Organization: The American University - University Computing Center
Date: Friday, 21 Aug 1992 22:22:53 EDT
From: <HERSCH@auvm.american.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: "Grammar"
 <1992Aug20.153627.23885@Princeton.EDU> <92233.220039HERSCH@auvm.american.edu>
 <1992Aug21.030903.3369@Princeton.EDU>

In article <1992Aug21.030903.3369@Princeton.EDU>, roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU
(Roger Lustig) says:
>
>In article <92233.220039HERSCH@auvm.american.edu> HERSCH@auvm.american.edu
>writes:
>>In article <1992Aug20.153627.23885@Princeton.EDU>,
>roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU
>>(Roger Lustig) says:
>
>>>Why *not* say "usage" when we mean usage?
>
>>Yeah, Roger...and why not say "me" when we mean "me" and not "I"?
>>Or why not say "fewer" when we mean fewer? You're always trotting
>>out centuries of usage as documented in the OED or other sources
>>as unanswerable justifications for whatever it is you seem to feel
>>like justifying. But centuries of using "grammar" or "grammatical"
>>in this way, which is understood by *everybody* who speaks English,
>>somehow fails to make it all right? Why is that, dear?
>
>For one thing, I'm not arguing that at all for the less/fewer
>distinction, as a closer reading of my posting would show, so skip the
>condescension for just a moment, OK?  In that case I am arguing for
>correctness of grammar, usage, and style in all or almost all contexts.
>
>Next, I am arguing against the use of "ungrammatical" as applied to
>informal or colloquial speech because of its political content.

Dear Roger, I'm hurt. I actually wasn't trying to be condescending,
I was trying to be affectionate. I mostly read this group at all
only because you post to it and make mincemeat, albeit politely,
of all kinds of dumb stuff that people around here foolishly argue for,
or mostly rail against bootlessly and fecklessly. At any rate, my
clumsiness will I hope be forgiven; I have, after all, been ill,
and in the hospital, so maybe you can cut me a sliver of slack.
*Now* are you sorry? Yeah, I thought you would be!!

If you could hear me over the string section, which is indulging in
Schumann at his most stormily pathetic, I would tell you that my
"why not say 'me' when we mean 'me'" quip was a piece of obviousness
to which you exposed yourself, but which I was not ruthless enough
in exploiting. Had I been, it might have been funny, but, well, there
it is. It wasn't funny, and you thought I was being condescending,
and what's-her-name made the crushingly, furiously humorless and
clueless rejoinder that asked if "I" and "me" had different referents.
Oh dear, I can feel nothing but shame at having provoked these responses
when I was making an offhand remark that tried to be mildly amusing
and friendly. Believe me, I don't call *everyone* "dear", dear.

I do hope you will continue to stick it to the people whom you correctly
diagnose as wishing to stigmatise others who speak dialects that are
"incorrect" because they differ from their own. That guy who talks about
ignoramuses, wallowing, as it were, in their dialects...sheesh. It's
rather noble of you to bother engaging such...er...oh never mind.

Okay, that's the end of the love-fest. (Oh, one more thing...you wouldn't
be related to Arnost Lustig, would you? Just curious.) This is where
the *however* comes. As much as I agree with your point of view
generally, and violently disagree with those of many of the people
you've been skewering, I must register a mild protest on the matter
of "I" used where the object-case pronoun would ordinarily be expected.
This usage may indeed have popped up in the language over and over again,
but there's no way I'm going to find it anything but ugly, something
to be avoided in my own speech and deplored in others'. And I kind of
bet you don't do it yourself (you write very nicely indeed, and people
who write nicely don't usually write "between you and I").

But it's not merely that I don't like it; I find that you're holding
your thumb over the OED entry when you talk of it. In your remarks,
you lay special emphasis on the presence of the _between_ preposition
apparently being linked to this object-use of I, and seem to imply that
the OED does too, which it does not. I'm sorry that I don't have your
text available to quote, but I do believe you implied or even asserted
that as being supported by the OED, and it isn't. Further, you refer to
the many examples that the OED gives of the object-case use of "I"
without divulging what the editors said about it or its distribution
in time. Before they get down to cases, the editors write: "This was
very frequent in end of 16th and in 17th c., but is now considered
ungrammatical." They go on to give three instances from Shakespeare
alone (and by the way, the _Merchant of Venice_ reference is act 3,
scene 2, not scene 1 as you wrote); but also, significantly, there
is only one citation dated after 1710, which is from _Tom Brown's
Schooldays_, 1857, "Let you and I cry quits." -- a usage mirrored
by the famous T.S. Eliot line you threw at me in this connection
a year ago or more ("Let us go then, you and I...."). Out of nine
examples they give (this is OED 1, by the way; sorry, I don't have
the 2nd edition), two have "between" in them. And not once do they
refer to "you and I" being an "indeclinable unit", as you suggest.

>That is, some people choose to lump usages they don't like -- but have
>no good arguments against -- in with obvious errors of grammar such as
>article-after-noun or "me am going to the store."  By doing so they can
>call all who disagree with them illiterate or stupid or sixth-grade-like
>or whatever.  I don't like that kind of intimidating tactic, especially
>when it is based on the blurring of a distinction.

But you see, I agree with you, and have always agreed with you, on the
whole. I agree that this is largely a political issue, and involves
class bigotry and--all too often, I'm afraid--racial bigotry as well,
disguised as mere class bigotry, as if that weren't bad enough. On the
other hand, I'm not sure that the distinction you want to make, which
is a clear enough disinction in itself, is worth fighting over. Real
grammatical error -- that is, saying something that is not part of the
grammar of the language, which, as we understand, is possible only
to genuinely defective speakers (non-native speakers and very young
children still in the process of first-language acquisition) --
is such a minor issue, such a really exterior issue to considerations
of the language we're considering, that it hardly needs a protected
terminology of its own, now, does it?

>What distinction is that?  Why, the distinction between grammar and
>syntax and style and usage, of course.  What?  We say "grammar" for all
>of those things?  Yes, we do -- informally.  No, we don't -- the moment
>we start talking seriously about language, which, they tell me, happens
>in this newsgroup.

But hey, if you really want it, you can have it. It doesn't matter to me.
But it seems rather peripheral to get very worked up over. On the other
hand, signs in the supermarket that say "9 Items or Less" seem, well,
even more peripheral, especially since it's pretty fucking impossible
to take serious, informed exception to the usage in question, as you
have amply shown and the weirdo linguo-fascists who hang out here have
shown themselves incapable of understanding. "It's WRONG!" Sheesh.
>
>Many people call spiders insects, which is OK if you're just using
>"insects" to refer to creepy crawly things.  Likewise, they may call all
>insects "bugs."  This would not play well in sci.entomology, though.
>
>Got it?  Distinctions are or are not relevant, depending on the
>situation in which they are used (or not).

I had it all along, Roger. It was I who advised you not to put your
knife in your mouth when you went to dinner with your prospective
in-laws (which of course presumes a great deal, all of which I
disavow if a disavowal is expedient).
>

>Now, if someone could finally tell me *why* we need the less/fewer
>distinction, i.e., in what situation its absence might confuse or
>obscure, I'll listen closely.  Until then, I'm going to go off and
>ponder the miraculous situation by which the world was not pluged into
>darkness by the horrible coincidence of the comparatives of "much" and
>"many."

I *KNOW* it's a typo, but nonetheless, I really like your coinage
"pluged". It *might* mean so many weird and wonderful things. At any
rate, to give the other side, as it were, the benefit of the doubt, and
acquit them of total stupidity in the absence of utterly convincing
evidence that they are more than mildly or partly stupid: We do actually
have the two words, 'less' and 'fewer', so we might as well get some
useful work out of them. 'Ten items or less' is obviously the way most
ordinary speakers of English would express the thing in question; those
who stake their metaphysics on its being wrong are clearly living in the
wrong universe, and perhaps should be assisted out of this one and into
that one, if only we could find where it lives. On the other hand,
to say "there are less tollbooths on route 86 than on the Garden State
Parkway" is simply disgusting, whether you can find 10 billion people
who say it or not. Is that grammar? No, clearly not. Is it class
bigotry? Perhaps for some; I hope that is not what provokes the disgust
in me. Can I give a rational explanation for how repulsive I find
"less tollbooths"? No, certainly not; I can also give no rational
explanation for the beauty I find in the paintings of Corot, or the
ugliness I find in the J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington. I will
not claim that those who find Corot's paintings unlovely are morally
inferior; I might have trouble defending the moral neutrality of an
aesthetic enjoyment of the Hoover building, though. If you have seen
the building (and are not, yourself, morally inferior), you will know
what I mean.

Anyway, Roger, dear, I'm sorry if you thought I was condescending, or
even disagreeing with you, except of course on the things I *do*
disagree with you about. I think you're very smart, and I enjoy
reading your articles even when they piss me off. Could anyone possibly
say *anything* nicer than that to *anybody*??

Regards,
H.
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english