Reference
Errors in English UsageOnce you have gotten past the sixth grade, you may be relatively free to follow the language itself in writing the language. Doing so earlier will get you in trouble with your teacher; please wait until later. The crimes of the elementary schools are many; we confine ourselves to noticing three of the worst.
It is I. Though insisted on as though assent to it were a ticket to Heaven, this is an incorrect sentence, as may be seen from its natural French counterpart, "c'est moi." Of what verb is "moi" the object? None; it is the focus of the identification statement, and focus statements do not take the nominative. Correct, and spontaneously produced by unspoiled speakers, is "It is me." Notice also the following dialogue, which could not be done in any other way without provoking howls of laughter by any sensitive bystanders:
A: Who's there?
B: Me.Or for greater elegance and reassurance,
A: Who's there?
B: Just me.Other valid examples:
A: I'm leaving.
B: Me too.A: Who has done this terrible thing?
B: Not me.The error arises from having too few grammatical categories. There is more to life and speech than the nominative and accusative cases.
Complete Sentences. Another fetish of the lower grade teacher is that all valid utterances must be sentences complete with a main verb. But in fact not all utterances in either classical Chinese or in English need to be SV or SVO contructs. We have already had "me" as a statement of identification, and thus in the "focal" case. There are also:
Ouch!
a simple exclamation, of which many profane variants exist; the vocative
Mom!
and the verb or verbal fragment attested in this once popular book title:
A: Where did you go?
B: Out.
A: What did you do?
B: Nothing.The second of these, "nothing," is a noun object serving, without its verb (which is understood from the form of the question), as a complete and satisfactory statement. Other statements without verbs:
Carrots, yuck.
A: What time is it?
B: Quarter of two.A: How are you going?
B: Subway, I guess.A: Will you be there?
B: Maybe.There are also examples where both the question and answer may be, and conventionally are, nouns or adverbs rather than verbal sentences:
A: How much?
B: A dollar forty, plus tax.Prepositional phrases, with or without negatives of their own, are also valid as statements:
A: And where did she hear that?
B: Not from me.And prisoners are positively ordered not to make sentences; by internationally recognized rule, they are to confine the information they give their captors to "name, rank, and serial number."
The idea that sentences must contain a subject (SV or SVO) is another delusion of the semi-educated. The VO or even simply the V option is perfectly sound:
Ready or not, coming.
A: What was all that about?
B: Beats me.Separable Compound Verbs. Like its Frisian cousin German, though much less so, English has verbs composed of a verb stem plus a preposition, or sometimes two prepositions. The prepositions always follow the verb. The school rule is never to end a sentence with one or both of those prepositions. It is not always wrong to follow this rule (which, properly considered, is a guideline of style rather than a rule of language), but doing so can sometimes lead to obvious monstrosities, and the monstrosities refute the rule as a rule. Famous down the ages is Churchill's refutation (not that he originally said it; this is one of those cases of reattribution to a more famous figure):
This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.
The primary verb is put up with, which dictionaries should list as a separate entry, but rarely do. Again, the error is simply in considering that all verbs consist of one word, and denying the compound verb a place in the grammatical scheme of things. The analysis, at such points, is not wide enough to contain the language.
Separable compound verbs are indeed separable. An object sometimes comes between its parts:
Show him up [expose him)
Take me out to the ball game
I will look them over, and let you know.The trick is to learn when to put the object after, and not inside the compound. One group of cases which come outside the compound is where the object is long rather than short. Compare:
Take me out to the ball game.
Will you please take out the trash?I will look them over.
Will you please look over these invoices, and tell me what you think?And there are cases where the compound verb is in fact not separable, as witness
I've got to go over my notes
I didn't have time to go over them properly.It all comes down to this.
It all comes down to who is willing to go.What it all comes down to, and we hate to say this, is that each such verb complex, and its privileges of separation, must be learned separately. And until the dictionaries catch up with the language, it must be learned by exposure to good usage. Good luck in finding some good usage, and good luck in getting away with using it when you find it. The combination of linguistic misinformation and a stance of authority is not wholly confined to elementary school teachers. It also thrives among copy editors.
It will be seen that these wrong rules and ludicrous guidelines tend to come from following a too literal application of Latin grammar to English usage, and from insufficient personal sensitivity to the points at which English (at bottom a Frisian language) differs from Latin and the Romance family (including Norman French, the language of England's conquerors).
This sort of thing is an oft told tale, but it is no better for the oft telling.
16 May 2008 / Contact The Project / Exit to Reference Page
