From: roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: "Grammar"
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 03:53:08 GMT

In article <92234.222253HERSCH@auvm.american.edu> HERSCH@auvm.american.edu writes:
>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.

Well, if that's your attitude, you can call me anything you want.

(Short of "angel-drawers.")

> 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!!

Say no more, honey.

>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.

Anytime, snookums.

>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.

<music up> Bring me my sword of shining gold...

>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.) 

Good guess, but no.  My father has the same name, albeit translated a
bit; he's Ernst Lustig.  [note to German speakers: honestly.]  But he's
Silesian, not Czech, and "Lustig" is afairly common Jewish name in parts
that used to be Austria.  It's a translation/transformation of Yitzhak.

(Sorry you asked?)

>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.

Stop right there: who's doing the expecting?  I notice you lapse into
the passive at the crucial moment.

>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").

I don't.  Overeducated immigrants teach their kids school English.

>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."

*considered* is the operative word, imho.  The OED is known to use
stronger language when it needs to.

> 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.

Nor did I say the OED was my source; sorry if I implied it.  

I know this is an unpopular tack, and really it's one of the more
trivial points out there.  But I like it for just that reason: so many
people say it, and it doesn't obscure anything, and it's almost
impossible to explain the rule to people who don't "get" it immediately.
It's *there,* and lots of people whose thinking and speaking I respect
use it.  

>>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?

Perhaps not, but "grammar" is cerainly worth separating from "usage," so
why call both types of error "grammatical error"?  That *does* blur a
distinction, and since it *is* possible to violate grammatical rules
*seemingly* -- by using rules of another dialect, for instance -- we
should be careful and decide what's going on in the individual case.

>>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.

I get worked up when and because it becomes a stick to bludgeon the
"ignorant, ungrammatical" types.

> 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.

OK.  You call them peripheral, I call them evidence, they call them
ignorance.  Life is complicated.

>>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).

But I eats my peas with honey!

>>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. 

But we have two words for *everything!*  Why spend our lives learning
twice as much?  English has four times as many words as, say, Russian.
Do we need to make them all compulsory?

(Remember "gorse" and "furze"?)

>'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.

That's because you're not listening closely.  Nobody says that; what
they do say is:

"There's less tollbooths..."

And, honestly, that one doesn't attract my attention as much as "There
are less..."

Honestly.

> 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

(Whew!  You had me worried for a moment.  I'm glad you told me.)

>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.

I grew up in DC, not two miles from AU.  I know the building.

>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*??

Reminds me of that Lenny Bruce routine, about how "fuck you" should be a
*nice* thing to say.

"aww, fuck you, mom.  And fuck Dad for me, too.  Bye." 

In any case, we agree.  Sure, some things sound ugly.  But that doesn't
make them wrong.

Roger