Consistent grammar mistake made

[JustKate]

If I remember accurately, and I'm sure JustKate can confirm or correct this, the problem originated with prescriptive grammars during the time of Early Modern English. Latin rules of grammar were applied to English due to the prevalent belief that Latin was a pinnacle of linguistic achievement and English should emulate it, even though the rhythms of the two languages are in fact nothing alike. There are still people who frown upon certain constructions as poor grammar when the "rule" should probably never have been there in the first place, and simply doesn't fit the language.

That is my understanding as well. I mean, you could actually have the same people - I had English teachers do this very thing - saying "Split infinitives do not belong in Standard Written English" one minute and the next minute they'd hold up Shakespeare as one of the greatest writers of English (which of course he is). And Shakespeare, as well as lots and lots of other great writers, split infinitives whenever he felt like it. This dichotomy never seemed to bother the split-infinitive-haters, the poor schmoes.

I'm not sure exactly when the idea that there are times when infinitives ought to be split and times when they ought not be split became, "Thou shalt not split infinitives, at least not if thou wantest an A in my class." My recollection is that while some authorities started talking about it right around the time they first started issuing grammar books, it didn't become engraved on a stone tablet, Ten Commandments-style, and in turn on the hearts of so many rule-loving English teachers, until sometime in the mid- or late 19th century.

By the way, I just checked one of my favorite source books, Garner's Modern American Usage, and Garner specifically cites Star Trek and "to boldly go" as an example of a "justified split." So neener, neener, neener to my 9th grade English teacher! A dedicated woman who taught me a lot about grammar, but she did have a bee in her bonnet about split infinitives.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

If I remember accurately, and I'm sure JustKate can confirm or correct this, the problem originated with prescriptive grammars during the time of Early Modern English. Latin rules of grammar were applied to English due to the prevalent belief that Latin was a pinnacle of linguistic achievement and English should emulate it, even though the rhythms of the two languages are in fact nothing alike. There are still people who frown upon certain constructions as poor grammar when the "rule" should probably never have been there in the first place, and simply doesn't fit the language.

That is my understanding as well. I mean, you could actually have the same person - I had English teachers do this very thing - saying "Split infinitives do not belong in Standard Written English" one minute and the next minute he'd hold up Shakespeare as one of the greatest writers of English (which of course he is). And Shakespeare, as well as lots and lots of other great writers, split infinitives whenever he felt like it. This dichotomy never seemed to bother them, the poor schmoes.

I'm not sure exactly when the idea that there are times when infinitives ought to be split and times when they ought not be split became, "Thou shalt not split infinitives, at least not if thou wantest an A in my class." My recollection is that while some authorities started talking about it right around the time they first started issuing grammar books, it didn't become engraved on a stone tablet, Ten Commandments-style, and in turn on the hearts of so many rule-loving English teachers, until sometime in the late 19th century.

By the way, I just checked one of my favorite source books, Garner's Modern American Usage, and Garner specifically cites Star Trek and "to boldly go" as an example of a "justified split." So neener, neener, neener to my 9th grade English teacher! A dedicated woman who taught me a lot about grammar, but she did have a bee in her bonnet about split infinitives.

Thanks!

 

[Doug Otte]

And what really takes the cake: I had a high school biology teacher who was a creationist. And it was a very good public high school overall, and not in the South. (Although the teacher was from Louisiana, I think.)

I know several scientists who are not only Christians, but Creationists. It is an incorrect assumption on your part (and amongst athiests) and others that the two are incompatible. They are not.

Actually, Creationism and Science are incompatible. Creationism is religion, and religion and science can never be reconciled.

That doesn't mean, of course, that a scientist can't be religious. Religion is a matter of personal faith, and faith can never be explained by science, which is a method for describing the physical world.

Sorry for continuing to derail this interesting thread about grammar...
Doug

 

[Timo]

Oh, I'm sure that faith can be explained by science in the next fifty years or so. See, it's this corner of the brain, with these chemicals doing this little dance when stimulated by this input...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shazam!]

faith can never be explained by science

Nor should it ever try to on grounds that faith is nonsense.

 

[JustKate]

Oh, let's not derail this thread, please? How often do we grammar geeks get to really sink our teeth into Trek grammar!

 

[Christopher]

Actually, Creationism and Science are incompatible. Creationism is religion, and religion and science can never be reconciled.

Actually, no. Creationism is not religion. It's a misinterpretation of religion that tries to define religious writings as literal historical and scientific fact rather than allegory and symbolism, and thereby totally misses the deeper spiritual and moral messages of those writings. It's bad religion and bad science.

And religion and science are not at all irreconcilable. Most religious people accept the reality of evolution and other scientific principles. Most biologists believe in God. The notion that you have to be an atheist to believe in evolution or that you have to be a creationist to believe in God is a fiction embraced only by a tiny minority of people who don't know any better. The far more common view is that God created a universe whose laws enable evolution to occur; that evolution produced the physical form of humanity and God instilled it with a soul. (Which, by the way, is the official position of the Vatican on the subject.) Most of the sincerely religious people I've known in my life have had no problem with science or evolution.

 

[iguana_tonante]

I can see using "me" in this example, though, despite the fact that it's not strictly correct. It might sound more colloquial, and colloquialness (?) is important in dialog.

Colloquiality? Or we should just say "colloquialisms are important in dialogs" and be done with it?

 

[Deckerd]

That would be dialogue on this side of the pond.

 

[arasam22]

Word order in English is rather optional anyway, compared to basically any other language. It's actually quite difficult to do understandable Yodaspeak in, say, germanic languages, while the clarity of English very little from such reshuffling suffers.

Timo Saloniemi

really? in my linguistics class we've been learning that actually English has one of the most inflexible word orders of the world's languages because we've lost most of our inflections and case endings over the centuries... syntax relies almost solely on word order. "the dog bit the farmer" is COMPLETELY different from "the farmer bit the dog" even though the same words are in the sentence. obviously, you can have variation and you will still be understood, but in general word order is very important.

in latin, however (and according to wikipedia, hungarian, russian, and finnish... and i'm pretty sure my dad told me that german was like this to some extent) you can put the words in basically any order and it will still be understood because there will be different endings for all of the words based on whether it's the subject, direct object, etc.

okay, so this is a different sentence, but i don't speak latin so i had to get my example from my linguistics textbook. :P

agricolA vidit lupUM= the farmer saw the wolf.
lupUM vidit agricolA = the farmer saw the wolf.

agricolAM vidit lupUS = the wolf saw the farmer
lupUS vidit agricolAM = the wolf saw the farmer

and btw... English IS a germanic language...

i don't know why i'm going off on a long tangent about this... probably for procrastination purposes... :P

 

[iguana_tonante]

That would be dialogue on this side of the pond.

Yeah, I actually wrote it like that since I was taught British English in school (colour, dialogue, centre, etc) but my automatic orthographic corrector is set on American English and I can't stand the red underline. I guess I'm weak willed about linguistic regionalisms.

 

[JustKate]

Colloquiality? Or we should just say "colloquialisms are important in dialogs" and be done with it?

Yes. But I think colloquialness is funny, so there!

Yeah, I actually wrote it like that since I was taught British English in school (colour, dialogue, centre, etc) but my automatic orthographic corrector is set on American English and I can't stand the red underline. I guess I'm weak willed about linguistic regionalisms.

"Dialogue" is my preferred spelling too, despite my Americanness. Spellcheck is trying to break me of it, but it hasn't succeeded yet. I spelled it "dialog" in this thread, but it was - believe me - a real struggle.

in my linguistics class we've been learning that actually English has one of the most inflexible word orders of the world's languages because we've lost most of our inflections and case endings over the centuries... syntax relies almost solely on word order. "the dog bit the farmer" is COMPLETELY different from "the farmer bit the dog" even though the same words are in the sentence. obviously, you can have variation and you will still be understood, but in general word order is very important.

It depends on how you define "flexible." English is flexible in that a whooooooole lot of constructions are possible. Yes, the construction can change the meaning, sometimes a lot, but it's still possible. That's beauty and the danger of it.

i don't know why i'm going off on a long tangent about this... probably for procrastination purposes... :P

That pretty much encapsulates the purpose of the BBS, if you ask me. I should know!

 

[arasam22]

whoa, really? i've always spelled dialog dialogue. oh, and there's that red squiggly underline. what do you know. if i had seen somebody type dialog i would've told them they spelled it wrong...

i dunno... maybe it's just my long history with the french language, but i always spell dialogue like that... same with theatre for some reason. i spell color and center the american way tho...

@justkate: i probably should have said "relatively inflexible." that's more along the lines of what i was going for... although it's probably not evident. :P

 

[JustKate]

My AmE dictionaries still list both spellings, so I generally use dialogue (dialog just looks so...amputated!) unless I have to change it for the sake of consistency. So it's not incorrect even in AmE.

 

[Myasishchev]

I've come across more than one teacher who didn't know basic things about the subject they were teaching. I once had a college physics professor who didn't know that a pound was a unit of force/weight instead of mass -- and what's scary is that nobody else in the class seemed to know it either, or else they were just too authority-bound to question the teacher. I had an English teacher who pronounced "synecdoche" as "synectady," and a physics teacher who said "Aristophanes" when he meant "Eratosthenes." And what really takes the cake: I had a high school biology teacher who was a creationist. And it was a very good public high school overall, and not in the South. (Although the teacher was from Louisiana, I think.)

You lucky duck. That sounds like incredible fun to me.

Also, in fairness, getting Greek names wrong isn't so bad.

The example about your pound-wise-and-mass-foolish physics teacher is absolutely bizarre, however. How do you get a B.A. or M.S. in physics (or any science, or anything) and not figure out at some point that the pound is a measure of force, like a Newton--I mean, even laypeople use it as such, "the pressure is x pounds-per-square-inch," "I can lift a hundred pounds over my head," etc.

The only really terrible English teacher I ever had refused to acknowledge that John Savage in A Brave New World was not supposed to be a paragon, only a victim, and that in fact he was 1)sexually repressed and 2)this was presented as at least as negative as and probably worse than the promiscuity of the future people. She yelled at me. I think she might have been a little John Savage herself. <_<

Sometimes even extraordinarily smart people make big mistakes in class--my transnational law professor just the other day (must have) misspoke and said that the UN was formed by the contemporary nuclear powers. Pretty sure I don't recall Taiwan ever exploding a nuclear device. And yesterday he transposed the plaintiff and defendant in a case, with hilarious results--he was pretty apologetic. (I know from these anecdotes, he doesn't sound like he's that extraordinarily smart, but trust me, he is. )

 

[BolianAuthor]

Has anyone noticed how in TNG episodes (can't remember if it was in the other ST shows) characters are constantly using "I" when they should be using "me"?
For example, I just rewatched "Conundrum" and Riker says "No one was more surprised than I" which is just wrong wrong wrong and they frequently make that common grammar mistake.

-Apparently the mistake they so consistently made is referred to as "hyper-correction" ( http://www.helium.com/items/463483-common-grammar-mistakes-and-how-to-fix-them )

So yeah, it was a pretty noob-tastic grammar mistake to be made by such smart script-writers.

That is correct usage of the "word". Yes, many people use "me" in the modern vernacular, but you can certainly always use "I", in its place.