The Truth Is Subjunctive

Overheard at Althouse:

October 3, 2016 

If fat-shaming is wrong...... what about basement-living-shaming and barista-shaming? 

Posted by Ann Althouse at 1:39 PM 85 comments 

The first word "if" is the giveaway that what follows is hypothetical and not factual. But Althouse used the indicative mood for the verb, giving credence to the premise: "fat-shaming is wrong."

Now re-express the idea in the subjunctive mood:

If fat-shaming were wrong...

... what about basement-living-shaming and barista-shaming?

My version may sound stilted and dated -- but it should! The premise should be cast with doubt because it is a tenuous premise. 

Can you see how the Althouse/indicative mood helps you to accept the premise? 

________________

*Our word "shame" is cognate with the old Germanic word for "pudenda." Link

object clause

Pop quiz!

Does this sound right to you?

It is right. 

Normally, you'd say "who should simply leave the Internet"  But this time the clause is the object to the previous chunk, the clause that tells who does what to whom, "I believe whom" That is the previous chunk and the main clause so you stick with whom even though that noun is the subject of it's own continuing clause, this time it's an object clause. 

I believe whom/who should leave the internet.

Whom wins.

And oddly, the same thing happens in hieroglyphics and the same thing happens in ASL. The noun as object has its own form and keeps its form as subject of its own clause. In hieroglyphs all of the "it" "you" "he" "she" "them" all those things change, and stay that way as the next chunk continues. In sign the same thing happens. When subject noun A does something to object noun B then B is positioned where A left off and whatever B does after that starts where A left it. Out there in left field perhaps.  So it's changed. You do not revert to textbook sign for B because A did something to it and your story continues. 

Who's A Nazi Now?

link

An 11-year-old British student corrected Justin Bieber's grammar:

In the song, you can be heard - on a number of occasions - stating 'If I was your boyfriend': here you have clearly used the subjunctive mood incorrectly.

The correct lyrics should, in fact, be 'If I were your boyfriend'.

This is a very common mistake made by the general public today; however, if role models (and popular singer/song-writers) such as you cannot use it, why should we make the effort to study and use such grammatical forms correctly?' link

cupboard

The note is suspect of being fake but the misspelling of cubbard is a nice touch. The note is titled "When you're house sitting for millennials and ask how the lights work."

The link goes to twitter post that circulated but search those words and a lot of results appear.

The house sitter is answered with a long description involving downloading an app to one's presumed smartphone and synching the app with their home device that turns on/off the lights. Access to the device to synch is convoluted and involves opening a cupboard above coat hooks. Synch the device manually then go the bathroom and flick off the lights.

The story is about young people's preference for complicating edge technology over simple straightforward appliance.  Comments latched onto misspelling cupboards.

I am a terrible editor. Everything looks good to me. I missed that one. Schwing, went right by. Yet most everyone else saw it. And it bugged them. It colored their view of the people writing the note. The error diminished the writers in the reader's view.

What a bummer.

I'm going to start saving the grammatical errors that British commenters point out. They concentrate on the error to the exclusion of all else. Without registering annoyance their nit-pics are the finest of all. They are really very good at pointing out mismatches within and between predicates. Spotting and naming them is their expertise. It signals an exceedingly haughty superiority in language without complaining. That's what I'll do, I'll start saving and sharing for entertainment.

I just now read, "I'm so glad you didn't end the sentence with "for" that's one of my pet peeves." The sentence was restructured to avoid it making it sound a bit funny in order to be proper. But it satisfied the reader.

I didn't have the heart to tell the intern trying so hard to impress to drop the word "Moms" for "mother."  The street language really does not work at the Federal Reserve Bank. He needed to know that but I couldn't tell him. Their memos are voiceless. Even in a meeting that street language will hold him back, and learning their language is not a cultural or racial sellout, white kids had to learn the specific and limited corporate language too. It's not his culture not fitting, all cultures must learn to fit, and it's not white culture, it's foreign to whites too. It's a signaling thing.

Peeved, really? There's an emotional thing going on that prevents acceptance of different forms?

I get corrected in every language I try. If I were afraid of correction then I wouldn't try anything. There is always a palpable sincerity. Except when there's not. Except when there's only signaling.

Grammar is my worst subject.  I can't match up anything right. That's where my scores are always the worstest.

KLEM FM

link in case the video don't load

Pay attention to the story. Does it bother you that the narrator can't conjugate the verb "to be"  correctly?

We was drivin' up Grapevine Hill passin' cars like they was standin' still

It doesn't really bug me. My dad talked that way. It's authentic vernacular.

What does grate on me is the increasing use of "was" for "were" in the subjunctive mood. Especially among the twittering classes.

"If I was rich, I would do ____."

 Plenty of famous people construct their wishes exactly that way. Just try googling "If I was" (with the quotation marks) and the names of celebrities. You'll be surprised.

KLEM FM

link in case the video doesn't load

I'm so tired of people getting the subjunctive mood wrong (triggered elsewhere).

Say what you will about the "Woodstock Generation" -- at least Robert Hunter knew his subjunctive mood. I count at least four instances of correct usage in his lyrics for "Ripple."

Lyrics after the break

Hillary protestors at Hard Choices book signing

Grammar: It Does Make a Difference

Call yourself a “grammar Nazi”? Be careful, because they actually exist...

Here’s a Tweet from the American Nazi Party, demanding correct spelling and grammar “for the cause”:

I'm not embedding the Tweet here... but it is embedded at the link.

I am embedding instead an attempt at humor.

grammar chiseled in stone

Was this shown already? Man, try to get a word in edgeways around this place sometimes.

They don't know what they're talking about

Over the course of writing a fair amount lo these many years, I've run into a lot of grammar issues.

My own, certainly. I'll be the first to admit that my public school education did not guide me well in the ways of grammar. Sure the basics, but once you get past the basics, there's a whole lot left.

I started really learning grammar when I started taking foreign languages.  I write intuitively with English, mostly picking up tips and tricks from reading. But other languages? There's no intuition to be had (for me at least), so it becomes more of a scientific pursuit.  Everything with a genus and species, connected with sure laws of that language, which once mastered can be flexibly ignored.

In my continuing quest to finally learn the English language, I've run into problems that aren't so nicely settled. They're not my problems. It's not me.  It's English. 

For instance, English lacks a generic singular.  We have a neuter: it.   But, when I'm trying to talk about a general person's ideas or behaviors, it's not nice to say, "It may think."  We're not robots!  "He may think," would suffice, but maybe I want to include the ladies.  "She might think," maybe, but that might lead Instapundit to give it a #waronmen tag. 

The old standby was to assume the masculine. Everyone is a he unless otherwise noted, and, like with the Greek, a group of guys could mean all guys or a mix of guys and gals.  Mankind, for instance, isn't  just for men, but everyone "man-like" in a genetic/clinical sort of way.

You don't even need a kind, just Man suffices.  "How to serve Man" was a cookbook for how to eat people, not just humans with penises. 

That's not acceptable anymore.  We say humanity now, or the tortured 'humankind', instead of mankind.

"All men are created equal" isn't allowed, as we want to say everyone has equal rights no matter what parts they have below.

Did you notice what I did in that last sentence?  Each person (a generic singular) has rights, no matter what... what....

What pronoun is appropriate to press on in that sentence?

 If you're old-fashioned you use just the "he" or if you're enlightened just the "she."  Some use "he or she," but that's a sign of indecisiveness, and that's something I will not abide.  Which is it?!

Admittedly, in our contemporary world "he or she" might even be an appropriate label for a specific subset of people.  We're not talking about hermaphrodites, however, in our generic sentences, we're trying to talk about a specific, yet not specifically gendered, person. 

Picking one or the other satisfies the need for a singular pronoun, and we all know a person isn't limiting the discussion to one gender.  But this brings its own problems.

So, I've gotten into the habit, along with many others, of using the plural "they" as a singular.  Which doesn't fit any rule but does fit how language has adapted itself to fill in missing gaps.  Like with memory, it may not be correct but it does allow us to function. 

A number of people disagree.  But they're wrong. 

The Classic Ambiguity

I took a grammar class in college (and aced it, natch) so I thought I'd share from my textbook. Pg 200…

"The absolute phrase (also known as the "nominative absolute") is a structure independent from the main sentence;(...) The absolute phrase introduces an idea related to the sentence as a whole, not to any one of it's parts:"

It goes on with examples... I'll skip those.

"Absolute phrases are of two kinds - with different purposes and different effects. (...) ...the first kind: the absolute that explains a cause or condition. (...) the absolute phrase could be rewritten as a "because, "when" or "since" clause:"

 The other type... "The absolute construction, on the other hand, leaves open the possibility for other reasons...." etc.,

"Perhaps the most famous absolute phrase is the one found in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And, as we know, it is open to more than one interpretation:"

Ah hah! She had a point to this grammar nonsense, you say.