Jose Carillo's Forum

YOU ASKED ME THIS QUESTION

Jose Carillo’s English Forum invites members to post their grammar and usage questions directly on the Forum itself, but every now and then, readers of my “English Plain and Simple” column in The Manila Times e-mail their questions directly to me. I make an effort to reply to every question individually. When the answer to a question is particularly instructive and of wide interest, however, I find it such a waste not to share it with users and learners of English in general. It’s for that purpose that I opened this special section. I hope Forum members will find reading it informative and enjoyable.

Which is correct: “I am a fan of hers” or “I am a fan of her’s”?

Question from KMXer, Forum member (October 14, 2010):

Help please! Which is correct? “I am a fan of hers.” or “I am a fan of her’s”?

My reply to KMXer:

The correct female possessive pronoun in such sentence constructions is “hers,” which means “that which belongs to her,” so the grammatically correct sentence is “I am a fan of hers.” “Her” is used without a following noun and is equivalent in meaning to the adjective “her.” The form “her’s” is not a valid possessive pronoun form in English. Forming the possessive by affixing apostrophe-s is done only on nouns, as in “Alfred’s,” “man’s fate,” and “the cat’s paw.”

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Making effective paragraph transitions in English exposition

Question by Miss Mae, Forum member (October 5, 2010):
             
I learned sometime ago that lead sentences of succeeding paragraphs must vary. That is, if Paragraph 1 started straightforwardly, the lead sentence of Paragraph 2 must begin or end with a modifier. Should that be followed strictly?

My reply to Miss Mae:

I have a feeling that you didn’t learn it right about how to do the lead sentences of successive paragraphs. To the best of my knowledge, there’s no rule that requires lead sentences of successive paragraphs to vary in certain ways, much less a rule that specifically states that “if Paragraph 1 started straightforwardly, the lead sentence of Paragraph 2 must begin or end with a modifier.” I feel pretty sure that whoever taught you these nonsensical rules didn’t really know what paragraphs and their lead sentences are supposed to do and, I might as well say it, wasn’t knowledgeable either about the basics of composition.

I think a more sensible approach to doing lead sentences of paragraphs is to think of them as logical bridges or transitional devices between a succeeding paragraph and the one preceding it. As such, the form, structure, and content of a lead sentence of a paragraph will largely depend on what the paragraph’s development task for the composition will be. In expository writing like the essay, there’s generally a choice of seven such tasks, as follows:

(1) To amplify a point or add to it,
(2) To establish a causal relationship,
(3) To establish a temporal relationship,
(4) To present an example,
(5) To make an analogy,
(6) To provide an alternative, or
(7) To concede a point.

Once the writer decides on any of these tasks, it will become clear what kind of lead sentence the paragraph needs. Generally, there are two categories of lead sentences that serve as transitional bridges for paragraphs:

(1) Extrinsic or explicit transitions. Lead sentences of this type primarily rely on such familiar introductory words as “however,” “therefore” and “moreover” to show how an idea that will follow is related to the one preceding it. The various conjunctive adverbs (“anyway,” “in contrast,” “in fact”) and transitional phrases (“before,” “after,” during”) are musts for this category of transitional sentences.

(2) Intrinsic or implicit transitions. Lead sentences of this type make use of the natural progression or “flow” of the ideas themselves to link paragraphs logically. Instead of using the usual conjunctive adverbs or transitional phrases, they effect paragraph transitions through a semantic play on key words or ideas in the body of the exposition itself. A sentence that performs an intrinsic paragraph transition usually (a) repeats a key word or phrase used in the preceding paragraph and makes it the takeoff point for the succeeding paragraph, or else (b) uses a synonym or words similar to that key word or phrase to do the transitional job.

Because extrinsic or explicit transitional sentences are simple and easy to do, beginning writers normally make very frequent use of them in developing paragraphs. As they gain greater mastery of the writing craft, however, they depend more on intrinsic or implicit transitions to do the job because they provide less obtrusive and more elegant ways of bridging paragraphs.

My book Give Your English the Winning Edge devotes four chapters to the making of effective paragraph transitions. I suggest you get a copy of the book to thoroughly learn the various strategies, techniques, and applications for doing them.

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The usage of “the both of you” and “at the end of the day”

Questions from Maria Balina, Forum member (September 26, 2010):

Hi, Mr. Carillo!

These are my questions:

1.  When do you use “the both” and “both?”  As far as I can remember, there was no need to put the article “the” before “both.” I must belong to a different generation!  Grin

2.  Why are the words “carnapper,” “holdupper,” and “jetsetter” used? Does the suffix “-er” justify the use of these words when referring to a person? I’ve checked my dictionary and these words do not exist.

3.  I’ve noticed that President Noynoy Aquino has used the cliche “at the end of the day”  a few times. I respect Pres. Aquino’s ghost writer Manolo Quezon but I am bit disappointed at the use of such a cliché.

My reply to Maria Balina:

The use of either “both of you” or “the both of you” and “both of us” or “the both of us” is acceptable in sentences like “Remember that this trip is only for [both of you, the both of you] so don’t bring along anybody else” and “Remember that this trip is only for [both of us, the both of us] so don’t bring along anybody else.” The form you are accustomed to using, “both of you”/”both of us,” is the scrupulously correct grammatical form, but the variant “the both of you”/”the both of us” is a widely used idiomatic form particularly in the United States. In fact, Google cites something like 22,100,000 entries for expressions using “for the both of you” and 21,600,000 for “for the both of us,” and about this form, the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage assures us that “There is no reason you should avoid it if it is your normal idiom.” In any case, you need not lose sleep over your choice of the more common form that doesn’t use “the.” There’s really no generational gap between the users of either form—only a geographical and linguistic one.

As we all know, putting the suffix “-er” to a noun or verb is the fastest and simplest way to convert it to a word that denotes the doer of the action. This is the normal way that words like “gardener,” “freezer,” and “heater” have evolved. As to the words “carnapper,” “holdupper,” and “jet-setter,” only the third—“jet-setter”—is acknowledged to be part of the English lexicon by the Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary, but we all know that the first two—“carnapper” and “holdupper”—have been widely used by the Philippine print and broadcast media over the years. I guess that in a few more years, these two will finally be recognized as legitimate English words simply by virtue of the frequency and intensity of their use in the Philippines.

Yes, I noticed, too, that President Benigno Aquino III uses the expression “at the end of the day” very often when he speaks extemporaneously. I really don’t know how to react to your disappointment at his frequent use of that expression, and I don’t think it’s appropriate to be blaming anybody for this state of affairs. Perhaps it would be better if I just shared with you my thoughts about “at the end of the day” and similarly overused expressions. I have written several columns about them in The Manila Times over the past five years and I am now posting them in the Forum for your appreciation. You can read all of them by simply clicking this link to “Doing battle with the most irritating phrases in English.

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Why many young writers prefer “beneath” to “under” or “below”

I had a very interesting e-mail conversation on word usage recently with my friend Krip Yuson, the Palanca Awards Hall of Famer and Philippine Star columnist, and I would like to share that conversation with Forum members and guests:

Krip:
Joe, been noticing for a long time that among the young, in particular, no one uses “under” and “below” anymore. Everyone uses “beneath”—even with such usage as “beneath the glass table” and “Beneath her nails was dirt.”

Hope we can have your take on this sometime?

Me:
I think there’s no question that “beneath” is a more elegant—shall I say also more “literary”?—word than “under” and “below,” so it’s not surprising for young writers and speakers to prefer it. I’d say though that there’s a touch of fastidiousness in “beneath” that I, as copyeditor, wouldn’t allow in most journalistic and nonliterary work. In such cases, I’ll blue-pencil “beneath” in “beneath the glass table” and in “Beneath her nails was dirt” anytime and routinely replace it with “under” or “below” depending on context. Listen to and feel the expressions “under the glass table” and “under her nails was dirt.” I’d say they sound much more natural and real-worldly.

Apart from their utilitarian sound and feel, of course, I have a suspicion that both “under” and “below” have been diminished in the public mind by their unfortunate association with the idiomatic expressions “under the table” (think “jueteng payola”!) and “below the belt” (think of Manny Pacquiao’s rogue boxing opponents!), both of which strongly connote corruption and unfairness. I can therefore imagine that this is one other reason for the beginning writer or budding public speaker to be loath to use “under” and “below.” They would rather use the more neutral if effete “beneath” to avoid such negative associations.

Krip:
Thanks for ur sexy sexplication, Jose. But isn’t it rather beneath us to cotton to these modernist applications of intended if ill-fitting elegance? Jeje.

Seriously, I recall that there were distinctions made by my old elementary school grammar amanuensis, or police, relating to the physical aspects involved. Parang “beneath” had to mean really under and there’s a cover or lid pa, or earth piled upon the described object, as in “What Lies Beneath”—while kapag “under” nakikita pa, something like that. Or is memory playing trick or treat with me?

I agree with you that more natural ’yung dating ng UNDER and BELOW sa expressions cited.

Maybe you can also touch on the distinction between the proper uses of THAT and WHICH, isa pang di alam ng mga bata.

Daghang salamuchas meantime, and keep it up, bro!

Me:
You’re most welcome, Krip! I agree that it’s beneath us to cotton to writers who invariably force-fit the preposition “beneath” into their prose instead of the plainer, simpler “under” or “below,” so perhaps you’ll also agree that editors ought to issue a fatwah against “beneath” except in very specific descriptions of relative position, in poetry, and in enigmatic phrases meant to tantalize, like the movie title What Lies Beneath and the title of Bette Midler’s song “Wind Beneath My Wings.” (Admittedly, “under” and “below” just can’t cut it in such instances.)

As to the specific denotations of “beneath,” I think it’s best to take a look at what my Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary has to say about the word:

beneath
Function: preposition
Date: before 12th century

1 a : in or to a lower position than  : BELOW  <beneath the surface>  b : directly under  <the ground beneath her feet>  c : at the foot of  <a camp beneath a hill>
2 : not suitable to the rank of  : unworthy of  <beneath his dignity>
3 : under the control, pressure, or influence of  <the chair sagged beneath his weight>
4 : concealed by  : under the guise of  <a warm heart beneath a gruff manner>

As we can see, “beneath” has very specific uses, so your old elementary-school grammar amanuensis must have been on the right track after all in discussing all those fine distinctions about the usage of the word.

As to the proper uses of “that” and “which,” you may want to recommend to your students to check out my four-part discussion of them here in the Forum, “Learning to use the relative pronouns confidently,” which I posted way back on October 16, 2009. It previously ran as a four-part series in my English-usage column in The Manila Times in September-October 2008. In that series, I extensively discussed the relative pronouns “who,” “which,” and “that” in the context of their role as introducers of restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses and of subordinate clauses in general.

I also devoted four chapters (Chapter 105-108) on the usage of “who,” “which,” and “that” in my third book, Give Your English the Winning Edge. I daresay that any serious student of English grammar who reads that website posting and those four chapters of my book need never worry ever again about misusing “who,” “which,” and “that.”

Finally, thanks for the words of encouragement, Krip! I sure could use them “when the gray November of my soul”—I’m just echoing your quote of Herman Melville in your Philippine Star column this morning—sets in unannounced sometimes in my good-English advocacy.

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Which is correct—birthday “celebrant” or “celebrator”?

Question from reader Gerry B. (September 19, 2010):

I just want to know the correct or more appropriate word for a person who celebrates a birthday.  Is it “celebrant” or “celebrator?”  For me, I have switched to using “celebrator.”

My reply to Gerry:

You’ve made a well-advised switch from “celebrant” to “celebrator,” and I think that in the foreseeable future, your decision will shield you from a lot of ribbing and unjustified criticism from your associates and friends. But is “celebrant” really wrong and unacceptable usage? I wrote a column in The Manila Times last July 3 giving my views about this usage, and I am posting it below in support of the position I’ve taken.

No need to hold “celebrant” in a straightjacket

The Philippines being a predominantly Roman Catholic country, there’s a tendency for the supposedly English-savvy among us to scoff at people who describe as a “celebrant” someone celebrating a birthday or some other auspicious occasion. “Oh, no, that isn’t right!” they would often cut off and gleefully heckle the speaker. “The right word is ‘celebrator’; ‘celebrant’ means a priest officiating the Holy Mass!”

But are people who use “celebrator” in that context really wrong? Do they really deserve all that heckling?

Although I don’t usually join the wicked ribbing that often follows, I myself used to think that people who call birthday celebrators “birthday celebrants” are—if not actually unsavvy in their English—at least ill-advised in doing so. Indeed, my Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary defines “celebrant” as “one who celebrates; specifically the priest officiating the Eucharist.” Likewise, the Collins English Dictionary—Complete and Unabridged defines “celebrant” as “a person participating in a religious ceremony” and, in Christianity’s ecclesiastical terms, as “an officiating priest, esp at the Eucharist.”

On the authority of these two dictionaries, I had never really bothered to check the validity of the conventional wisdom that anybody who’s not a priest or cleric should never be called a “celebrant” but only a “celebrator.” By “celebrator,” of course, practically everybody uses it to mean someone observing or taking part in a notable occasion with festivities.

Recently, though, after witnessing yet another savage if good-natured ribbing of someone who used “celebrant” to describe a birthday celebrator, I decided that perhaps the issue was serious enough to look deeper into. I therefore resolved to check the usage with at least two other lexicographic authorities, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD).

The OED gives two definitions of “celebrant,” first as “a person who performs a rite, especially a priest at the Eucharist,” and, second, citing North American usage, as “a person who celebrates something.” For its part, the AHD primarily defines “celebrant” in essentially the same vein as the first OED definition, as (a) “A person who participates in a religious ceremony or rite”; (b) “A person who officiates at a religious or civil ceremony or rite, especially a wedding”; and (c) “In some Christian churches, the cleric officiating at the celebration of the Eucharist.” Like the OED, the AHD also makes a second definition of “celebrant” as “A participant in a celebration.”

Then the AHD goes one step further and makes the following usage note for “celebrant”: “Although ‘celebrant’ is most often used to describe an official participant in a religious ceremony or rite, a majority of the [AHD] Usage Panel accepted the use of ‘celebrant’ to mean ‘a participant in a celebration’ in an earlier survey. Still, while ‘New Year’s Eve celebrants’ may be an acceptable usage, ‘celebrator’ is an uncontroversial alternative in this more general sense.”

This being the case, I think people who use “celebrants” to describe people celebrating birthdays and other special occasions aren’t really wrong, and they certainly don’t deserve to be cut down and needled when using that word. And there’s no need for anyone to get upset either when called a “celebrant”—whether as principal or guest—during such occasions. I dare say that “celebrant” is as good a word as “celebrator” in such contexts, and except perhaps in the company of hidebound Christian fanatics, we need not hold the word “celebrant” in a straitjacket to describe only the Christian clergy doing their rituals.

In short, we can freely use “celebrators” to describe people celebrating or attending a birthday party or any other happy occasion, and I think the English-savvy among us need to get used to the idea that the usage of “celebrants” is actually par for the course and doesn’t deserve all that bashing as if it were bad English. (July 3, 2010)

A rejoinder from Gerry:

Thank you for your prompt reply and enlightening explanation on the use of “celebrant” and “celebrator.” Yesterday, one of my officemates questioned me for using “celebrators” instead of “celebrants” when our HR staff posted a list of birthday “celebrators” for the month. Well, I explained to him what I believed and knew was the correct one. And to make sure I had a basis in my answer, I consulted you later just to confirm my belief.

Thank you very much.  I really enjoy your Manila Times column and English Forum.  I have learned a lot from you.

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A grammar conversation on parenthetical usage

What’s the proper punctuation mark to use for parentheticals? Quite often a pair of commas will do, but there are grammatical situations where commas simply prove inadequate to the task, resulting in structurally flawed sentences with a subject-verb disagreement error or a dangling or misplaced modifier.

About the matter of punctuating parentheticals, let me share with you an e-mail conversation I just had with a friend, Palanca Awards Hall of Famer Ed Maranan:

Ed:
Joe, here’s a line from one of my children’s stories:

“Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose interest in his little birthday gift—and yes, pride in his grandpa—were growing by the minute.”

Am I right in seeing more than one subject in the subordinate clause which calls for a plural form verb, or does the word “interest” subsume the rest of the clause and thus call for a singular verb?

Me:
The operative subject in the subordinate clause is definitely the singular noun “interest.” The subject “pride” in the parenthetical “and yes, pride in his grandpa” doesn’t compound the operative subject (a parenthetical being an optional grammatical element), so “interest” is the only operative subject in that subordinate clause. We therefore have a subject-verb disagreement error here because the sentence uses the plural verb “were” for the singular noun “interest.”

Ed:
Aha, but if I were to construct the sentence in this manner:

“Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose interest in his little birthday gift and yes, pride in his grandpa were growing by the minute.”

...would the sentence with the plural “were” now be correct?

Me:
Yes, definitely! It would greatly clarify matters, though, if the word “yes” is preceded by a comma to make it a full-fledged interruptive. Otherwise, some readers might misconstrue the whole clause “pride in his grandpa were growing by the minute” itself to be the interruptive.

Ed:
Just a follow-up. Look at these two constructions:

1. “Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose interest in his little birthday gift and, yes, pride in his grandpa were growing by the minute.”

2. “Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose interest in his little
birthday gift and yes, pride in his grandpa, were growing by the minute.”

The first is your suggested placement of the comma—before “yes.” What if the comma were placed after grandpa? And here’s still another possible construction:

3. “Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose interest in his little birthday gift and, yes, pride in his grandpa, were growing by the minute.”

Three commas in all. Would this not more fully solve the problem of ambiguity and observe the rule of agreement? You said that without the comma before “yes,” readers might misconstrue “(and yes,) pride in his grandpa were growing by the minute” as the interruptive, with a faulty agreement, but this would not be the case because “whose interest in his little birthday gift” would then be a lost, dangling paraphrase without a verb, would it not?

Me:
I think the use of more commas to resolve the ambiguity in that construction just adds more grammatical and structural wrinkles to the sentence. In Sentence #2, in particular, putting a comma after “grandpa” detaches the interruptive “yes, pride in his grandpa” from the main sentence and makes the plural verb form “were growing” erroneous.

Sentence #3 is better than Sentence #2 in that it provides a comma before “yes,” thus making it a full-fledged interruptive separate from the parenthetical “pride in his grandpa.” However, both sentences suffer from the same subject-verb disagreement error.

We can make that error disappear by simply using a pair of dashes instead of commas to set off the parenthetical from the rest of the sentence:

“Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose interest in his little birthday gift—and, yes, pride in his grandpa—was growing by the minute.”

Here, the pair of dashes provides a much stronger break in the thought and structure of the sentence and this prevents the parenthetical from messing up the sentence grammatically.

FURTHER READING:
In “The parenthesis and its uses,” a six-part essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2008, I discussed the various grammatical and structural considerations involved in punctuating parentheticals. The wide-ranging discussions about punctuation in those essays should prove instructive to Forum members, so I have reconstituted the six essays into three parts for consecutive posting in the Forum. The first part is now posted in this week’s edition of the Forum.

Click to read “The parenthesis and its uses – Part I” now!

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Is it “Mexico woman” or “Mexican woman?”

Question e-mailed by Oliver Oliveros (August 24, 2010):

Is it “Mexico woman” or “Mexican woman?”

(He sent this question with a link to a news report about Miss Mexico winning the 2010 Miss Universe title.)

My reply to Oliver:

You ask if a writer or speaker should say “Mexico woman” or “Mexican woman.” I would say it all depends on what is meant. If the reference is to a woman in association with Mexico in some unspecified, offhanded, or generic way but not necessarily as one of its nationals, as in “I’m delighted by the performance of that Mexico woman,” then the use of “Mexico” as modifier of “woman” would be grammatically and idiomatically correct. However, if the reference is to specifically to the woman’s nationality, as in “A Mexican woman was crowned 2010 Miss Universe,” then the use of the modifier “Mexican” is grammatically and formally called for. This modification, of course, is done in semantically the same way as in “American woman,” “Brazilian woman,” and “Italian woman.”

We must be aware, though, that the “-an” ending isn’t the only possible ending for such modifiers that indicate nationality. It really depends on whether the name of the country ends with a vowel or a consonant, on how the name itself is spelled, or on a language-based convention adopted by the country itself. Cases in point are “Chinese woman,” “Japanese woman,” “British woman,” “French woman,” “Pakistani woman,” “Swiss woman,” “Turkish woman,” and “Philippine woman” or “Filipino woman.” The Anglicized nomenclature for nationality really takes all kinds.

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Is “virtually” the alternative to the adverb “practically”?

Question from Telekinesis, forum member (August 15, 2010):

Mr. Carillo, is the adverb “virtually” the alternative to the adverb “practically”?

My reply to Telekinesis:

Yes, we can say that the adverb “virtually” is an alternative to the adverb “practically,” but in actual usage, I wouldn’t say that they are practically interchangeable. Their dictionary definitions are, of course, almost identical, as we can see from these entries in my digital Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary:

virtually
Function: adverb 
Date:15th century

1 : almost entirely  : NEARLY
2 : for all practical purposes  <virtually unknown>

practically
Function: adverb 
Date: 1571

1 : in a practical manner  <look practically at the problem>
2 : ALMOST, NEARLY  <practically everyone>

Even if “virtually” and “practically” are almost synonymous, however, I must make the caveat that the semantics of the two are significantly different. For instance, let’s take what I’ve just said: “I wouldn’t say that they are practically interchangeable.” Except in an academic exercise like this, you won’t ever catch me using “virtually” in place of “practically” in that statement. I won’t ever say or write “I wouldn’t say that they are virtually interchangeable.” In such usages, “practically” has a practical, matter-of-fact flavor, while “virtually” has a hint of affectation that borders on what I’d call hoity-toityness. Indeed, one of the very few instances when I think “virtually” can replace “practically” without causing me discomfort is in the case of science or technical statements, as in this hypothetical sentence: “The two positions of the electron at that energy level are virtually interchangeable.”   

As to why this is so, I think we need to take up as well the meaning of the adjective “virtual,” from which the adverb “virtually” originated:

virtual
Function: adjective 
Etymology: Middle English, efficacious, potential, from Medieval Latin virtualis, from Latin virtus strength, virtue
Date: 15th century

1 : being such in essence or effect though not formally recognized or admitted  <a virtual dictator>
2 : of, relating to, or using virtual memory
3 : of, relating to, or being a hypothetical particle whose existence is inferred from indirect evidence  <virtualphotons> —  compare REAL 3
4 : being on or simulated on a computer or computer network  <print or virtual books>  <a virtual keyboard>: as  a : occurring or existing primarily online  <a virtual library>  <virtual shopping>  b : of, relating to, or existing within a virtual reality  <a virtual world>  <a virtual tour>

As we can see, the word “virtual” has a very slippery sense of perceived or imagined strength and of theoreticalness to it, which contrasts to the workaday, down-to-earth denotation of the noun “practical.” So, when it comes to a choice between their adverb equivalents when I’m talking about mundane matters, I’d take “practically” over “virtually” anytime.

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Should we find less dangerous alternatives for “as a matter of fact”?

Question from forces20 (August 13, 2010):

Hello, Mr. Joe: Time and again, I have been hearing the expression “the benefit of the doubt,” but until this time I still don’t know the meaning of that expression. Can you give me an explanation of that phrase so that every time I hear it from my teachers or other people, I will be able to understand what they mean?

My reply to forces20:

When you “give the benefit of the doubt,” it means that although you may have doubts or questions about someone’s actuations or declarations, you are willing to ignore those doubts or questions for the time being and view those actuations or declarations with a positive or favorable frame of mind. In its legal sense, “the benefit of the doubt” means a favorable opinion or judgment that is adopted despite uncertainty.

Here’s an example of the usage of that expression: “You were one of the three who did overtime work when that highly confidential document was spirited out from the office files, but I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt because your two co-workers that night have vouched for your integrity.”

When someone gives you the benefit of the doubt, that person continues to have confidence in you despite some actuations or declarations of yours that had tended to diminish that person’s full trust in you. Example: “Your quarterly performance has been below par, but since conditions were far from ideal during that period, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. But I’m expecting you to work double time to meet your quota in the next quarter.”

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What does the expression “the benefit of the doubt” mean?

Question from reader edmanuelsong (July 26, 2010):

Mr. Carillo, when trying to emphasize a point or condition, many Filipinos love to say “as a matter of fact...” No big deal to us, but to non-Filipinos, the last word of that phrase sounds funny if not embarrassing. Either we wage a campaign to emphasize the right pronunciation of “fact,” or we should come up with less dangerously sounding phrases in lieu of “as a matter of fact.” Your take on this.

My reply to Ed:

You’re right, Ed! The phrase “as a matter of fact” is one of the most-often used intensifiers among Filipinos when they speak in English. I really see nothing wrong with its use every now and then to emphasize a point; what’s objectionable is when it’s used much too often—to the point of being a real pain in the ears (when spoken) and a real pain in the neck (when written). In fact, Ed, those who use “as a matter of fact” or “in fact” for, say, every other statement of theirs strike me as not being altogether truthful; they profess the truthfulness of their claims too much and too often that I get the feeling that they are actually telling lies. (I hope my repeated use of the phrase here for academic discussion purposes exempts me from being perceived as a liar.)

We can, of course, reduce the excessive or habitual use of “as a matter of fact” or “in fact” by using some of its alternatives. In my case, I sometimes replace it with “indeed” when the sentence sounds right or even better with the replacement. Consider the first clause of the third sentence of my first paragraph above, for instance: “In fact, Ed, those who use ‘as a matter of fact’ or ‘in fact’ for, say, every other statement of theirs strike me as not being altogether truthful.”  I’m sure you’ll agree that it sounds OK when “in fact” is replaced with “indeed”: “Indeed, Ed, those who use ‘as a matter of fact’ or ‘in fact’ for, say, every other statement of theirs strike me as not being altogether truthful.” I must tell you, though, that the two consecutive “ed” sounds in the new sentence—that of “indeed” and that of your name, “Ed”—would make me think twice about using “indeed” in that specific example. I find those “ed” sounds cacophonic so I’d probably end up dropping “Ed” to get rid of one of them, or else use “actually” to replace “indeed,” as in this new version: “Actually, Ed, those who use ‘as a matter of fact’ or ‘in fact” for, say, every other statement of theirs strike me as not being altogether truthful.” Now I can breathe better!

As to the danger in mispronouncing “fact” to sound something like doing the sexual act, I don’t think it’s right to ban the word for something that really isn’t its fault. I also don’t see how we can wage a campaign against the mispronunciation of “fact” in, say, the local courts of law or in the halls of the Philippine Congress where we are sure to hear the mispronunciation most often. Can we fine the transgressors a fixed percentage of their legal fees or of their Countryside Development Fund (as the case may be) every time they mispronounce “fact”? No, sir, we just couldn’t do that in this democratic country of ours!

So then I’d recommend that we campaign instead for the use of either “actually” or “indeed” instead of “as a matter of fact.” On second thoughts, perhaps we should push only for “actually” as a substitute. I have this nagging feeling that not many can give full justice to the use of “indeed” in their statements. From my experience, I know that “indeed” is such a particularly demanding word that not many writers and speakers can produce the very exacting and precise semantic flourish that it demands from every sentence that uses it.

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More error-riddled English-usage books come out of the woodwork

I’m sure it was simply coincidental, but on July 9, two days after Forum member Kuyerjudd made a posting in the Forum asking me if he should burn a badly written English-usage book in his college, a Philippine regional education official ordered the pullout of a set of error-riddled English workbooks being used in Lipa City’s 66 public elementary schools. This was after the workbooks were found to have so many grammatical mistakes, false information, incoherent sentences, and typographical errors.

According to a report in the July 12 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, “Many of the errors in the workbooks are obviously encoding errors that could have been caught by proofreading. A good editing would have done wonders for the workbooks.” The report also quoted the chair of the workbook development team as admitting that “she did not have the time to go over the contents of the workbooks before these were sent off for printing.”

In a subsequent posting in the Forum on July 14, Kuyerjudd comments about those error-riddled workbooks: “I actually don’t have any problem with workbooks being badly written as long as they’re not about English usage. And, sure, I guess they make a valid point there, saying a badly written book is better than no book, but it just ticks me off that they force that stuff on students.”

It also turns out that Kuyerjudd had not consummated his idea of burning that English-usage book—the one coauthored by his college professor—for (1) being blind to the semantic difference between “borrowing” and “lending,” and (2) asking an absurd true-or-false question and answering it wrongly. As I wrote in this column last week, he had consulted me about his idea and I told him that if only to make his indignation over that book subside a little, he could do so “where it’s safe and where you won’t start a major conflagration.”

Instead of burning that book, though, Kuyerjudd decided to read it in its entirety, then posted these comments in the Forum:

“I’ve finished reading the whole book. Not all of it is badly written; I figure it’s just the parts that one terrible writer wrote. I have to say, though, that even the parts that were ‘okay’ were not properly edited, with all the orphans and widows as well as annoying mid-paragraph breaks—and oh, don’t get me started on the alignment! They could have at least proofread it.

“Also, there was this section on how to write summaries. They used a summary of the novel Twilight that was taken off some site. The URL was scattered across the page, which made me question if the writers knew what a bibliography was. Plus, why Twilight? Couldn’t they have used literary fiction? It’s not that I despise Twilight (and that’s not to say that I don’t), but wouldn’t a book like Tuesdays with Morrie or The Five People You Meet in Heaven make more sense in a college workbook? Sure, Twilight easily captures the attention of its teenage readers, but a terribly written summary of half of Twilight taken off some shady website? 

“The exercise after the section begins with the phrase, ‘Assuming all of you have read Twilight [...].’ And then I couldn’t read on without cringing.

“Afterwards there’s another multiple-choice question in the Critical Reading section (before which there were paragraphs you had to read) that goes as follows:

“3. He felt that something ominous is about to happen. ‘Ominous’ means _______. (a) good, (b) evil, (c) jolly, (d) great

“I tell you, it’s like reading a book meant for grade-schoolers. And also, that’s supposed to be ‘was’ there, right?

Then Kuyerjudd gave this afterthought: “Once, in class, our professor corrected part of a paragraph in the book. I guess that’s all good, but frankly, I couldn’t help laughing silently to myself.”

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Can I just burn our monstrosity of an English-usage book now?

Question from Kuyerjudd, new Forum member (July 7, 2010):

Hi there!

In our English class, we were forced to buy an English book written by the professors of the college in which I study. I have no problem with that and the fact that the number one rule at school is “nothing is compulsory,” but the thing is that it’s terribly written. I lost two points off an exercise because of a “stray” adverb.

A passage in one of the chapters says: “It takes three whole days to read the English dictionary” (or something like that).

But in the True-or-False exercise, it says that “It would take nearly three days to read the English dictionary” is true.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t “whole” and “nearly” two different things?

And here’s another brilliant one: 

“1. English continues to grow through borrowing, which means ________.

a. inventing
b. buying
c. acquiring
d. lending”

I was convinced the correct answer was “c. acquiring.” Imagine my surprise when our English prof said it was “d. lending.”

College may be all too new for me but even I know that “lending” and “borrowing” don’t mean the same thing.

Furthermore, upon inspection (i.e., visually editing the book and leaving proofread marks), the monstrosity should not have been published and forced upon the minds of students in the college where I’m studying.

Now, how would a freshman student like me go about fixing this?

My reply to Kuyerjudd:

You’re absolutely right about that answer-choice test! The words “whole” and “nearly” are two entirely different things and it looks like the authors of that English book—all professors of your college, you say—are semantically insensitive and have no business writing English-usage books at all. In the context of the usage you cited, my digital Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary defines those two words as follows:

whole
“3 a : constituting the total sum or undiminished entirety  : ENTIRE  <owns the whole island>  b : each or all of the  <took part in the whole series of athletic events>”

nearly
1 : in a close manner or relationship  <nearly related>
2 a : almost but not quite  <nearly identical>  <nearly a year later>  b : to the least extent  <not nearly as good as we expected>

So, if the passage in the chapter under study says “It takes three whole days to read the English dictionary,” it would be semantically wrong to say that the following statement is True: “It would take nearly three days to read the English dictionary.” It would be false because “nearly three days” is not the same as “three whole days.” Even if the adverb “nearly” is changed to “almost,” the statement would still be false. The only adverb that could conceivably make that statement true is “exactly,” but then it would have shown that the original statement itself, that “It takes three whole days to read the English dictionary,” is semantically defective and, to be frank about it, unrealistic, imprecise, illogical, and almost absurd.

The sentence “It takes three whole days to read the English dictionary” is, to begin with, not an appropriate referent statement for the True-or-False question because its parameters are highly questionable and not well-thought-out. Below are three fatal semantic defects of that statement:

1. English dictionaries vary widely in number of entries and textual content. The highly abridged ones may have only a few thousand word entries with very brief definitions, thus making them fit in just a few hundred pages. My Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate, however, has 165,000 entries and 225,000 definitions in all, and runs to a total of 1,624 pages; the unabridged Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, on the other hand, lists 450,000 words and 10,000,000 usage examples, and runs to 2,662 pages. And the latest printed edition of the Oxford English Dictionary consists of 20 volumes, with a total of 291,500 entries in 21,730 pages. Clearly then, it would take much more than just “three whole days”—in actuality probably several months or years—to read a respectably sizable dictionary straight and without stopping (a very bad idea to begin with), so to say that “It takes three whole days to read the English dictionary” is a badly informed statement and is nothing less than puerile, bad thinking.

2. People read at widely varying speeds, so assuming that they start reading a copy of the same reasonably authoritative dictionary simultaneously and do so until the last page, it would take them a highly variable number of weeks or months to do so. With this fact taken into account, the statement that “It takes three whole days to read the English dictionary” becomes even more unrealistic and absurd.

3. The statement that “It takes three whole days to read the English dictionary” is actually a semantic cop-out because it doesn’t identify the person who takes only that long to read the English dictionary. If the statement at least said that a speed-reading world champion can do that and if at least specified a particular abridged dictionary, perhaps it would have acquired at least a bit of verisimilitude or truth. As it is, however, the statement is bizarre and definitely out of this world.

Now, as to this filling-the-blank test statement: 

“1. English continues to grow through borrowing, which means ________.

a. inventing
b. buying
c. acquiring
d. lending”

You’re absolutely right! The correct answer should be “acquiring,” not “lending” as your English professor said. In the context of that statement, “borrowing” means “to appropriate for one’s own use,” “to derive,” or “to adopt,” definitely not “to lend.” The action of “borrowing” in this context is that of the entity making the acquisition, not of the entity from which the acquisition is taken. 

In sum, Kuyerjudd, if indeed the authors of that English book are blind to these distinctions between “borrowing” and “lending,” and couldn’t even compose a proper and logical True-or-False question, then I agree with you that it would be dangerous to make those professors continue teaching English, and even more dangerous for them to be allowed to write English-usage textbooks. 

So, you ask, how should a college freshman student like you go about fixing this very serious problem? You’ve actually made a very good start by describing your predicament in this Forum. Just keep on doing so whenever you discover patently absurd things about English and language in general that are being taught or being foisted on you in school or elsewhere. And yes, I think your indignation would subside a little bit if you burned that English-usage book authored by those professors. Do it right now, but please do it in a place where it’s safe and where you won’t start a major conflagration.

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Why isn’t it natural to say “I haven’t seen George for a lot of years”?

Question from Cheryl, new Forum member (July 1, 2010):

“I haven’t seen George for a lot of years.”

I know it doesn’t sound natural to use “a lot of” in the sentence above—the quantifier “many” being the correct quantifier—but can anyone explain why from a grammar rule viewpoint? In most cases we can substitute “a lot of” or “lots of” for both much and many, so why not here?

My reply to Cheryl:

In informal conversations and writing, native English speakers very frequently use “a lot of,” “lots of,” and “plenty of” with both uncountable and plural nouns, as in “a lot of books,” “lots of time,” and “plenty of problems,” and they interchange these quantifiers at will, as in “lots of books” and “plenty of books,” “a lot of time” and “plenty of time,” and “a lot problems” and “lots of problems.” (And as you say, you’d rather use “many” as quantifier in such cases.)

In the specific case of the noun “years,” it’s actually idiomatic among native English speakers to interchangeably say “I haven’t seen George for lots of years” or “I haven’t seen George a lot of years,” as evidenced by these number of entries for them in Google—“a lot of years,” 15,700,000 results; “lots of years,” 1,940,000 results. (Here’s a random sample: “Retirement age really isn’t so very old. At 62 or 65 years of age you have lots of years to have fun.”)

To native English speakers, therefore, in contrast to your personal experience (I presume you are French), it’s perfectly natural to use “lots of years” or “a lot of years” to quantify “time” in general and “years” in particular. Our perception of what’s grammatically and idiomatically correct in language actually depends on the linguistic community we are living in, and it takes a lot of getting used to before we become perfectly attuned to and comfortable with its idiomatic ways of saying things.

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What’s the difference between “flammable” and “inflammable”?

Question from edmanuelsong (June 29, 2010):

What’s the difference between “flammable” and “inflammable”?

My reply to edmanuelsong:

“Flammable” and “inflammable” are adjectives that mean exactly the same thing—“capable of being easily ignited and of burning quickly.” The older word is actually “inflammable,” which was derived from the Medieval Latin inflammabilis, which literally means “to set on fire.” A common misconception, of course, is that the prefix “in-” in “inflammable” means “the opposite or negative,” but it doesn’t; it means “inside” instead, so there’s really no contradiction between “inflammable” and “flammable.” Nevertheless, there’s a very real danger in people wrongly thinking that “inflammable” means “not flammable,” so in time it became conventional to drop the prefix “in-” in “inflammable” and just to say “flammable.” Also for safety’s sake, it became conventional to describe things that can’t be burned or ignited as “non-flammable” and not “inflammable.”

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Can you help me answer this confusing English-proficiency test?

Question from computer chair (June 20, 2010):

In a test I took, the following question was given:

In each of the following sentences, part of the sentence or the entire sentence is underlined. Beneath each sentence you will find five ways of phrasing the underlined part. Choose the best answer. 

“Outsourcing jobs to a consulting firm in another country is more cost-effective than paying employees locally, but overwhelmingly negative are its effects on customer satisfaction.”

(A) overwhelmingly negative are its effects on customer satisfaction
(B) it has overwhelmingly negative customer satisfaction effects
(C) in its customer satisfaction effects it is overwhelmingly negative
(D) there are the overwhelmingly negative effects in customer satisfaction
(E) its effects on customer satisfaction are overwhelmingly negative

*I was able to narrow down the answer choices to either B or E

The answer is E and the explanation was the following: The subject and action are in the wrong order in this sentence [using the clause in answer choice A]. (E) corrects the unnecessary reversal. (B) does nothing to solve the problem. (C) creates the awkward phrase “customer satisfaction effects.” (D) unnecessarily introduces the phrase “there are the,” and uses “in” where “on” is correct.

Please help me solve this confusion. Thank you.

My reply to computer chair:

The bad syntax and very clumsy phrasing of answer choices B, C, and D make them obviously incorrect. The choices can thus be quickly narrowed down to A and E.

The inverted clause in answer choice A is a possibly correct answer, for an inverted clause is actually a legitimate clause construction that positions the predicate ahead of the subject. At first blush, however, it looks like there’s a subject-verb disagreement error in A. In fact, I myself was initially tripped into thinking that the inverted clause “overwhelmingly negative are its effects on customer satisfaction” is rendered incorrect by the plural form of its operative verb “are,” which evidently doesn’t agree with its singular-from antecedent noun phrase, “outsourcing jobs to a consulting firm in another country.” On closer scrutiny, however, we will find that there is, in fact, no subject-verb disagreement in that inverted clause, for its operative subject is actually the plural noun “effects” and not the singular form antecedent of the possessive pronoun “its,” which, of course, is the noun phrase “outsourcing jobs to a consulting firm in another country.” 

As I point out in Chapter 71 of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge, one of the clear and present dangers when we construct inverted sentences is the higher probability of our verbs failing to agree in number with the subjects of our inverts. I therefore gave the following advice about inverted sentences (an advice that I myself obviously overlooked in this case): 

“So always remember this rule: the number of the subject must follow that of the verb, not that of the noun or pronoun that intervenes or comes before it. Take, for instance, this somewhat poetic invert: ‘To the dark recesses of public office go the scoundrels for their last refuge.’ 

“At first glance it would seem that the plural verb form ‘go’ should be the singular ‘goes’ instead so it can agree with the singular ‘public office.’ A closer look, however, shows that the true subject of the invert is not ‘public office’ (nor even ‘dark recesses’) but the plural ‘scoundrels.’ 

“The price of using inversion, it turns out, is eternal vigilance in our grammar.” 

So now, if this is the case, would answer choice A be a wrong answer for that test? I don’t think so. The inverted clause construction “overwhelmingly negative are its effects on customer satisfaction” turns out to be grammatically and semantically airtight and thus meets the grade as a correct answer. However, its use as a coordinate clause in that sentence may seem unnatural, disruptive, and discordant; to the English learner, in fact, it wouldn’t look and sound in sync with the scheme of things in that sentence. (This is probably what was meant by the cryptic explanation given to computer chair that answer choice E “corrects the unnecessary reversal,” but that reversal actually isn’t grammatically wrong but is only stylistically different). I think it’s only because of this stylistic discordance that although grammatically correct, answer choice A is beaten by E—“its effects on customer satisfaction are overwhelmingly negative”—as the best answer for that test. I would wish, though, that the makers of standard English-proficiency tests would avoid crafting tests that allow for such ambiguity in the answer choices. It’s so tricky and cruel to foist them on both native and nonnative speakers of English!

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“I hope you’d get well soon” or “I hope you’ll get well soon”?

Question from Isabel S. (June 8, 2010):

In a note to me recently, Isabel S. mentioned that she was having some health problems, so I made this wish in the closing of my reply: “I hope you’d get well soon.” To this, she made the following rejoinder:

Between us grammarians, would you consider it pedantic on my part to wonder why you used the indeterminate verb “would” in your second sentence: “I hope you’d get well soon”? Was that a typo? 

Surely the correct, more positive way to say it is “I hope you get well soon” or “I hope you’ll be well soon”?   

Saying “I hope you would be well…” sounds awkward, wouldn’t you say? Have you done a piece for your Forum on when to use “will” and “would”?  

My reply to Isabel S.:

You are not alone in thinking that the modal auxiliary “will” instead of “would” should be used in the sentence “I hope you’d get well soon.” Many people actually use “will” habitually in such constructions, and I get the feeling that this has actually become idiomatic in modern speech. But as I explained in a column that I wrote in The Manila Times in response to the same question in June 2008 or practically two years ago, the grammatically correct modal auxiliary in such cases is “would,” and the same is the case for sentences with verb phrases of uncertainty like “wish,” “expect,” or “pray.”* The modal auxiliary “will,” on the other hand, is used for sentences with verb phrases of certainty like “am sure,” “are certain,” and “are positive,” as in these sentences:  “I am sure [that] you will get well soon!”  “We are certain [that] you will get well soon!”  “They are positive [that] you will get well soon!”  

It’s idiomatic and widely acceptable, of course, to use the form “I hope you get well soon,” but we need to remember that this is simply an elliptical form of the sentence “I hope that you would get well soon,” which, of course, consists of the main clause “I hope” and the relative subordinate clause “that you would get well soon.” To streamline the sentence for easier and quicker articulation, the ellipsis routinely gets rid of the relative pronoun and the modal auxiliary “would.”

Click this link to read my column “The choice between ‘would’ and ‘will’” now!

P.S. Just an afterthought: I forgot to mention to Isabel that in informal usage, we can actually sidestep the modal distinction between “would” and “will” by simply saying “Get well soon” or “Do get well soon.” Of course, such informal usage will depend on the relationship between the speaker and the person being addressed, taking into account the seriousness of the ailment, seniority and age difference, their relative positions in society or in an organization, and various other social or professional distinctions. For instance, you don’t write your ailing boss “Get well soon”; it would be polite and good form to say “Please get well soon” or “I hope you would get well soon.” There will often be hairline distinctions in degree of politeness for every situation, and sensitivity to these distinctions in language is part of the social graces.   

---------
*This is based on Definition 5b of “would” by the Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary, as follows: 5b — used in auxiliary function in a noun clause (as one completing a statement of desire, request, or advice) <we wish that he would go>

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Two English grammar questions from the SAT Reasoning Test

New Forum member computer chair sent me two SAT grammar questions, the first last June 15 and the second last June 17. Below are the questions and my answers to them.

Question #1:

I came across this question in a prep book and was wondering if you could explain the answer and the grammar behind the answer.

* the underlined part is the part which needs to be corrected

“___________ the orchestra for six concerts, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was scheduled.”

(A) After conducting
(B) After his conducting
(C) While conducting
(D) Although he had conducted
(E) After he had conducted

I was able to exclude A, C, and D. However, I was not able to decide between B and E. 

*the correct answer is E

My answer to Question #1:

The answer could only be E; it is the only answer that’s both grammatically and logically correct. In the sentence in E, the pronoun “he” is properly supplied as the doer of the action of conducting the orchestra, and the past participle “had conducted” is the correct tense for the repeated action in the indefinite past. The sentence works properly as a whole because both the main clause and the subordinate phrase are properly constructed and linked by the subordinating conjunction “after.”   

It couldn’t be B because the pronoun “his” in the subordinate phrase “after his conducting the orchestra for six concerts’ doesn’t have a proper antecedent or referent noun. That antecedent or referent noun should be a musical conductor, but nowhere in the sentence is there any reference to that person. The possessive “Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony,” which might seem to be the antecedent or referent noun, actually doesn’t qualify because it is not a person but an inanimate object. 

A and C are wrong answers because each of them doesn’t have a referent noun doing the action; for the same reason already given above, the noun form “Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony” doesn’t qualify as that referent noun, being an inanimate object.

D is a wrong answer because its subordinating conjunction, “although,” is illogical and inappropriate to the statement.

Question #2:

In the following sentence, one has to find the error in the sentence. The error in this sentence is answer choice A. 

The more scientists learn about subatomic particles, the more closely they come to being able to describe the ways in which the universe operates. No error

(A) "the more closely"
(B) "to being able"
(C) "the ways in which"
(D) "operates"
(E) No error

*I thought the answer was B because "to being able" sounded awkward and was not a typical infinitive as it had a -ing ending. I am still confused about this.

Furthermore, the answer is A. The correction is "more close" instead of "more closely." However, I the comparative form of close is closer, and isn't more close the incorrect way of saying closer? Please help me in sorting out this confusion! Thank you!

My answer to Question #2:

About this SAT test:

“The more scientists learn about subatomic particles, the more closely they come to being able to describe the ways in which the universe operates.”

(A) “the more closely”
(B) “to being able”
(C) “the ways in which”
(D) “operates”
(E) No error

I don’t think the error in the sentence is answer choice A. The phrase “the more closely” is perfectly grammatical to me in much the same way as “the closer.” All of the other answer choices likewise have perfectly grammatical and logical phrasing except (c) “the ways in which.” The correct phrasing is “the ways by which,” where the preposition “by” is used to mean “through the agency or instrumentality of.” The preposition “in," which typically indicates inclusion, location, or position, doesn't denote such agency or instrumentality for how the universe operates.

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“I hope you’d get well soon” or “I hope you’ll get well soon”?

Question from Isabel S. (June 8, 2010):

In a note to me recently, Isabel S. mentioned that she was having some health problems, so I made this wish in the closing of my reply: “I hope you’d get well soon.” To this, she made the following rejoinder:

Between us grammarians, would you consider it pedantic on my part to wonder why you used the indeterminate verb “would” in your second sentence: “I hope you’d get well soon”? Was that a typo? 

Surely the correct, more positive way to say it is “I hope you get well soon” or “I hope you’ll be well soon”?   

Saying “I hope you would be well…” sounds awkward, wouldn’t you say? Have you done a piece for your Forum on when to use “will” and “would”?  

My reply to Isabel S.:

You are not alone in thinking that the modal auxiliary “will” instead of “would” should be used in the sentence “I hope you’d get well soon.” Many people actually use “will” habitually in such constructions, and I get the feeling that this has actually become idiomatic in modern speech. But as I explained in a column that I wrote in The Manila Times in response to the same question in June 2008 or practically two years ago, the grammatically correct modal auxiliary in such cases is “would,” and the same is the case for sentences with verb phrases of uncertainty like “wish,” “expect,” or “pray.”* The modal auxiliary “will,” on the other hand, is used for sentences with verb phrases of certainty like “am sure,” “are certain,” and “are positive,” as in these sentences:  “I am sure [that] you will get well soon!”  “We are certain [that] you will get well soon!”  “They are positive [that] you will get well soon!”  

It’s idiomatic and widely acceptable, of course, to use the form “I hope you get well soon,” but we need to remember that this is simply an elliptical form of the sentence “I hope that you would get well soon,” which, of course, consists of the main clause “I hope” and the relative subordinate clause “that you would get well soon.” To streamline the sentence for easier and quicker articulation, the ellipsis routinely gets rid of the relative pronoun and the modal auxiliary “would.”

Click this link to read my column “The choice between ‘would’ and ‘will’” now!

P.S. Just an afterthought: I forgot to mention to Isabel that in informal usage, we can actually sidestep the modal distinction between “would” and “will” by simply saying “Get well soon” or “Do get well soon.” Of course, such informal usage will depend on the relationship between the speaker and the person being addressed, taking into account the seriousness of the ailment, seniority and age difference, their relative positions in society or in an organization, and various other social or professional distinctions. For instance, you don’t write your ailing boss “Get well soon”; it would be polite and good form to say “Please get well soon” or “I hope you would get well soon.” There will often be hairline distinctions in degree of politeness for every situation, and sensitivity to these distinctions in language is part of the social graces.   

---------
*This is based on Definition 5b of “would” by the Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary, as follows: 5b — used in auxiliary function in a noun clause (as one completing a statement of desire, request, or advice) <we wish that he would go>

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Precisely when is the present or past conditional used?

Question from curious cat, Forum member (May 25, 2010):

Hi,

Here’s the situation:

A buyer hands a large bill to two old folks selling Christmas trees by the roadside. Husband realizes he left his fanny pack inside the trailer, says that he’ll be getting it, comes back out with it in hand, finds out that the buyer had already left, and the sale has been lost. Wife, who is upset, says to him: 

”If you had had your fanny pack around your waist where it belonged, they wouldn’t have enough time to change their mind.”

(1) Does the second phrase sound awkward? 
(2) Since he now has a fanny pack with him, does the present conditional apply or, because he didn’t have his fanny pack with him then, should the past conditional be used instead?

My reply to curiouscat: 

Not only does the second phrase of the sentence sound awkward but, along with the main clause itself, it is grammatically flawed. The correct construction of that conditional sentence should be as follows:

If you had your fanny pack around your waist where it belonged, they wouldn’t have had enough time to change their mind.”

As corrected, the conditional modifying phrase is in the simple past tense, and the main clause is in the negative form of the past conditional. The main clause couldn't be in the present conditional because the condition of “not having the time to change their mind” no longer subsists up to the moment of the wife's speaking; in fact, the buyers had already changed their mind and had left by the time the husband came back with his fanny pack.

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Which of the ESL sentences below are grammatically correct?

Question from curious cat, new Forum member (May 19, 2010):

Hi! May I ask a favor? Which of the following ESL sentences below are grammatically correct? I’d also appreciate it if you could include your thoughts behind your answers as well.

(1)
May I ask a favor of you?
May I ask a favor from you?

(2)
He is smarter than any boy in class.
He is smarter than any other boy in class.

(3)
I will be there by next Friday.
I will be there on Friday next.

(4)
I prefer tea to milk.
I prefer tea over milk.

(5)
Completing the race, he collapsed.
On completing the race, he collapsed.

(6)
While sitting in the restaurant, he was attacked by the criminals.
While he was sitting in the restaurant, he was attacked by the criminals.
While he sat in the restaurant, he was attacked by the criminals.

(7)
She shall answer my question.
She will answer my question.

(8)
This is he.
This is him.

(9)
You shout at me as though I were deaf.
You shout at me as if I were deaf.

(10)
I told myself to stay calm.
I said to myself, “stay calm.”

(11)
People seemed to have known the use of fire in those days.
People seem to have known the use of fire in those days.

(12)
Regine and myself thought it best to leave.
Regine and I thought it best to leave.

My reply to curiouscat:

I have set in boldface the grammatically correct construction in each set of sentences:

(1)
May I ask a favor of you?
May I ask a favor from you?

The phrasal verb “ask a favor from” is the accepted conventional usage. Also a generally accepted alternative is the following construction that drops the preposition:
May I ask you a favor?

(2)
He is smarter than any boy in class.
He is smarter than any other boy in class.

“Any other boy” is correct because it excludes the boy being compared to the rest of the boys in the class; “any boy” is incorrect because it includes the boy being compared to himself, which is an absurd way of comparing.

(3)
I will be there by next Friday.
I will be there on Friday next.

The first one is the generally used construction, but the second one—even if not generally used—is also grammatically correct and acceptable.

(4)
I prefer tea to milk.
I prefer tea over milk.

The phrasal verb “prefer tea to milk” is the accepted conventional usage; on the other hand, “prefer tea over milk” is also grammatically correct but sounds very officious and formal.

(5)
Completing the race, he collapsed.
On completing the race, he collapsed.

Since the collapse happened after completion of the race, the second sentence is the correct one. On the other hand, the first sentence indicates that the collapse happened while the player was still in the process of completing the race, so he or she couldn’t have completed the race.

(6)
While sitting in the restaurant, he was attacked by the criminals.
While he was sitting in the restaurant, he was attacked by the criminals.
While he sat in the restaurant, he was attacked by the criminals.

All three are grammatically correct, but the first is the smoothest, most streamlined, and most idiomatic construction. The second and third uses the pronoun “he” in both the main clause and the subordinate clause, revealing less familiarity with the more advanced English grammatical forms.

(7)
She shall answer my question.
She will answer my question.

The second sentence is American English; the first, a British English construction. Both are grammatically correct.

(8)
This is he.
This is him.

The first is the scrupulously grammatically correct construction, but the second—although grammatically flawed because “him” is in the objective case—is more  idiomatic and more commonly used..

(9)
You shout at me as though I were deaf.
You shout at me as if I were deaf.

The second sentence is the generally accepted conditional usage.

(10)
I told myself to stay calm.
I said to myself, “stay calm.”

Both are grammatically correct. In the second sentence, however, the “s” in “stay should be capitalized to indicate that “stay calm” is a quoted sentence in a sentence, as follows:

I said to myself, “Stay calm.”

(11) 
People seemed to have known the use of fire in those days.
People seem to have known the use of fire in those days.

Since the supposition was made by people in the past, “seemed” is the appropriate tense for the verb.

(12) 
Regine and myself thought it best to leave.
Regine and I thought it best to leave.

The first sentence is grammatically wrong because it wrongly uses the reflexive “myself” for what should be the nominative case “I.”

NOTE: My comments about Items #11 and #12 have been corrected after my attention was called by Forum member maxsims through e-mail. For a more detailed explanation of the changes, please go to the discussion thread for this topic.

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What are the differences between the 4 major linguistics theories?

Question from vizvonvan, Forum member (May 12, 2010):

Hello Mr. Carillo! It’s been quite a while since I logged in to take part in the forum. I’m confused by these terms—transformational generative grammar, comparative-historical grammar, traditional grammar, and structural grammar. What are their differences?

My reply to vizvonvan:

The four terms you are asking about—transformational-generative grammar, comparative-historical grammar, traditional grammar, and structural grammar—are actually four distinct theories or schools of thought about language. They are far too advanced to be discussed with sufficient rigor here. From a layperson’s standpoint, however, we can get a general idea of their differences by starting with the more familiar theory and proceeding to the unfamiliar or more complex ones.

Traditional grammar is the prescriptive approach to language that’s normally taught in English-language schools from kinder to college; it is, of course, also the grammar used by the English-language mass media and books as well as the primary basis for the discussions of proper and improper English usage in this Forum. The prescriptive rules and concepts used by traditional grammar are primarily based on Latin grammar, and in the case of the English used in the Philippines, traditional grammar follows the American English standard.

Structural grammar is a descriptive approach to linguistics that focuses on the mechanics and construction of sentences. It is more concerned with how the sentence itself is constructed rather than with the implications of individual words. This structural approach, which is the basis for the creation of most written documents, assumes that what is seen on the surface is also the straightforward meaning behind the words of the sentence.

Comparative-historical grammar is an approach to linguistics that seeks to establish an explanation for the relationships between languages, and it’s one that assumes that linguistic change is largely systematic and rule-based. Early work in this linguistics approach focused on relationships between languages and groups of languages primarily in terms of a common ancestry or the same root-language.

Transformational generative grammar, a relatively new theory of linguistics popularized by Noam Chomsky in the 1950s, postulates that all languages have the same deep structure, but that their respective surface structures differ because of the application of different rules for transformations, pronunciation, and word insertion. This theory asserts that when words and pronunciations are added to the surface structure of a particular language, what emerges is identical to an actual sentence in that language.

These are only bare-bones, nonspecialist descriptions of the four linguistic terms you listed, and they focus primarily on the characteristics that can best distinguish them from one another. A deeper study of linguistics is needed for a fuller understanding and appreciation of the theories of language behind these terms.

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Which is the right usage, “on TV” or “in TV”?

Question from paul_nato, Forum member (April 16, 2010):

I’ve always wondered...

Which is the right usage, “on TV” or “in TV”? I hear both used by different people. That goes for radio, the Internet, and whatnot.

Thanks!

My reply to paul_nato:

The well-established usage is “on TV” rather than “in TV.” Native speakers of English would say “I saw you on TV last night” rather than “I saw you in TV last night.” The same is true when “TV” is spelled out as “television,” as in “The beleaguered candidate appeared on television last night to appeal for sobriety in the election campaign.” This idiomatic preference for “on” is in keeping with the general rule that the preposition of place and location to use for surfaces is “on,” and it is conceptually intuitive and logical to consider the TV screen as a surface.

Some people, of course, mistakenly think that it’s acceptable to use “in TV” instead of “on TV.” This is likely because when the word “TV” or “television” is used as a modifier, say for such terms as “TV debate” and “TV newsroom,” the appropriate preposition for linking such terms in a sentence is “in.” This, for instance, is the case in such sentences as “The candidates became violently adversarial in their TV debate” and “There was chaos in the TV newsroom when the derogatory document against a candidate turned out to be spurious.” In these cases, however, the true object of the preposition is not “TV” but the nouns “debate” and “newsroom,” respectively, and these nouns require “in” and not “on” to link them to the sentence.

This explanation for “on TV” as the preferred usage also applies to “on radio” and “on the Internet,” which are the accepted idioms for these two other communication media. It doesn’t apply to “the movie,” though; the widely accepted usage is “in the movie,” as in “The child star appeared in the movie as the young Rizal.” There could be other instances  similar to this that may require the preposition “in” rather than “on,” so it’s advisable to knock off the phrase “and whatnot” in the last sentence of your question above.

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Is “brownouts” the correct word for the outages we’ve been having?

Question from Maria Balina, Forum member (April 10, 2010):

Hi, Mr. Carillo!

Is “brownouts” the correct word to use to refer to the outages we’ve been having lately?

My reply to Maria Balina:

The term “brownout” is defined as a period of reduced voltage due high demand for electric power, resulting in reduced illumination. Technically, during a brownout, the electric supply isn’t cut off, but because of the reduced voltage, lamps don’t give off enough light and electric appliances malfunction. In this sense, the outages we’ve been having lately are not brownouts at all. They are “blackouts,” which means periods of failure of electric power in particular areas, whether planned or inadvertent. 

In the Philippines, however, the term “brownout” has become the widely accepted idiom for blackouts. This is probably because the term “blackout” doesn’t seem to apply in general when power failure occurs during the daytime; the darkness isn’t total and the exteriors of buildings remain well-lighted. When power outages happen at nighttime, of course, people become more comfortable describing them as “blackouts.”

A better term for “brownout” is, of course, “power outage.” This term would free us from having to correlate the absence of electricity with the sensory feeling of darkness. But the public’s level of comfort in using “brownout” is quite high, I think, so I doubt if “power outage” could supplant it in the lingua franca within one or two generations.

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Shouldn’t verbs in “there was” clauses be singular all the time?

Question from dantreys (March 23, 2010):

Hi, Joe! An opinion writer in one of the major broadsheets wrote an article yesterday that contained this sentence:

“There was once a time when there was more than one exchange existing all at the same time.”

I feel a bit queasy about the sentence because something tells me the correct verb right before “more” should be “were” since it refers to “more than one exchange,” which, notionally, is a plural subject. What do you think?

Thanks and good day!

Danny

My reply to dantreys:

“There was once a time when there was more than one exchange existing all at the same time.”

The sentence above, Danny, is an example of a construction that uses the so-called “anticipatory ‘there’ clause” twice. The pronoun “there” is, of course, the anticipatory subject in each case. In such constructions, “there” carries little or no independent meaning but simply points forward to the notional subject which is placed later in the sentence for reasons of end weight or emphasis. In the particular sentence above, the notional subject is the noun phrase “once a time” for the first anticipatory “there” and “more than one exchange” for the second anticipatory “there.”

Now, your question is: Since the operative verb “was” refers to “more than one exchange,” which is a plural subject, shouldn’t that verb take the plural form “were” instead to ensure subject-verb agreement?

My personal preference is to use the singular “was” rather than “were”; in effect, I’m saying that the use of “was” by the broadsheet’s opinion writer is grammatically correct. This is the descriptivist position in a usage that continues to be debated until today, a position explained by one of its proponents as follows: “Since the ‘there is’ combination is followed in the great majority of sentences by a singular subject, it has become a standard way of introducing a subject, whether singular or plural, another example of the victory of usage over logical grammar.” I might also add here that in American English, when a compound subject follows the verb in a “there is” construction, the verb very often takes the singular form, as in this sentence: “There is shame and dishonor in being found to be unfit for public office.” See and feel how badly that sentence sounds when “there are” is used instead: “There are shame and dishonor in being found to be unfit for public office.”

The prescriptivist position, on the other hand, recommends that after the expletive “there,” the verb is singular or plural according to the number of the subject that follows. This is the position you have taken; you are more comfortable constructing that sentence as follows: “There was once a time when there were more than one exchange existing all at the same time.” It looks and sounds a little bit awkward to me, but I’m not saying that it’s grammatically wrong. So long as you are consistent with the usage and you know and can explain your position about it, I don’t think there should be any problem.

Having said that, however, let me say that English teachers of the traditional bent discourage the use of the expletives “there is” (and “it is” as well) among students, arguing that this usage fosters lazy thinking. My own position is that expletives are tolerable when used sparingly and judiciously—perhaps no more than once or twice every one or two pages of the standard manuscript page. But when the anticipatory “there” is used twice in a row in the same sentence, as in the case of that opinion writer’s sentence, the resulting construction is decidedly awkward and convoluted. So, as an editor, I always suggest to my clients to routinely avoid “there is” constructions because of its needless and oftentimes confusing complexity.

Indeed, we can actually eliminate the second anticipatory “there” clause in that opinion writer’s sentence by reconstructing it as follows: “There was one time when more than one exchange existed all at the same time.” And although the folksiness would admittedly be lost, we can actually make this bare-bones version of that sentence with both anticipatory “there” clauses dropped: “One time, more than one exchange existed all at the same time.”

At any rate, some writers prefer take recourse to the anticipatory “there” clause to make their writing sound folksy and informal. This is intended to make the exposition or narrative sound more spontaneous; indeed, it’s meant to give the reader the feeling that the writer is talking off the cuff and isn’t really on the alert about what should follow in what he or she is saying (and that being the case, he or she really won’t be bothered with ensuring perfect subject-verb agreement and such grammar things). When the writer overuses the anticipatory “there” clause in an essay or novel, however, I would get the nagging feeling that here, indeed, is one more lazy thinker whose laziness has gotten out of hand and is about to ruin what would otherwise be a good expository or narrative performance.

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If “none” means “nothing,” isn’t saying “none of them are” wrong?

Question from Forum member vinzvonvan (March 25, 2010):

There’s this example from an English book using the word none in a sentence. It says there: “All the women are fat, none of them are thin.” There’s no explanation from the book and I’m also confused myself. To say “none” means “nothing” but why "none of them are”? Shouldn’t it be none of them is? Thank you so much for your solution to my problem! Wink

My reply to vinzvonvan:

Although a lot of people think that the pronoun “one” is singular and as such should
be followed by a verb in the singular form, it has always been either singular or plural in construction since the beginnings of English. Specifically, when the sense of the statement is “not any persons or things,” the plural usage is more commonly used. This is precisely the sense of the example you presented from that English book, “All the women are fat, none of them are thin.” We can therefore be confident that the plural usage here, “none of them are thin,” is correct—with practically every major grammar authority backing that usage.

In contrast, the singular form of the verb is used when “none” is intended to mean “not one” or “not any,” as in the following example: “Of the four leading candidates, none is a clear winner at this time.” To avoid being needlessly challenged in your usage in such sentences, however, it would be wise to use “not one” instead of “none is”: “Of the four leading candidates, not one is a clear winner at this time.” It’s absolutely no contest for the singular usage of “none” here.

Of course, it could also be that your idea is that more than one of the candidates are not clear winners. In that case, that sentence could very well use the plural form of “none,” as follows: “Of the four leading candidates, none are clear winners at this time.” It would be foolhardy for anyone to challenge your plural usage of “none” in this case.

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