…in traditional grammar as I remember it from 70 years ago (and then I learned transformational grammar in college, and now I despise traditional grammar, which I was quite good at in my youth, so why am I having this argument?), subjects and verbs must “agree,” and verbs denote actions (it distinguishes them from nouns), so verbs often “act”on nouns (or objects, either direct or indirect, and now my memory of traditional grammar is going fuzzy again).
But we can talk about verbs “acting” on nouns, or adjectives “describing” nouns, without employing literal personification and meaning verbs are somehow corporeal, muscular, and physically doing something to nouns; anymore than we mean adjectives are sitting around discussing the physical attributes of nouns. If I recall correctly, in traditional grammar direct objects “receive” the actions of verbs, or the subject of the sentence, or something like that. But the term doesn’t mean they accept a present from another part of the sentence, or that it open the front door to them.
Pullum’s argument is that words don’t receive actions from verbs, especially where there is no action to receive. But “throw” is clearly an action (and a verb), while “is” is traditionally classified as a verb, but it seldom even implies action. “That is my cat” doesn’t even address the being of my cat, but it does address the relationship between me and a nearby feline. And in the sentence “that” can be said to be (!) receiving the relationship stated by “my cat.” It’s a special use if language within the terminology of traditional grammar, but no more inappropriate than to use “Chords” in discussing music and then speak if the “chords of memory,” which is a metaphorical use of the musical term.
Pullum says we don’t use this meaning of “receive” outside the discussion of passive voice in traditional grammar. And he says it as if that observation states the entire problem with how passive voice in traditional grammar is understood. But he’s starting with a category error. He’s saying the clauses in a sentence can’t receive or give, because there are so many examples of sentences where no part of the sentence “gives” and no other part “receives.” But he’s changing categories mid-argument. If I give you a present and you take the present, then you have received the present. But receiving the action of a clause in a sentence is not a physical act, and yet is a concept of traditional grammar whether the verb in the sentence is “throw or “is,” Pullum is making a technical term of grammar a literal term; and then he knocks his straw man over.
English does not have gendered nouns, but most European languages do. Such nouns generally require what, in English, we would consider an article. The best example I can think of in English is a usage that differs in America and in Britain. Brits say (generally): “The ambulance took her to hospital.” In America we find that noun naked without an article: “The ambulance took her to the hospital.” In most European languages the “article” is part of the word, and indicates the gender of the noun: masculine, feminine, or neuter. Who doesn’t mean feminine nouns wear skirts, or neutral nouns are eunuchs. But try to learn the rhyme or reason why one noun is feminine, one masculine, etc. if you don’t learn the concept with your first language, it can be a barrier. If you try to discern the “masculine” qualities of nouns in German or French, you will be going in the opposite direction from understanding, because the terms are, in this category, grammatical, and have nothing (except, perhaps, in a very, very deep level of socio-cultural analysis), to do with cultural concepts of gender. You can, in other words, speak of nouns with gender in the grammar of some European languages, without getting into an argument about whether they were born that way.
Pullum’s argument, in essence, is that unless the sentence says “The boy throws the ball to the girl ,” it doesn’t involve an action being received (or delivered) to an object. Which may be literally true; but it’s not grammatically true. And sentences can have literal meanings, while at the same time having grammatical meanings. Wittgenstein might call it a language game. I might say Pullum is playing a game.
Or could be we’re just talking past each other, and we should bury our differences in a discussion of transformations grammar. Noam, I mean?
I was a bit unfair to Pullum here. I just thought he made a bad start. I think the rest of what he has to say would repay attention.
I think in the context of his more complete set of arguments about the widespread and entirely incorrect condemnation of the use of the passive voice (most clearly seen in the invocation of Strunk-White) his point about verbs in that relationship to nouns does make what he said in the first part valid. I should have posted all six of them. In the context of the general claims about why the use of the the passive voice is bad, the reception of actual action is relevant. I think in a number of the examples he gives in the first one in which he discusses this, the inadequacy of the traditional description as to what is going on works better. Especially in sentences in which there is no actual agent who is doing something in the context of the sentence. The ones in which he gives actual examples from writers of established reputation make his point quite clearly, especially in answer to the condemnation of the use of actual passives.
ReplyDeleteThe many examples he gives of the would be grammar police identifying passive use to condemn, where there is no passive construction in the example - and several of them come directly from the source of the nonsense, Strunk and White - is especially useful. That video would have been the one most directly relevant to the criticism that led me to post it. The grammar police are keystone cops, most often. Even some of them while writing corporate and professional style books.
I've been experimenting with "comprehensible input" language learning - to see if my marbles are still in the bag - and the experiment is convincing me that language can't be monitored by learned rules. Not even our native language. It's all playing it by ear.