IS THERE A STANDARD ENGLISH?
WHAT MAKES A USAGE (UN)GRAMMATICAL
by Charles-James N. Bailey© 1996. 2001 by Orchid Land Publications
[updated 20020116, 20090411]
NOTE TO READERS: This page began long ago has grown unwieldly.
It should still prove useful, but the information on the exochronous modality
available on L.26 should not be ignored, since it shows how far current
grammar books have gone astray--calling a modality that can never be a
simple present or even a tense a "simple present tense." [20090411]
SEE ALSO L26
[NB: The grammatical points in the following are based on research published by Oxford University Press in my Essays on time-based linguistic analysis (1996)--abbreviated ETBLA in the following; much or most of this information is found in a later version of ETBLA, especially Chh. 5-6; see the book's index.Standardizing a language requires a standardizer, as in the case of many European languages, whose speakers mistakenly believe this to be the case of all languages. This belief not seldom leads to egregious errors and expressions like "To whom she gave it was about what we were speaking," "From where did they leave?" (contrast correct relative-clause from where), and "He asked about from what part of the world they came." Pragmatically, must is not right--it sounds impolite--where hafta or 've gotta is more native-like--with the proper rule-governed assimilations. There is a difference between doesn't needa and the admonitory tone of need not. There are English-teachers abroad who are unaware of the fact that non-auxiliary have takes do-SUPPORT, but nevertheless contend they are teaching "standard" English. If you ask them who standardized it, they will mention some fantasy.
The cure is not to go to the opposite extreme of thinking usage wins--whatever people say is ex hypothesi correct. The idea that "usage determines correctness" is quackery of the first water, equal to the bankruptcy of supposing that specifying what is correct takes away one's freedom to speak any way one wishes--the freedom to be wrong. Two reason can be offered for saying the preceding. On the practical side, if you vary far from the grammar (saying "John ate a rabbit" to mean "A rabbit ate John"), communications breaks down. On the theoretical side, a grammar is the tightest and most complex system any human ever masters. If systematicity is not taken into consideration in determining matters of correctness, the determination is fatally flawed--and the direction of natural change will be wrongly predicted.
There will always be those who are convinced by reason and those who reject reason in favor of the "popular" route of doing what oth- ers do. While there is no doubt that prestige is an important element in acceptability, an educated person should have the gumption to follow those who know what they are doing, not those who are ignorant of the principles of language. Those who pronounce gigabytes or gynecology with a hard "g" violate the system . . . and would do so even if they pronounced giant and gigantic with a hard "g" for the minor consistency; for that would remain inconsistent with larger principles of English--its sound system, how the properly education pronounce words borrowed from Greek and Latin, etc. There is no point in arguing this with those who incline to "what others do" and are immune to reason. The intellectual gulf between the educated and miseducated and the uneducated is too great. The uneducated cannot help their plight; the miseducated will seldom change, not least because of the gulf between a list mentality and a systematic outlook. Arguments between Anne Thrax and Ricq Dorqson will avail no more than discussions with Dally Dalrymple, Dilly Dilworth, or Cara Korum. Suppose someone splits up have got . . . to or used . . . to (useta) with an adverbial while entertaining no doubts about the "standardness" of what they say. Never mind what real educated native-speakers say. Contrast the actually occurrent *"I have not too much money" with a native-speaker's "I haven't got" or "I don't have much money"; contrast "We used in those days to smoke in restaurants." Examples like "She was used to say that"--which was said by Thackeray and Dickens, but not in this century by normal native-speakers--for "She useta say that" or, with a different sense, "She was used to sayin' that" (with [t] for -ed in both)?
Aren't foreigners still taught an obsolete pronunciation of were--like ware and wear, rhyming with there--as "standard"? (It is still current in "Keltic" varieties, but for reasons that have got nothing to do with "non-Keltic" English.) Think of the lexical errors sanctioned by (irrefragable) dictionaries--false friends like learn (German erlernen, at least when not in the progressive modality) for study, cash (German Kasse, as in the absurd, "Go to the cash" for cashier['s] window, and many more--all "standard" for not a few foreigners. The boundaries between come and go are different in English in German; and "man" in the senses of "adult male" and "humanity" are separate words in many languages. There are many such examples that different languages treat differently. Where English distinguishes thinking "of" from thinking "about" from the use of think meaning "regard," other languages may have single verbs for all three senses. Some languages do not distinguish foot and leg, though they may distinguish things that English does not distinguish. Ancient Greek does not distinguish the semantic territory of many psychological terms the way English does.
What does a linguist mean when s/he says that something "explains" a grammatical construct or analysis? This can best be answered with an example from ETBLA. You can hear the following: --It was/is important that Sal not tell anyone about this.
--It is important that Sal doesn't tell anyone about this.(The second example uses the exochronous--the "new English subjunctive.") The first example in the foregoing pair requires several things to be explained in the subordinate clause. (Note in passing, that "tell" in the foregoing examples has all of the earmarks of an infinitive: It is not inflected; it lacks do-support when negated; etc.) Things that need to be ACCOUNTED FOR include at least the following: (i) why a form of do is lacking; (ii) why "tell" is used rather than "tells"; (iii) why there is no sequencing of the time form; and (iv) why we sometimes say "shouldn't tell."
If we assume that "SHOULD not tell" is the first example and that it can (like a dozen other grammatical forms)* be omitted in certain contexts--in this example, in clauses depending on expressions of importance and propriety and of volition and necessity--then everything falls into place and the foregoing otherwise inexplicable points are duly accounted for. There is a virtual SHOULD in "It was/is important that Sal SHOULD not tell anyone about this."
For the explanation in terms of the English system and a general theoretical principle, see the index of ETBLA under: should (dubitative, factual). See also optional should-DELETION (instead of the mythical "subjunctive" in the inferior grammars) in "He insisted that we [should] not be late." The environments for this are given in the booklets cited on this page and in ETBLA on p. 238.
Since should-DELETION cannot apply in the context in which the rules of IF-deletion and the fronting of certain auxiliary and modal verbs to the place of If (as in "Should Sal not tell . . . "), there is no ordering problem. But in the situation of IF-deletion, it is obvious that the fronting of should, etc., has got to follow IF-deletion. So time (if even only virtual time for some analysts) has to be included in an explanatory grammar.
--------------------------------------
*Two examples of a deletion that are accompanied by a word-order reversal, viz. subject-verb-reversal.Cf. IF they should leave early, . . . : Should they leave early, . . .
MAY/LET glory be to those martyrs : Glory be to those
martyrs!Note that in the longer form of the second of the foregoing examples (the version with "may"), may has got a totally different sense from its sense in "Those martyrs may be glorified at the service tomorrow."
Grammatical explanation must also include time (virtual time, if one adheres to many going theories of language-analysis). In most varieties of English, internuclear //t// becomes [d] before an un- stressed vowel--as in matter. But this happens only in conversatio- nal tempos; the rule does not apply in real time when one is speaking slowly or emphatically. There are varieties of English in which the vowel in madder is changed but not in matter--even when //t// changes to [d]. This brings in a somewhat more cogent view of real time. The marked order of two rules would be:
(i) Change of //a//. (The change can be of various sorts, depending
on the variety.)
(ii) Change of //t// to [d].
In faster tempos, the rules would change to the unmarked order, with the change of //t// to [d] preceding the vowel change. In that event matter would sound like madder.
For a vast number of rule-order changes in English, see the writer's "Variation resulting from different rule orderings in English phonology" in Bailey & Shuy (eds.), New ways of analyzing variation in English (Georgetown University Press, 1973, pp.211-252; one or more examples of rule threesomes are included, though most examples deal with a pair of rules.) Rule ordering and re-ordering (to unmarked order) is an essential of a good grammatical description. Most of the examples come from phonetology, but there are others affecting syntax and morphology. (See should-DELETION above, even though there is no unmarking of the ordering of the rule in question.)The temporal dimension cannot be omitted in an explanataory grammar, even if some insist that it's only virtual time in analysis. In real-time usage, there can be no dispute. But time does not only play an application rôle here; it is the historical cause of any marked ordering, in the sense that a later rule (in a marked ordering; this is usually the relation of two or three rules) developed in the language later than the prior rule(s).
Think of teachers who do not know why the exochronous-anterior can have a definite time, whereas the the present-anterior cannot. On the anecdotal level (and only slightly relevant to the foregoing), one once heard a BBC announcer try to divide useta: He came up with "uset a week ago to [do that]"!
The concept of "standard" blocks useful learning; some young Europeans and Asians living in an English-speaking country learn, after a certain time, to imitate the natives. They recognize that "standard" often means, "The more archaic, the better; the more up-to-date, the worse!" But there are those who believe their teachers about a standard English. This belief negates the ability of some students taking a year off to live in Britain, Ireland, North America, or Down Under, or South Africa to listen to English with much gain on the production side. The deprivation is not minor. One can relate stories of how every deviation from the pre-taught "standard" gets rejected as non-standard, so that time spent in the English-speaking countries goes for nought. How naughty!
The wealthier the country where the non-native-speaker studies, the worse are the effects of the concept of a "standard" on learning English. For wealthy countries write their own textbooks (disdaining those written by native-speakers); they can afford to translate books and the sound tracks of movies. Poorer, or just smaller, countries lacking such "advantages" send their students abroad with greater success. But the Swedes and Dutch often still use the archaic shall as the default posterior modality; think how it sounded when the pilot of a Dutch plane said, "We shall land shortly"!--one could only wonder what emergency was occurring.
What errant teachers should do is read how Sir James Murray, the lifetime editor of the great Oxford English Dictionary (whose operational editors have been mostly non-English) definitively rejected the notion of a single standard. They should also read the Preface that Daniel Jones wrote for his pronunciation dictionary--against the idea of a standard (he even notes that some of his own pronunciations are not listed first in his own dictionary!). Samuel Johnson, the author of the first important dictionary of English, had long since pointed out how alien the ideas of an academy and a standard language are to the the mentality of an English person--and indeed those living in what we now call Anglo-Keltic culture. He omitted pronunciations altogether--on the grounds that the important people he listened to spoke differently--particularly with regard to "ea" in beat. (Of course, the monarch could not be a standard even for the British, because she is too isolated from the way English is really spoken.)
While all of the foregoing is self-evident to any native speaker of English, even native-speaking sociolinguists are great propagators of the idea of a standard English: Those who should know most about this actually perpetrate the error. It is far from unknown for some of them to treat this or that variety of English as a deviant from their own speech--instead of properly looking for a pan-English underlying representation for them all. But their minilectal framework and premises of course rule the latter out of court. (Some writers have been so fanciful [to put it more mildly than it deserves] as to speak of "standard" or even "standardized" Middle English or Anglo-Saxon--which latter they erroneously term "Old English"; see discussion in chap. 10 of Essays on time-based linguistic analysis.) Native-speaking teachers of "standard" English have even been heard to blindly, or rather deafly, translate German phrases (Stadt/Universitaet Berlin "City/University OF Berlin") without the dummy-of that English (and French) require(s).
Variation in the data, pp. 152-154 discusses the notion of a standard English and the DICTIONARY SUPERSTITION--the idea that dictionaries of English are prescriptive standardizers rather than descriptions of cultivated and colloquial usages; several other writings by the same author make similar points in varying ways. When the dictionaries of other languages mistranslate English words, the dictionary superstition will quell all doubters. How can one not believe that dictionaries are inerrant (except for typos) in any country in which a dictionary standardizes, indeed defines, good usage?
It is an error to regard as "slurred" speech the regular changes of underlying sounds that occur in normal speaking; e.g. dropping "t" in Christmas and mostly and "d" in windmill and landmine; changing "th" to a fronted "s" in moths, which does not rhyme with moss; deleting "t" in plenty but keeping it in warranty; changing underlying //d// to [b] in "I'd been" and goodbye; dropping //v// of 've and unstressed of in certain environments; etc.--there are sixty to eighty such rules in different kinds of English. Mimicking the orthography is no criterion of correct pronunciation. If you don't drop the "t" in soften, often, moisten (but not piston), mustn't, etc., you are being "unruly" with regard to the system of English--and that is the foremost way of telling whether a usage is correct or not. There are many quite natural sound changes that cultivated speakers make in normal speech which they suppress in more formal (monitored) styles to make the output more like what linguists call the "underlying representation" of a word--which is often more like the orthography. We gotta is ruly for formal "We've got to"; and We been there is ruly for slightly more formal "We'b been," more formal "We'd been," and most formal "We had been." It is wholly proper and correct to let the natural sound laws work as far as cultivated usage allows them to; going further results in sloppy enunciation.
A linguist would put it this way: We have styles in which progressively added rules (sound changes) apply that yield outputs progressively farther from the underlying representation.
What makes a grammatical usage correct or not depends on the system--which is anything but just an incoherent listing of usages. This can be shown with the infinitive. Consider the invented "rule" that you cannot insert anything between a to and the verb that it serves as an operator to, making it an infinitive (even though to gets deleted in various contexts--with a difference in force in the case of need and dare; to is deleted with ought and help when they are in marked [negative, interrogative] contexts; and an infinitive complementing causative make is present only when the infinitive is well separated from make by a largish number of structures--in the contrast between "They made us sing it" with "They made all of us who were new members of the club to sing it."). Actually, to is parallel with have and had in forming anterior modalities (e.g. "they have just done it, we had carefully prepared it, they had all read it"); with be going to and will in forming posteriors (e.g. "it's soon gonna be ready, that'll probably be ready by tomorrow"); with be and get in forming passive modalities (e.g. " it was suddenly disrupted, it got quickly clarified"); with modal verbs like can and may in forming expressions like "can never say so, may suddenly appear"; etc. Since to and these other operators are parallel and functionally similar, forbidding the insertion of an adverb between to makes no more sense that forbidding expressions like "have already done," "is now being watched," and the like. (CLICK HERE for more on the role of system in correctness) The system is what counts, but many grammarians have list (inventory) mentalities rather than an ability to think in terms of retiform systems.
Consider further that we sometimes use to and sometimes omit to with an infinitive that complements help. Which is "correct"? Keeping it is correct in some places, dropping it is incorrect in "modal" environments (negation, interrogation, comparison). Ought, need, and dare are parallel, or rather even more stringently systematic, the system of English being such that a small class of verbs (transvestite modals) functions this way. Except for the frozen usage of yore ("I dare not do it"), we distinguish modal and non-modal uses of ought, dare, and need in modal environments. We therefore assign different senses to "they don't need to do it" and "they needn't do it" (which brings in volition--advice, warning, or the like). Different forces are felt in "Do they dare to resist?" and "Daren't they resist at all?" Such contrasts are of course absent in unmarked (default) contexts. Those whose say "Dare we stay?" or "They oughtn't do that" would not say *"We dare stay" or *"They ought do that."
Authors of sometimes expensive grammars who have got little inkling of the true system of English and grammar columnists of like background will tell you that English has got a "subjunctive" (evidently because Anglo-Saxon had one. CLICK HERE to see the correct analysis of that.) As for the reason why many cultivated speakers switch from her and me in "They saw her" and "They saw me" to she and I in "They saw she and I"--as well as from I in "I did it" to myself (or uncultivated me) in "Joe and myself (me) did it"--is made clear in the booklet which can be brought up by CLICKING HERE AND HERE. See also other grammar pages on this website. Grammar columnists who write atrocities like "the one whom we thought had done it" and "gave it to whomever wanted it" reveal an absence of systematic knowledge about whom in current English and get confused by trying to follow supposititious rules in grammar books. They can hardly tell you why cultivated speakers say who, rather than whom, in "He told who?" and "He wondered who they'd been speaking of." They might even have you say "He wondered about of whom she had been speaking" and other grotesqueries (about which I've written enough in the linguistic literature; for some details, CLICK HERE.)
[I am grateful to Mark Swearingen for raising issues that have led me to insert the preceding four paragraphs. I am preparing a lengthier treatment in a forthcoming book on grammar to be issued by Orchid Land Publications on CD-ROM.]
It is obvious that no single pronunciation dictionary can be valid for English-speakers who use the rainbow of styles available to every native-speaker. Aside from that, there are lectal differences. For some, four (and fore) rhyme with stressed for; for others, for does not rhyme with four and fore. Some rhyme for with far, while some reverse the two pronunciations relatively to what most of us say. Those with vested interests in standing out as gurus of English (however poor their linguistic training and background in modern theory) promote the false notion of a standard. If pinned down, most could not tell you what makes this or that grammatical or ungrammatical (in any language). The appeal to "usage" is sometimes made; but, on the one hand, not all usages are good and some are so rare and marginal as to be hard to clarify. On the other hand, rejecting the usage of a substantial number of "good" speakers poses grave problems. Some British and American scholars even speak of "standard X English" where X refers to a country other than their own, one that they clearly have got only a shallow, scant acquaintance with.
It is of interest that the author of one pronunciation dictionary of Southern British mentioned that he does not speak "standard English"; and that several grammarians from other parts of Great Britain than England, as well as some phoneticians from England, concede pretty much the same thing. (Since there is no "standard English," how could anyone speak it? But for that matter, as has been claimed by German scholars in a position to know, no German conversationally speaks "standard High German" exactly the way Duden defines its grammar and pronunciation.) When it comes to dividing words at the end of a line, the English principles (so different from the basic principles of many European languages ancient and contemporary) are simply beyond the pale for non-native teachers of English, at least according to knowledgeable observers.
Not many English grammarians today have never heard of preteritive verbs (in Greek and Latin) like English "'ve got" for "possess," etc. There are those that think that intensifier adverbs routinely need -ly. Such people do not understand why "pretty ugly," "right incorrect," "bloody neat," "jolly sad," etc. are not contradictory and are indeed good English. (What of "sore afraid" in the 1611 New Testament? Contrast very with archaic verily; contrast current exceedingly with older exceeding). Intensifier adverbs express a high degree of some quality. It is passing strange (note the intensifier passing without -ly!) to be ignorant of the facts: "Most tragic" does not mean "mostly tragic," nor is "just condemned" the same as "justly condemned." "Rightly done" is not the same as "right done" in "The turkey in the oven is right done now." Being "plain stupid" is not the same as being "plainly stupid"; and being "real special" is different from being "really (and truly) special." "Flatly wrong" for "flat wrong" would be bizarre. Although we can say "sooner" and "soonest," there is no "soonly." Contrast the adverbs in "She pretty/prettily thin," “It’s sure/ surely hidden,” "It's hardly done because it's hard to do." “They swim good” (with good instead of well), is common enough in normal English. Is it a quasi-intensifier here—as is proper in “They got proper angry”? I've heard "flat" used as an intensifier in "flat wrong." So when someone mis-corrects you for saying "It's sure hidden" or for saying "They'll win good/bad," you should know how to deal with the problem.
Malory even used be to as an (infinitive) complement to a preceding main verb; Shakespeare said (in the modern manner--in non-interrogatives, of course) There's followed by a plural subject/complement; and the 1611 Bible writes "Whom say ye that [!] I am?" with whom as a predicate complement! Think of those who try putting a prepositional phrase or whom at the beginning of an indirect question . . . or, systematically worse, fail to understand which clause a preposition belongs to when they say, "I gave the payment to whomever delivered the goods." (See further my article, "Where English cannot put the preposition before a relative or interrogative pronoun," in G. Leitner (ed.), The English reference grammar [Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag (1986), pp. 156-177.) It is not hard to find among today's grammar gurus examples of something like "They wondered about whom probably did it"--an example they would have to regard, by their own "standards," as wrong. One of them has written (more than once) whom in a context like "the one whom they said did that." So far from understanding that the English case system of personal and WH-pronouns is more Romance-like than Germanic (or Latinate), they would reject utterances by highly educated and cultivated speakers like "Jocq and myself'll do it" and "to she and I" (on which CLICK HERE)--not to speak of traditional "than whom." So much for the facts.
Given the factual untruth of much of what has been said about "standard English," it is naturally beyond the powers of many foreigners (in cultures vastly different from ours) to conceive how there can be good English, bad English, etc.--i.e. how a native-speaker knows that what is being said is "good English" or not. This is one of the first problems that a TEFL person needs to address. Of course, it presupposes that one has recognized the problem in the first place; this is not often so. But a beginning can be made by ascertaining that Europeans don't see how you can know whether something is correct if the thing has not been standardized--which of course requires a standardizer--an academy, a Duden, or some self-appointed guru. If one does not know the answer, one may need some personal re-toolin'!
Even so, there will be disputes, e.g. over "to she and I" (on which see the link to information on pronoun forms). One misconception that many erroneous pronouncements about English are based on is the idea that English is a lineal descendent from Anglo-Saxon and is therefore "Germanic." Never mind that the system is demonstrably Romance in telling ways--at least if you avoid being misled by Anglo-Saxon calques on Old French functors and structures . . . and have an up-to-date understanding of how new languages come into being. You are not convinced? Well, some will never be open to an idea that is different from one already entertained. But contrast how German and French would render "a very long table" and "a table longer by three meters" and ask whether the French syntax would have been "borrowable" by everyday speakers of early Middle English. (French parallels English, while at least modern German would have the equivalent of "the by three meters longer Table.") Whom may come from Anglo-Saxon, but Middle English originally had "the which" like French laquelle. Besides, wham was a dative in Anglo-Saxon. ETBLA explains how English calques French compound prepositions with Anglo-Saxon words; e.g. many uses of "for" become "for the sake of, instead of, in place of, because of," and others of Romance structure. You are not convinced? Be my guest! :))
Good English is what the propounders of a Standard English are really striving to get at in a misguided way (and despite caveats restricting the concept to syntax and/or lexicon). Not just any old way of speaking is good English; cultivated speakers recognize, at least in practical terms, what is bad English. The POINT is: There is, generally speaking, an acceptable way of dealing with the problems of correctness, acceptability, and what have you. But to get at good English, you have to know the distinctive aspects of Anglo-Keltic culture that make it so vastly different from European culture.
What are the criteria of good English? Certainly, one of the most important
|
Some systematizations that have not become generally accepted by good speakers or writers are analogies with accepted uses. Neglected analogies can be helpful in teach- ing. Take the misuses of proved : proven and those of may : might: |
|
|
Like rotted, proved is predicative (verb-like); like rotten,
are also attributive participles (as well as gerunds); the full forms are predicative. (See Why more English instruction won't mean better grammar [1992, p. 24]; see also ETBLA, pp. 170, 238.) |
Like could and would, might is conditional; like can and will, may is exochronous. Since conditionals are used (i) for doubtful (non-expectative) predications and (ii) or past- posteriors in subordinate clauses depending on a main clause whose predicate is past, may is not more correct than can or will would be in "She's assuming that in that untoward event, her candidate probably might/could/would not be accepted" or in "He thought that his candidate may/can/will be admitted." On the other hand, one does NOT pray "that health might be bestowed on [NAME]," as that would violate the verb system of English. May has positive overtones, whereas might has negative undertones. (NB: Should's four uses are no longer conditionals of shall.) |
| For four uses of into (defi- nitely not what the grammars say!), see ibid., p. 109. See many examples on this page! | |
|
Another fine analogy wrongly condemned by
grammarians who think that English should look like German or French is the
common usage of adding OF after these types of
words:
all of the adults present VS. all adults (cf. uncondemned all of them, some of them, none of them; grammars insist on all the adults present without of) off of, outside of, inside of, alongside of (cf. uncondemned out of, on top of, etc.; there is no beside of, but by the side of exists) |
|
|
Lie : lay. Lay has become a contraponent (verb passive in sense but active in form, like translates in "This book translates easily"), but set is intransitive only in uncultivated English. The last comment is true only of words referring to seating; when set refers, e.g., to what concrete does, it is quite acceptableSee the OLP booklet, Why more English instruction won't mean better grammar (1992, p. 9). |
To see how useful and easy virtual prepositions and other virtual particles are in grammar analysis, see the OLP booklet, How grammars of English have missed the boat (1997, pp. 10-11 of the 1st ed.; a 2d ed. is due to appear in 2002). |
| On the question of whether only "different FROM" is correct, as traditionally maintained, it should be noted that many now accept "different THAN" (on the analogy of "other than") and even "different TO" (on the analogy of "[dis]similar to." The usage with than is growing fastest. | For misconceptions about English intensifiers--manner adverbs lacking -ly--see the OLP booklet, Why more English instruction won't mean better grammar (1992, p. 8) and http://orlapubs.com/opL74.html |
is the system. If one cannot discern the system in the foregoing, then one should not be talking about--letting alone teaching--grammar. Since items in the language are generally not just things in a list but parts of a system, the POINT is: There is, generally speaking, an acceptable way of dealing with the problems of correctness, acceptability, and what have you. But to get at good English, you have to know the distinctive aspects of Anglo-Keltic culture that make it so vastly different from European culture.
Many grammars are ignorant of the way English case forms (like the conjunctive and disjunctive forms of French, though more systematically) reverse themselves in marked contexts--i.e. when conjoined (say, by and), when standing directly before a modifier (e.g. relative clause, prepositional phrase) or appositive, or otherwise (cf. the Queens' "for we British" and examples from a prime minister in Why grammar of English have missed the boat, p. 1). In the example, "Someone--probably me--will read it" (written by a federal judge), me is used instead of I because it is set off from the verb it goes with.
The natural "him and me" (as in the British speech of the literary legend, Adrian Mole; see ETBLA, p. 331; cf. p. 152) or "Mary and me" (cf. lui/Marie moi) is usually fudged by educated speakers thus: "Mary and myself arrived late." The personal pronoun system has two forms, though (like French elle) the two are identical in the case of it, you, y'all, and one). We can call them light and heavy (default in unmarked uses) or any other terms one wishes:
Light: it, she, he, they, you, y'all, I, we (one)
Heavy: it, her, him, them, you, y'all, me, us (one)
Absolutes are notable in not differentiating over-marked conjoined pronouns: "They being ready, we left," "She and he being ready, we left." More systematic would be "Her and him being ready, ..." The heavy forms are used in unmarked environments where the light forms are not used there, viz. for unmarked subjects--that is, those not conjoined or qualified as explained above. The light forms are replaced by the heavy forms, and conversely, in marked environments.
There is a system in all of this, one that is hardly different from that of French, that English grammars fail to discern. French grammarians have done a much better job with the pronouns and with the description of the tenses compounded with their equivalent of English "have." But as exochronounous uses are not distin- guished from non-exochronous uses in French, English is sufficiently more complicated to puzzle non-native speakers over when a definite time can and may not be used with present-anteriors in, e.g., "She has (always) done it at midnight."I recently heard "It was John and I" by someone who would not say "It was I" but rather the normal English "It was me." "I" would be even more likely in "It was John and I who did it."
Since speakers of English generally avoid putting the pronoun I or me before a second- or third-person pronoun in conjoined pronouns, examples like "for I and she" are not attested. Special rules apply to whom, whose use is very limited among educated speakers, though the half-educated will persist in saying "the one whom she said was to finish that job," "We knew whom they had sent," "They wondered about from whom/where it had been sent, and "He asked about what he had been thinking"--whether about belongs to the first or the second clause--either way. We do not say "about what" or "about whom" or "from where" in indirect questions. We say, "I wonder who they talked about" and "I told you who saw who," and "I asked about who was speaking with who." To see why the ending 's does not form a case, let alone a "possessive" case, see my OLP book, Variation in the data: can linguistics ever become a science? [1992, pp. 104-108]. Note examples like "the one that I bought it for's work" and see the example heard on TV in ETBLA, p. 200: "Don and I's baby." For reversals of the passivizing auxiliaries (be : get), see the author's Variation in the data, p. 86-89 and ETBLA, pp. 224-229. For the way the unmarked and marked posteriors reversed themselves in early Modern English and how they do it today, see ETBLA, pp. 216-230.
For reversals of by and until that foreigners have such difficulty with, see ETBLA, pp. 187-191. Note that although the three main uses of should are irrealis (certain not referring to an existing fact), this gets reversed in "We were surprised (or: "disgusted") that they should be acting like that"--which is said only when the that-clause mentions a fact. If you grammar cannot explain that, you can be assured of its ineptness.
Since items in the language are generally not just things in a list but parts of a system, POINT is: There is, generally speaking, an acceptable way of dealing with the problems of correctness, acceptability, and what have you. But to get at good English, you have to know the distinctive aspects of Anglo-Keltic culture that make it so vastly different from European culture.
What are the criteria of good English? Certainly, one of the most important is the system. (Of course some systematizations (analogies) are not accepted by good speakers or writers.) Since items in the language are generally not just things in a list but parts of a system, POINT is: There is, generally speaking, an acceptable way of dealing with the problems of correctness, acceptability, and what have you. But to get at good English, you have to know the distinctive aspects of Anglo-Keltic culture that make it so vastly different from European culture.
What are the criteria of good English? Certainly, one of the most important is the system. (Of course some systematizations (analogies) are not accepted by good speakers or writers.) Since items in the language are generally not just things in a list but parts of a system, the system should be respected. We change "g" in analogy or analogical from what it is in analogous because of the following vowel difference. (Cf. the earlier discussion of gigantic, gigabyte, androgynous, and gynecology, where the role of the vowel-lightening morphophonological rule of English in the last example was not dwelled on as much as the pronunciation of "g.") Just as we change the second "i" in divine : divinity, so should the "y" in the last pair be changed; therefore, the first syllable of gynecology and androgynous it is (and has been) like our word "gin." There is no acceptable reason for putting the "eye" that ends quasi- at the end of semi- and multi-. And why reject disassociate while allowing disaffected, disappointed, and disillusioned --not to speak of disenamor, disenhance, and disembark?
[Lacking a proof-reader, as he does, the author will appreciate typographical and other errors in the foregoing, assuming they are based on sustainable considerations.]
UNDER
CONSTRUXION
Hits
on this website since 11-22-98 
