech at the Brandenburg Gate.
the decision to hold the speech at Invesco was made two months ago.
Sometimes it's a time adverbial:
Sayyed Nasrallah to Hold Speech on Resistance Day.
And sometimes it's both:
Professor David Ray Griffin will hold a speech on 8 September 2006 in the Tropeninstituut in Amsterdam.
By contrast, give a speech is the norm when the focus is non-specific or where the adverbial gives further information about the topic.
Mike gave an excellent speech.
She gave a speech on the environment.
And of course, we can add adverbials of place or time to this:
Mike gave an excellent speech on the environment on Friday last at the Planetarium.
So the generalization seems to be something like this: give a speech is the more general usage; but hold a speech can be used where the focus is explicitly on the event rather than on the subject-matter. Without this focus, I find the usage dubious:
Mike held an excellent speech.
I think I could only use this if I meant 'the arrangements Mike made for the speech were excellent' - analogous to 'Mike held a meeting to talk about the environment' , 'I held a party and nobody came' (The Bee Gees), and so on. I'd be interested to know if others share this feeling.
Sunday, 18 January 2009
On a disappearing dialect
Philip Holland has sent me a copy of his book Words of the White Peak. The subtitle explains: 'the disappearing dialect of a Derbyshire village'. I've talked about the importance of documenting dialects in this blog before, so I'm happy to bring it to the attention of readers.
The village is Earl Sterndale, just south of Buxton, in the Peak District. He was a dairy and sheep farmer for some 40 years, but the book describes him as many other things besides - hotelier, pianist, poet, and now lexicographer. The present collection came out of a three-year course in creative writing as a mature student at the Devonshire campus of Derby University in Buxton. It's never too late to become a lexicographer!
Dialect studies always start small and then grow fast. In the end Philip interviewed over 150 people to get all the words and phrases which form his dictionary. But, as he says in his introduction, it's more than a dictionary: it's also a memoir of his life and work on his farm. Many of the words are local farming words, such as beldering, for the bellowing of a bull, or blareting, for the bleating of a sheep. But there are also several general words, such as crozzled 'dried-out, burnt up, withered', and discourse phrases, such as choose 'ow (i.e. 'how'), added to a sentence to reinforce inevitability - 'the outcome would be the same whatever you did'.
You have to be careful, when you're reading a dialect book about a particular area. The words it contains simply illustrate what is used in that area. It doesn't mean that they're all unique to that area. Several of the words used in Earl Sterndale are found in other dialects of the British Isles, such as cack-handed 'clumsy', chuntering 'mumbling disagreeably', and nous, 'common sense'.
Dialects always overlap in this way. What we see in Earl Sterndale is a unique constellation of usages, some local to the area and some part of a wider dialect community. Every village would probably have its own voiceprint. The pity is that so few have been studied. Philip Holland's book shows what can be done.
You can find the book through Derbyshire bookshope, including shops on the Charsworth Estate and the Farming Life Centre in Blackwell, near Buxton, price £8.95. Also via the publisher, Anecdotes Publishing (www.anecdotespublishing.co.uk).
The village is Earl Sterndale, just south of Buxton, in the Peak District. He was a dairy and sheep farmer for some 40 years, but the book describes him as many other things besides - hotelier, pianist, poet, and now lexicographer. The present collection came out of a three-year course in creative writing as a mature student at the Devonshire campus of Derby University in Buxton. It's never too late to become a lexicographer!
Dialect studies always start small and then grow fast. In the end Philip interviewed over 150 people to get all the words and phrases which form his dictionary. But, as he says in his introduction, it's more than a dictionary: it's also a memoir of his life and work on his farm. Many of the words are local farming words, such as beldering, for the bellowing of a bull, or blareting, for the bleating of a sheep. But there are also several general words, such as crozzled 'dried-out, burnt up, withered', and discourse phrases, such as choose 'ow (i.e. 'how'), added to a sentence to reinforce inevitability - 'the outcome would be the same whatever you did'.
You have to be careful, when you're reading a dialect book about a particular area. The words it contains simply illustrate what is used in that area. It doesn't mean that they're all unique to that area. Several of the words used in Earl Sterndale are found in other dialects of the British Isles, such as cack-handed 'clumsy', chuntering 'mumbling disagreeably', and nous, 'common sense'.
Dialects always overlap in this way. What we see in Earl Sterndale is a unique constellation of usages, some local to the area and some part of a wider dialect community. Every village would probably have its own voiceprint. The pity is that so few have been studied. Philip Holland's book shows what can be done.
You can find the book through Derbyshire bookshope, including shops on the Charsworth Estate and the Farming Life Centre in Blackwell, near Buxton, price £8.95. Also via the publisher, Anecdotes Publishing (www.anecdotespublishing.co.uk).
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
On if and was/were
A correspondent writes from Poland about the use of was/were in conditional sentences. He was taught to say If I were, etc., and was advised that If I was, etc. was substandard. But he's noticed that grammars today seem to be saying the opposite. Some grammars say that was forms are normal and were forms are formal. Some say that the two forms are interchangeable. 'Are we in a sort of transitional period?', he asks. Maybe, he adds, were is used only in stock phrases, such as If I were you.
Yes, we have to get that one out of the way, for a start. There are a couple of expressions where the were is idiomatic - as it were is the clearest case, as it allows no substitution of was. Similarly, when the conditional is inverted, was isn't possible: I would like to go, were I not working. If I were you is slightly less fixed, as it's possible to say if I was you as an informal variant. This has become increasingly common in standard English over recent years, and it's the norm in many regional dialects. It isn't that if I were you is formal, though, in standard English; it's stylistically neutral.
This differs from the situation in the 3rd person singular, where the was form seems to be the neutral one these days, with were becoming more formal. But it's a grey area. I heard a discussion the other day which went something like this:
A If Jane was right for the part, I'd cast her.
B But that's the point. Is she right?
A Well if she were, I'd cast her, that's all I'm saying...
The stress fell heavily on were. If it weren't for the extra emphasis, one might say that here the two words were interchangeable. I suspect that A could just as easily have said If Jane were right.... On the other hand, I doubt whether A would have said, with emphasis, Well, if she was .... Phonological highlighting of the contrast seems to make a difference.
I'm not sure about this being a transitional period, though maybe the pace of change is hotting up. Usage issues of this kind were being discussed in Fowler, nearly a century ago. And indeed, you can trace uncertainty between was and were back several hundred years. What I think has happened is that the attitude of grammarians has changed. Formally they would give credence only to the formal options. Today they recognize that everyday usage includes both. A full discussion would need to recognize both a formal/informal contrast and a speech/writing contrast. Personally I (think I) use was as my norm in speech, reserving were for more formal contexts. In writing, I (think I) use were as my norm. I have to say 'think' as I don't use either all that often!
There's an excellent discussion of the various possibilities in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, pp. 86-8.
Yes, we have to get that one out of the way, for a start. There are a couple of expressions where the were is idiomatic - as it were is the clearest case, as it allows no substitution of was. Similarly, when the conditional is inverted, was isn't possible: I would like to go, were I not working. If I were you is slightly less fixed, as it's possible to say if I was you as an informal variant. This has become increasingly common in standard English over recent years, and it's the norm in many regional dialects. It isn't that if I were you is formal, though, in standard English; it's stylistically neutral.
This differs from the situation in the 3rd person singular, where the was form seems to be the neutral one these days, with were becoming more formal. But it's a grey area. I heard a discussion the other day which went something like this:
A If Jane was right for the part, I'd cast her.
B But that's the point. Is she right?
A Well if she were, I'd cast her, that's all I'm saying...
The stress fell heavily on were. If it weren't for the extra emphasis, one might say that here the two words were interchangeable. I suspect that A could just as easily have said If Jane were right.... On the other hand, I doubt whether A would have said, with emphasis, Well, if she was .... Phonological highlighting of the contrast seems to make a difference.
I'm not sure about this being a transitional period, though maybe the pace of change is hotting up. Usage issues of this kind were being discussed in Fowler, nearly a century ago. And indeed, you can trace uncertainty between was and were back several hundred years. What I think has happened is that the attitude of grammarians has changed. Formally they would give credence only to the formal options. Today they recognize that everyday usage includes both. A full discussion would need to recognize both a formal/informal contrast and a speech/writing contrast. Personally I (think I) use was as my norm in speech, reserving were for more formal contexts. In writing, I (think I) use were as my norm. I have to say 'think' as I don't use either all that often!
There's an excellent discussion of the various possibilities in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, pp. 86-8.
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