From: roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: "Grammar"
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 06:56:11 GMT

In article <1992Aug21.044831.16510@news.columbia.edu> gmw1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener) writes:
>In article <1992Aug21.025717.2319@Princeton.EDU> roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:

>>In colloquial speech, when such things are being referred to informally,
>>"Grammar" is indeed the word to use.  But we're trying to sort things
>>out, and around here I feel it obfuscates, especially when specific
>>issues of what usage, style, etc. are, and howthey relate to matters of
>>prescription and description, have been raised.

>But Roger, from what I've read, *you* are the only one arguing for a 
>distinction between a formal notion of "grammar" and the definition that
>is in common use.  

Hello?  "THE" definition in common use?  My dictionary gives *seven*
definitions, all of which are in common use.  I'm arguing against using
the word, precisely because we tend to slip and slide between
definitions if we use it in a discussion of language.

>>Besides, by calling colloquial usages "ungrammatical," you lump them in
>>with real errors such as the article-after example I gave.  There's
>>a clear difference in quality between the two -- i.e., one is a matter
>>of preference, one a structural universal

>That's a matter of opinion.  To some, the use of "me am here" is just as
>'bad' as saying "1/3 less calories"

That's their opinion.  I've never hear a justification of sch an
attitude, though.  If this were alt.usage.english.grunt, then
unsupported opinion would be fine.  As it is, it's a discussion group,
and opinions with a little support are far more welcome.

>>>Most prescriptive grammars I've ever seen would proscribe less+countables
>>>or "me and my friends"+predicate.  

>>So cite them already!  This is at least my fifth request.

This is now at least my sixth.

>>(If they don't allow "not a penny more, not a penny less," then they
>>need a new prescription.)

>That's specious.  "not a penny more, not a penny less" doesn't prove
>a damn thing.  The "more" and "less" do not refer to the penny, but
>to the uncountable of which the penny is a unit, namely money.  

>The underlying meaning is: "I'm not spending a penny more money, and
>I'm not spending a penny less money."  In the "10 items or less" bit,
>the only thing under discussion is the quantity of items.  

Why? Why can't it be "stuff"?  "how much stuff do you have in your
basket?" "Eight items."  If "dollars" can turn into "money," then
"items" can turn into "stuff."

More examples of actual usage:

"Six is one less than seven."
"Write 'I love grammar' on the blackboard 100 times--and not one time
less."
"The baby is less than six months old."
"complete this in 25 words or less."

Put "fewer" in those sentences and you have stilted sentences that are
*not* in common use.  People just don't say that sort of thing.

>And "less items" doesn't work.

(Actually, it does, and vast numbers of people say it, but we'll let it
pass for now, even though I've cited an authority for its correctness
and standardness...)

>>>	grammatically incorrect or qwkward; not conforming to the
>>>	rules or principles of grammar or accepted usage.

>>>That definition seems to be in accord with your earlier statement that
>>>many people in this newsgroup (myself included) use "grammar" to refer
>>>to accepted usage.

>>Indeed.  But I'd like to know just who's doing the accepting, and on
>>what grounds.  Turns out, it's like pulling teeth.

>Turns out that you can't deal with the notion that there isn't an 
>academic standard to appeal to on this.  

Uh, what?  I can deal with it just fine!  If you tell me that something
is standard and correct, and I ask you to tell me why, and you can cite
neither evidence nor authority, then I can deal with it instantly: by
pointing out that you're blowing smoke.  You wave your hands and insist
on distinctions and standards and "accepted usage" and correctness and
propriety, but when it comes time to tell me *why* these things are what
you say, all of a sudden the line goes dead.  

And half the time, you can't even tell me what the standard *is*.

This has nothing to do with academic standards -- though *you* were the
one who brought up standards in the first place.  It has to do with
backing up what you say.

>My saying "I've gotten to
>like Broccoli" would be hopelessly ungrammatical in the United Kingdom.

In the loose sense, i.e., it's not common usage there.

>So, given an American and a Brit in the same room, the only standard
>is the English that they've learned.

Right, which is structurally almost identical, which means that after
hearing the "Gotten" construction once or twice, the Brit will have no
further problem with it.

>>As for Strunk and White, I'm not sure that it's a guide to "accepted
>>usage," but rather a guide to good style, which is not the same thing,
>>and NONE of our definitions are going to let you sneak style into
>>grammar.  

>Strunk & White may spend a lot of time on style, but many of its points
>are actually points of usage.

[Decided to punt on Chicago, eh?]

Indeed, S&W does make usage prescriptions.  Many of them are at variance
with actual usage, and even with most other prescriptions.  (e.g.,
"different than.")

>>In any case, I like my prescriptions best when they come with some
>>justification.  

>Yes, but as style varies from regions, heck, between idiolects, a blanket
>appeal to some higher power isn't always terribly useful.

My point exactly!  Instead of waving The Book, give a reason.  Give a
region, if you wish.  Or define the style you're addressing in the first
place.  

This is where all the trouble starts: when people start bludgeoning
speakers of everyday English for not hewing to S&W's rules for formal
expository prose.

>>Now, I happen to know the *history* of the less/fewer distinction.

>Wow.  That doesn't mean that you suddenly have some sort of monopoly on
>stating that it's "correct usage," which is how this whole thing started.

Nor did I state that, so don't go putting silly words in my mouth.  

Knowing the history of the distinction *does* tell me one thing: no
writer or speaker ever worried about it until some 19th century
schoolmasters *invented* the distinction out of a simple fear of
alternatives, i.e., they wanted to be able to teach that one word
was right, the other wrong.  Before that, good speakers and writers
could and did use "less" in many places where you now insist on "Fewer,"
and nobody was any the worse for it.  Nor did anyone complain.

So why should I let myself be jerked around by the laziness of a 19th
century schoolmaster, especially since the rule has never really taken
hold in common speech, and is also disregarded quite a bit in the
written language?

This is my point: somebody in the last century made a rule.  Before the
rule was made, nobody claimed that certain uses of "less" with a
countable were obnoxious in any way.  Even after the rule was made, most
people, including some highly educated ones, ignored it.  The rule is
not to be confused with grammar OR usage.  It may be part of this or
that style, but I'll wait for evidence that that is the case for a
particular style.

>It may be correct usage for you, but for the people making the correction,
>and for a lot of others, less+countable is simply *wrong*.

Yes.  *Very* simply.  Without justification, and without correspondence
to the way people use the English language.

And if they dare to correct *me*, they'd damned well better have a good
reason to do so.  And "because it's wrong" is NOT a reason -- but it's
the only reason I've heard around here so far.

>>leads me to the conclusion that it's a stupid prescription
>>prescribed by stupid prescribers.  It serves no purpose, does not
>>reflect the actual usage of present

>Couldn've fooled me.  Believe it or not, but many people still use the 
>less/fewer distinction. 

And many never picked it up when it was coined.  By saying "Still,"
you're appealing to the tradition of usage -- but the evidence for this
tradition is extremely dicey.

> You're free to ignore it in your writing, however.

Am I?  Or will "educated" people (i.e., those who learned a rule in
school) groan and moan and call me "illiterate" and "uneducated" and
"Barbaric"?  I seem to recall people going to complain to supermarket
managers and 1-800 operators about the usage on signs and paper bags.
Clearly the people being complained to were *not* free to use it, and
THAT, my friend, is where I came in.  People insisted on "correcting"
other people's grammar, and used justification based on standards,
education, tradition, and the lot.  All those justificationa are
basically bunk, and the corrections were rude, wrongheaded, snobbish,
and factually uninformed.  

>>the *real* distinctions that are *indeed* made in actual usage.

>Whose actual usage?  I make a *real* distinction between countables
>and collectives. 

Mazeltov.  Most people don't draw the line quite there; when a countable
is used as an upper bound, they often use "less."  There are published
surveys of this kind of thing; they reveal that educational level does
*not* determine who uses "less" in this situation, I'm sure.  Again,
your personal style is sacrosanct; but imposition of it on others is
wrong, and snooty comments about others are just as bad.

>>And when you get right down to it, that's how you determine "accepted"
>>usage: you go to those whose acceptance matters: the users.

>Precisely.  Lots of users still make the distinction, and there's no reason
>for them to stop.

Hey, wait a minute!  A moment ago, you were calling the majority who
make a *different* distinction wrong, improper, etc.  I haven't called
you that, nor have I demanded that anyone stop saying "fewer" for "less"
even when they come out sounding stilted.  What's your point?

>>  Good
>>lexicographers and linguists and writers and critics have done this for
>>centuries when they wanted to know what was accepted.

>Indeed they do, and that's why the less/fewer rule still exists in so
>many style/grammar books, such as the ones I cited.

Yah.  Like the Chicago Manual, which doesn't address usage at all.  Nice
try.  Chicago's for preparing a document, especially a book.  You want
to know about commas or in-line citations?  Try Chicago.  Usage?  Sorry,
wrong number.

I don't know about Little/Brown, but I do know that Strunk&White (the
third one you cited) is not particularly linguistically informed, and
does *not* reflect actual usage in many of its prescriptions.  Again,
it's a book for those writing formal, expository prose.

But to address your point, no, that's NOT why they do it.  They do it
because it's a "rule of grammar," one that's easily stated, and one that
doesn't cause so much trouble that it can be laughed away (as "no
preposition at the end of a sentence" can be).  If S&W ever consulted a
survey of written or spoken English, it's news to me.

Usage guides based on study of the language (e.g., Evans and Evans) tell
you who uses the distinction, where, why, and what happens if you ignore
it.  If E&E could so thoroughly trash less/fewer 35 years ago, and with
so much evidence, what does that say for the value of the distinction,
other than that it gives some people a warm feeling inside?

>>But don't you go telling other people that what they're doing is*wrong*!
>>That's preposterous.  

>If you ever edit my copy, I'm certain you'll put big red deletion marks
>through all my fewers and replace them with lesses.  

No, of course not.  Why the hell would I do that, unless it sounded
bad?

>And if I ever edit
>yours, be assured that every less+countable will be globally replaced
>with a countable.  

And a "fewer,"I suppose.  At which point I'll get another editor, who
knows how to pay attention to important things -- unless of course I've
agreed to abide by house style, and the style-sheet actually bothers
with such things.  (I've never seen one that does.)  A contract's a
contract.

>One of the purposes of editing is to correct grammatical
>errors, and as far as I'm concerned, less+countable is still an error.

Good luck getting a job as an editor with that attitude.

>>Especially with something as ssilly as less/fewer, when clarity is in
>>no wise compromised.  Not a bit.

>Clarity isn't compromised when you say "me am here."  It's perfectly
>clear who's here.

Plenty of things *are* disrupted, though, such as the flow of
communication.  People will stop listening to what you say next, because
they'll havesuch a hard time believeing what they heard before.

This does not happen with "less/fewer" unless one has trained oneself to
be offended by it.

Or, to summarize: one is idiomatic, the other, not.

>>>We still decline pronouns in English.  "Me and my friends" violates that
>>>rule, rather blatently.  I see no benefit to violating that rule even in
>>>casual conversation, unless one *wants* to sound like a sixth grader.

>>Well, here's your standard, your norm: belittlement.  Lots of people who
>>aren't sixth-graders, and who don't sound like them, say that. 

>Hardly.  The point is that most people have been cured of that error by
>the time they're out of sixth grade.

Most people?  Naaah.  I hear it all the time.  Perhaps not most people
in Morningside Heights.  

As for "cured of that error," try again.  It would be more accurate to
say that they're cured of using such a colloquial usage in fancy
company.  They may not say it at work, but it goes over just fine at the
corner bar.  In short, they've been taught another dialect in school.

>>in many other situations it's quite normal, and if you disagree, I
>>recommend a semester or two out in the real world, with your ears on.

>As if I haven't heard that error enough in life already.

Then take a course in linguistics, and find out just what you mean by
"Error."  What you're trying to say is "dialect."  In some dialects, "He
and I" is an error.

>>Note that the argument from "extend much of that clarity" has suddenly
>>vanished, btw.  No loss of information, here, either. 

>SO WHAT?  What difference does it make if there's no loss of information?

You tell me.  It was your reason for speaking that way just a moment
ago: greater clarity, you said.  Now you chuck the clarity argument and
pretend it's irrelevant.  What gives?

What other reasons do you have for complaining?  Why bother with the
"error" argument if the error makes no difference?  "Me and Paul will
win 'em all" caused nobody any problems, except for a few English
teachers who keeled over and thus missed a terrific World Series.  "Me
am here" disrupts the flow of communication by being terribly
nonstandard in a way that the previous example does not.  It's incorrect
in a way that the other sentence is not.  

Neither sentence is part of the written or formal-speech dialect.

>I could say "Je suis ici" or "hic sum" to you, and there would be no loss
>of information.  

To me, yes.  (Actually, you'd get a funny look with the Latin, since it
means "I am this," but that's OK.  I'm sure you meant to type "Adsum".)

Again, what's your point?  Most English speakers would experience 100%
information loss.

>I could say "here be me" or "me is here" and there'd be 
>no loss of information.

Wrong.  Both sentences would be disruptive, as their grammar (formal
sense) would be wrong.  They would jeopardize anything that followed
being understood.  

>  That doesn't mean that any of them is proper English.

It does mean that you have a chance to grok the difference between
grammar and usage, or at least part of it.  REAL incorrect grammar
sounds SO wrong that it disrupts everything.  Say "Me am here" to anyone
who doesn't know you're joking around and you'll have a hard time
getting anything else across.  Say "me and Paul are here" and you may be
judged by your use of dialect, but no native speaker will be bothered
enough to stop listening.  Unless they're really snobbish.

>>To be sure, I wince when my colleague says that in a meeting, too;

>Gee, Roger.  Why?  No loss of information.  As you said in a previous
>post, "Isn't that what matters?" 

To me, yes, it is.  When we're trying to sell a product to a couple of
bankers who are insecure enough about their language to judge someone on
it, then it *does* matter.  It says no more about your character or
education than mud on your trousers would; but people see it anyway.  I
wish it weren't so.

(Aside: we invite clients who visit us to wear jeans.  They love the
idea, a workday without a suit being a treat for many of them; and their
language changes accordingly!)

As I've said all along: context, setting, etc. determine the dialect,
determine the usage.   To a great extent, they determine the meaning,
too.  People tailor their language choices accordingly.

Accordingly, too, they are more likely to be buffaloed by specious
"rules" in office or school than elsewhere.

>>but I frankly don't care if he says it on the
>>golf course or in the car.

>"me and my friends..." doesn't gain any more correctness on the golf
>course than it does in the seminar room.

Wrong.  Dead wrong.  So wrong you're not in the ballpark.  

It gains  a great deal because the *dialect* has changed.  the *idiom*
has changed.  In the boardroom, pronoun declension matters, and goes
only oneway, more or less.  (See me for exceptions.)  On the golf
course, you don't speak boardroom English, and anyone who corrects "me
and my friends" winds up wearing an eight-iron.

Roger