Philippine education seems caught in a cul-de-sac with no way out

I am posting in the Forum a letter dating back to October 28, 2012 that I had most unfortunately glossed over because it was sent to me as an attachment to an e-mail rather than in the body of the e-mail itself, which was blank—thus giving me the impression that it was spam or malware. Only much later, when I finally found the time to spare to check my e-mail box more closely, did I find out that it wasn’t. The attachment was a letter addressed to me that came from Mr. Antonio Calipjo Go, academic supervisor of Marian School of Quezon City, who has been engaged these past several years in a lone crusade against error-riddled public school textbooks.

Here’s his letter full:

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A puzzling usage of “which” to introduce a relative clause

Question by Miss Mae, Forum member (August 27, 2012):

One of the things I’m very careful about is to put a comma before which. So why did this sentence not use a comma before “which”?

“Looked at from another angle, the aim of the ‘Long March to resist Japan in north China’ was to allow CCP members to rest and recoup their strength, and provided a reliably safe and self-sufficient base area in the north-west for the armed resistance against Japan which came later. (China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation)

My reply to Miss Mae:

Let’s take a close look at the usage of the conjunction “which” in the sentence you quoted:

“Looked at from another angle, the aim of the ‘Long March to resist Japan in north China’ was to allow CCP members to rest and recoup their strength, and provided a reliably safe and self-sufficient base area in the north-west for the armed resistance against Japan which came later.”

In that sentence, “which” is used as a function word to introduce a subordinate clause expressing consequence, result, or effect. That subordinate clause is “which came later,” which is a restrictive clause—meaning that this clause is essential or indispensable to the meaning of the sentence. (The opposite of a restrictive clause is, of course, the nonrestrictive or nonessential clause—meaning that the clause is not absolutely necessary to the meaning of the sentence. Put in another way, a clause that follows “which” merely adds information to the sentence and can actually be taken out without altering the basic idea.)

Now, in American English, the convention is to use the function word “that” to introduce a restrictive or essential clause, and to use “which” preceded by a comma to introduce a nonrestrictive or nonessential clause. This American English convention is the usage that you are particularly referring to, and you are absolutely right in expecting that comma to precede the “which” in that sentence, in which case it should read as follows:

“Looked at from another angle, the aim of the ‘Long March to resist Japan in north China’ was to allow CCP members to rest and recoup their strength, and provided a reliably safe and self-sufficient base area in the north-west for the armed resistance against Japan, which came later.”  

But the big question is: Why wasn’t that comma provided before the “which”?

The answer is that either that sentence is grammatically wrong or that it’s not in American English to begin with. It was therefore necessary to check the provenance of that sentence. When I did, I found out that it was apparently written by Xuē Xīnrán, pen name Xinran, who is a British-Chinese journalist, broadcaster, and writer. That usage of “which” is therefore grammatically correct because the sentence you quoted is in British English, in which the grammatical convention for the usage of “which” is different from that of American English.

In British English, “which” is used in place of “that” for introducing both restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses. The British English convention marks a nonrestrictive clause by preceding the “which” with a comma; when the clause is intended to be restrictive, no comma is used to precede “which.” In the case of the sentence you quoted, the absence of that comma before “which” is a telltale sign that we have a British English sentence here that an American English writer would have rendered with a “that”—with no comma before it, of course—as follows:

“Looked at from another angle, the aim of the ‘Long March to resist Japan in north China’ was to allow CCP members to rest and recoup their strength, and provided a reliably safe and self-sufficient base area in the north-west for the armed resistance against Japan that came later.”

Response by Mwita Chacha, Forum member (August 28, 2012):

Although the sentence under discussion is said to have correctly used the conjunction “which”—based on the British English standard—it is still terribly wanting in the other grammar aspects, or so I’ve observed. To be specific, the subject of that sentence, namely “the aim,” is followed by a linking verb “was” and completed by its subject complement in form of an infinitive phrase “to allow” with all its associated modifiers; but it has nothing to do, in my view, with the action verb “provided” next to the comma. My comprehension is that, for the sake of parallelism, the past tense verb “provided” should have been reduced to its base form “provide” and introduced by particle “to” to make an infinitive “to provide” so that it will form a well-balanced pair of infinitives with the preceding infinitive “to allow” by compounding them with the coordinating conjunction “and.”

My response to Mwita Chacha’s comment (August 28, 2012):

Mwita Chacha’s suggested revisions to that sentence from China Witness: Voices From A Silent Generation would result in the following sentence:

“Looked at from another angle, the aim of the ‘Long March to resist Japan in north China’ was to allow CCP members to rest and recoup their strength, and to provide a reliably safe and self-sufficient base area in the north-west for the armed resistance against Japan that came later.”

I don’t think that the revision is faithful to the sense intended by the original statement. It seems clear to me that by using the past tense verb “provided,” the author meant the coordinate clause “(the Long March) provided a reliably safe and self-sufficient base area in the north-west for the armed resistance against Japan which came later” to be not a part of the stated aim of the Long March but a result—a positive consequence—of the decision to undertake that Long March.

I agree with Mwita Chacha, though, that the original sentence quoted by Miss Mae is wanting in some other grammar aspects. Indeed, I think the sense would have been clearer if the pronoun “it” was used as the subject of the second coordinate clause so that the shift from aim to consequence would be unmistakable:

“Looked at from another angle, the aim of the ‘Long March to resist Japan in north China’ was to allow CCP members to rest and recoup their strength, and it provided a reliably safe and self-sufficient base area in the north-west for the armed resistance against Japan that came later.”

For greater clarity and to emphasize that shift from aim to consequence, however, I would have gone as far as using the emphatic form “did provide” in that coordinate clause, as follows:

“Looked at from another angle, the aim of the ‘Long March to resist Japan in north China’ was to allow CCP members to rest and recoup their strength, and it did provide a reliably safe and self-sufficient base area in the north-west for the armed resistance against Japan that came later.”

Miss Mae, of course, is right in the case of this sentence from China Witness: “I was born and grew up in Jingxiang village, in Cang’an county, Zheijang province, it has over six hundred years of history.” It does need a semicolon instead of a comma after “Zheijang province”—and using that semicolon would be grammatically airtight regardless of whether British English or American English is being used in that sentence:

“I was born and grew up in Jingxiang village, in Cang’an county, Zheijang province; it has over six hundred years of history.”

As an editor, though, I’d go for narrative smoothness and use a summative modifier instead in that clause:

“I was born and I grew up in Jingxiang village, in Cang’an county, Zheijang province, a place that has over six hundred years of history.”

(Watch for my essay on summative modifiers as a clarifying device in exposition. I’ll post it in next week’s edition of the Forum.)

Rejoinder from Miss Mae (August 29, 2012):

Uh-oh, I don’t think I understand. 

I even thought at first that the sentence simply had a typographical error. That “to provide a reliably safe and self-sufficient base area in the north-west for the armed resistance against Japan” was just another of the aims of the Long March (the other being “to allow CCP members to rest and recoup their strength”). So I concluded that the sentence should have been written this way instead: 

“Looked at from another angle, the aim of the ‘Long March to resist Japan in north China’ was to allow CCP members to rest and recoup their strength, and provide a reliably safe and self-sufficient base area in the north-west for the armed resistance against Japan which came later.” (China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation)

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Choosing between the idioms “on the rise” and “on the increase”

Question by maria balina, Forum member (July 29, 2012):

Hi, Mr. Carillo!

When do you use the expressions “on the rise” and “on the increase”?  Can they be used interchangeably?  

Your immediate reply will be appreciated.  Thank you.

My reply to maria balina:

The figurative expressions “on the rise” and “on the increase” both mean increasing in frequency or intensity and can be interchangeable in some contexts. We can both comfortably say “Violent crime is on the rise in the city” and “Violent crime is on the increase in the city.” However, when the context is that of improving or advancing in personal stature or of gaining some desirable attribute or trait, only “on the rise” is appropriate, as in “The family’s fortunes are on the rise” and in “That singer’s star is on the rise now that she has a new talent agent.” Semantically, “on the increase” doesn’t work in such contexts, as we can see in these awkward sounding sentences: “The family’s fortunes are on the increase.” “The singer’s star is on the increase now that she has a new talent agent.”

On closer examination, we will find that the choice between “on the rise” and “on the increase” primarily depends on the subject. When the subject is a numerically measurable quantity, as in the case of, say, “rice harvests” and “median incomes,” both “on the rise” and “on the increase” can be used:

“Rice harvests are on the rise in Isabela.” / “Rice harvests are on the increase in Isabela.”

“Median incomes are on the rise in farming towns.” /“Median incomes are on the increase in farming towns.”   

When the subject is abstract and uncountable or not precisely measurable, however, only “on the rise” works semantically:

“Our luck is on the rise after a long, bad spell.” “Consumer confidence is on the rise after the prices of basic good stabilized.”

In the case of “on the increase” in such contexts, it becomes advisable to use its literal equivalent, “increasing,” instead:

“Our luck is increasing after a long, bad spell.” “Consumer confidence is increasing after the prices of basic good stabilized.”

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“The same to you” not catch-all reply to expressions of best wishes

Question by Mwita Chacha, Forum member (July 21, 2012):

My country’s president was being interviewed by a local radio presenter on the day he was celebrating his birthday. On that special show, the interviewer allowed listeners to make calls to the station to wish their head of state a happy birthday. As expected, virtually all listeners uttered the common social expression “Happy birthday to you,” but it was the president’s reply to the greeting that left me particularly puzzled. Indeed, I could hear him saying “The same to you”' in response to each I-wish-you-a-happy-birthday greeting, which suggests that his replication was not just a slip of the tongue. My question is: Don’t we have limits concerning the use of the expression “The same to you” as a polite reply to those who are giving us their best wishes?

My reply to Mwita Chacha:

The social expression “The same to you” is, of course, a polite reply by a greeted person to a wish or greeting that’s also applicable to the one who made the greeting at the first instance. When the greeting is “Have a nice day!” or “Have an enjoyable evening!”, it’s perfectly acceptable to reply “The same to you!” or “You, too!” (Of course, “The same to you” would also be an appropriate response to such collectively applicable greetings as “Happy Thanksgiving Day!” and “Merry Christmas!” I’d say, though, that it’s more socially graceful to return the same greeting by saying “Happy Thanksgiving Day, too!” “Merry Christmas, too!” Saying “The same to you” in such situations just sounds socially off-key and lazy to me.) But when the wish or greeting applies specifically and uniquely only to the person being greeted, as “Happy birthday to you!” to a birthday celebrator, the expression “The same to you” is obviously off-tangent and terribly inappropriate. The most common and suitable response to a birthday greeting is, of course, “Thank you!” or “Thank you very much!” The president of your country was therefore ill-advised in using “The same to you” to respond to his birthday well-wishers. 

For nonnative English speakers, however, it takes time and adequate exposure to get conversant with the social graces in English. This is why it behooves those who are good in English, whether native or nonnative speakers of the language, to be tolerant and forgiving of people who make public conversation gaffes like the one you cited. We obviously can’t correct them to their face—certainly not those in power or in high places—when they make such social booboos, but indirectly educating them is obviously desirable and acceptable. This is why I think this feedback of yours about the inadequate social graces of your country’s president is a step in the right direction. Who knows, this feedback just might reach him without offending him and thus start doing wonders to his English-language social conversations.

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When do we omit the relative pronoun “that” in a sentence?

Question by Miss Mae, Forum member (June 25, 2012):

What should be the guideline when omitting “that” in a sentence like this one from a news story in The Manila Times?

“While China said it would also ask its fishermen to leave the area, it stressed it had no intention of pulling out its bigger ships from there.”

Because with the phrase “while China said it would also ask its fishermen to leave the area,” having no “that” between “said” and “it” sounds natural. But with the phrase “it stressed it had no intention of pulling out its bigger ships from there,” it isn’t. Why is that?

Reply of Forum member Mwita Chacha to the above question (June 25, 2012):

They say that the word “that” can be omitted after a verb of attribution (“said,” “stated,” “announced,” “disclosed,” “stressed”) without a loss of meaning. For instance, it’s not inaccurate to write “The minister has said he would open a case against the newspaper.” On the other hand,  “that” is not optional in the sentence “The president announced that his new tax plan would be introduced soon.” This is because without including “that” in that sentence, the clause “his new tax plan...” can be mistaken for the direct object of verb “announce.”

Also, “that” is not optional when one verb of attribution is shared by two “that’s.” For example, in the sentence “The minister said that he would open a case against the newspaper, and he would drag to the court all his attackers,” the word “that” should have been inserted after the second “he” for the sake of parallelism.

As to whether the sentence you have given is correct or not, my view is yes, it is grammatically airtight for one reason—it has used two different verbs of attribution, “said” and “stressed,” in two different clauses, one independent and the other dependent. You might recall that a clause is defined as a construction consisting of a subject and a verb that has a complete meaning. Even if those two clauses had used the same verb of attribution, the inclusion of the word “that” in either clause would still be optional for as long as the two clauses have different subjects.

My comment on Mwita Chacha’s posting (June 26, 2012):

Great explanation, Mwita Chacha! Thanks for your instruction support to the Forum!

Rejoinder of Mwita Chacha (June 27, 2012):

I acknowledge your compliments, Sir! But does it not seem that I have somewhat botched my explanation, especially in the final part of it? Indeed, I have come to think that in order to help the reader not mistake the clause “it had no intention of pulling...” for a direct object of the verb “stressed,” the word “that” is really necessary before “it,” as Miss Mae has suggested.

My reply to Mwita Chacha’s rejoinder (June 29, 2012):

Many journalists and professional writers with a journalistic background routinely omit “that” in modifying clauses, as in this sentence taken by Miss Mae from that news report:

“While China said it would also ask its fishermen to leave the area, it stressed it had no intention of pulling out its bigger ships from there.”

Such sentences are a common elliptical form, particularly in spoken English. The unellipted form of the sentence above is, of course, this construction with the two missing “thats” restored:

“While China said that it would also ask its fishermen to leave the area, it stressed that it had no intention of pulling out its bigger ships from there.”

A rule of thumb I use for such sentences is to avail of the ellipsis only (1) if the elimination of “that” won’t confuse the reader, and (2) if the resulting elliptical sentence reads and sounds better than the full-blown sentence.

I would say that if read aloud, the following fully ellipted version of that sentence would handily meet the two conditions I cited above:

“While China said it would also ask its fishermen to leave the area, it stressed it had no intention of pulling out its bigger ships from there.”

Even if “that” is absent after the verb “stressed,” there should be no problem understanding what is meant by the ellipted clause “it stressed it had no intention of pulling out its bigger ships from there” as articulated. 

But what about if that sentence is silently read in print? My perception is that even if “that” is absent, there’s still no real danger of misconstruing the intended sense of the modifying clause “it had no intention of pulling out its bigger ships from there.” I would therefore say that the following doubly ellipted sentence is semantically airtight both in its written and spoken form:

“While China said it would also ask its fishermen to leave the area, it stressed it had no intention of pulling out its bigger ships from there.”

Still, it’s prudent to observe this caveat in doing elliptical constructions: When in doubt, don’t.

RELATED READING:
The virtue of elliptical constructions

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Proposed rewrite of inscrutable English of magazine’s foreword

New Forum member Menie made the following posting that offers a suggested rewrite of the seriously flawed English of a college magazine’s foreword that was sent to me last August 8, 2010 by Prof. R. Muthukumar of the Department of Business Administration of NMSSVN College in Nagamalai, Madurai, India:

I see that no one has taken up the challenge of translating this to something which can be understood at first reading, so I will give it a try. Step one is a literal translation: substituting the weird words and phrases with understandable words or phrases, but retaining the general style of the sentences.

Having understood what they are trying to say, we can then attempt to rewrite it in a better style, but still retaining all of the ideas expressed above.

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“Sick books” issue goes off the deep end, then bubbles up again

There was this story in two of the broadsheets last November 9 that Education Secretary Armin Luistro visited “sick books” crusader Antonio Calipjo Go recently and encouraged him to resume his terminated crusade. This was after Mr. Go announced a few days back that he was shelving his one-man advocacy for good, having been intensely pilloried instead of being thanked for it by the publishers, authors, and editors of the targeted textbooks.

Well, what a coincidence! Just two days before that, a new member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum—his username is pedestrian—asked me to explain what those textbook errors were all about in the first place. He was belatedly responding to a June 6, 2009 editorial of The Manila Times that commented on the several dozens of questionable English passages that Mr. Go had found in six locally produced English-language textbooks. Pedestrian was saying that since there was no explanation for those errors, it’s difficult for him to learn from them.

I told pedestrian that then and now, I just didn’t have the time to critique all those problematic textbook passages, but I consented to doing the following four samplers just to give him some idea of what the problem is all about:

(1) “The rain and storm are needed to snuff out the heat in the air.” There’s nothing wrong with the grammar of that sentence, but its sophomoric use of the phrasal verb “snuff out” makes it sound infantile. To “snuff out” is much too strong and emotional a verb phrase in that statement, for it means “to extinguish (as in smothering the flame of a candle), make extinct, kill, or execute.” And to say that the rain and storm are “needed” to do that snuffing out action on heat is unwarranted personification, or inappropriately representing rain and storm as humans. Here’s a more objective, level-headed way of wording that sentence: “The rain and storm remove heat from the air.”

(2) “Just remember this acronym—DOCSiShQACNMN to make it easy for you to remember the order of adjectives in a series.” It should be obvious even to a preschooler that this is ridiculous advice—to use a tangled, tongue-twisting, terribly-hard-to-recall acronym as a mnemonic for remembering the order of adjectives in a series. We normally expect to get such advice from simpletons, not educators or textbook writers.

(3) “Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the novels ‘The Treasure Island’ and ‘The Kidnapper.’” This factually erroneous sentence is the result not only of the ignorance and laziness of the textbook writer but also the carelessness and cluelessness of the textbook editors. The correct titles of those very popular novels are Treasure Island—without the article “The”—and Kidnapped—not “The Kidnapper.” It’s really unthinkable for the author of that book not to know this, and this kind of factual error makes that textbook statement sound almost like a sick joke.

(4) “My sister is old. She can accompany me to the outing.” This statement is semantically faulty and almost laughable. It gives the idea that old age is a prerequisite for someone to qualify as a companion to an outing. This time, the problem is both semantic and grammatical. What the writer obviously wanted to say is, “My sister is old enough. She can accompany me to the outing.” The adjective “enough” would have been enough to make that statement logical, but the textbook writer evidently didn’t have enough semantic sensitivity to make that distinction.

I told pedestrian in closing that I wish someone would pick up after me and find time to dissect the remaining problematic textbook passages, which I daresay won’t be remedied by simply providing supplemental notes to the flawed textbooks, as had been done by the DepEd. Those textbooks should be withdrawn from circulation as soon as practicable, then replaced with textbooks written by semantically competent authors.

Read The Manila Times editorial on the textbooks with erroneous English!

Read “Luistro backs Go crusade” in the Philippine Daily Inquirer now!

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And we thought we’d find typos only in newspapers and books!

I don’t think we can blame this one on the influence of too much short-cut texting on the mobile phone.

What do you think?

Here’s the story from Yahoo!

Cringe-inducing typo outside N.C. school
By Brett Michael Dykes

Well, here's something to make your old English teacher gasp in horror: A road contractor hired to paint the word “school” on a freshly paved stretch of road near Southern Guilford High School in North Carolina rendered the traffic area in question a “school” zone.

But fear not for the (surely confused) youth of Greensboro! The contractor, a company called Traffic Markings, has already corrected the error.  Here's visual evidence, courtesy of local TV station WXII.

WXII had some fun with the typo on the air too:

This isn’t the first such mishap on record. Last year, for instance, a Miami-area road crew offered the variant spelling of “scohol,” while in 2007, a team in Kalamazoo, Mich., managed the same “h” and “c” reversal.

Chalk it all up to a bad day’s wrok.

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