How the present perfect differs from present perfect continuous
Senin, 30 Juli 2018
How the present perfect differs from present perfect continuous
The two grammatical situations that need a comma before ‘and’
In response to my column last week, “No, we shouldn’t ever stop learning English grammar,” reader Gerson Palomo posted this question on punctuation usage: “What I learned from school is that the comma ( , ) should not be placed before the word ‘and.’ Am I right ?”
I replied to Gerson that it depends on the usage and the intended sense. For instance, there’s no need for a comma before “and” in a two-item compound subject like this: “Tina and Larry bumped at each other at the park during a heavy downpour.” But a comma is perfectly in order in a compound sentence like this: “I arrived two hours late, and only then did I realize that I was mistaken about the time of our meeting.” There are actually two specific situations that require placing a comma before “and,” a conjunction that we will recall joins sentence elements of the same grammatical rank or function. Those situations are as follows: 1. A comma is needed before “and” to punctuate the last of a series of three or more additive grammar elements, as in “Temperate countries have the four seasons of summer, autumn, winter, and spring.” For clarity, the so-called serial or Oxford comma is formally placed before the last of the grammar elements, which in this case is “spring.” However, this convention is not rigorously observed in modern usage, particularly in the case of serial grammar elements of one or just a few words. Indeed, most newspapers and magazines streamline such sentences by rountinely knocking off that last comma: “Temperate countries have the four seasons of summer, autumn, winter and spring.” When the serial grammar elements are long and complex, however, using the Oxford comma greatly ensures clarity. Its absence in this sentence construction from a magazine article is particularly instructive: “The major businesses in the domestic pet services industry are traditional veterinary services, fancy pet grooming and makeover shops, a wide assortment of animal and bird food, freshwater and marine fish of various kinds and aquarium equipment and supplies for industrial and home use.” There are actually five serial grammar items in that sentence (try counting them mentally), but because the writer didn’t deploy an Oxford comma after the word “kinds” before adding the last serial item, the latter part of the sentence almost becomes incomprehensible. Now see how the simple insertion of the Oxford comma effortlessly clarifies the serial enumeration: “The major businesses in the domestic pet services industry are traditional veterinary services, fancy pet grooming and makeover shops, a wide assortment of animal and bird food, freshwater and marine fish of various kinds, and aquarium equipment and supplies for industrial and home use.” 2. A comma is needed before “and” to coordinate two independent clauses in a compound sentence, as in “The sudden surge in the survey ratings of an underrated presidential candidate caused panic among his opponents, and suddenly they all went on overdrive to demolish his reputation.” The comma between “opponents” and “and suddenly” makes it crystal clear that two independent clauses are involved, the first being “The sudden surge in the survey ratings of an underrated presidential candidate caused panic among his opponents” and the second, “suddenly they all went on overdrive to demolish his reputation.” Without that comma between those two clauses, the sense and clarity of the compound sentence are greatly diminished. This rule to use a comma before the conjunction applies not only to “and” but also to the six other coordinating conjunctions “but, “or,” “nor,” “for,” “so,” and “yet.” For example, a comma is needed before “for” to clearly establish the sense of this compound sentence: “The sudden surge in the survey ratings of an underrated presidential candidate clearly panicked his opponents, for suddenly they all went on overdrive to demolish his reputation.” This essay first appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in its April 30, 2016 issue, © 2016 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved. | |||
A Passion for English
For its being more emotional than I usually allow in my English-usage columns, I have long hesitated to post in the Forum this highly personal essay that I wrote sometime in 2007. But today being Fathers’ Day, my resolve was broken when my wife and two sons (their sister, the eldest, is now married and lives abroad) badgered me to choose the restaurant for their ritual Fathers’ Day treat for me. Touched by their caring and solicitousness, I thought that perhaps it would be apropos to post the essay as a Fathers’ Day retrospective of some sort, so here it is. (June 19, 2016)
One legacy that I am confident of having already given my children is an abiding passion for good English, coupled with a keen appreciation for the finer things that make them uniquely Filipino, like caring for family and a capacity for joy and laughter and for at least a little song and music. I am afraid that my attempts to provide for them material wealth way beyond the needs of the current year or semester have not altogether been successful, but by the grace of God all of them are healthy and can speak to me, to their mother, and to their friends in impeccable English, and all are doing quite well in school. I know that the global clock is ticking without pause or letup for all of us, Filipinos and non-Filipinos alike, but it is comforting to know that whether we are Sri Lankan, Korean, Maori, Serb, Swede, or Melanesian, there is a language that can wonderfully widen our outlook and open doors and opportunities for our children beyond what the language we were born in can do. And that other language, of course, without any doubt and reservation, is English. Of course I only know too well that whether their English is good or not, there are many roadblocks along the way for people whose dream is to rise above their current station in life. My own life has been like that: one long series of quiet ups and downs, suffering, frustration, and heartbreak that could have broken the will of someone with a fuzzier dream or a weaker resolve. It seems to me now that life’s formula is essentially a gentle or strong yank downward for every little bit of success that you achieve, and a little or big comeuppance for every pride of achievement or vainglory that you feel. But through all these, in my case, one dream seems to have held and continues to hold: my children are getting a good, solid education with English at its core, and the proof of it is simply too many that I always count my blessings and discount my tribulations. My daughter has already cleared many of the roadblocks to her own dream and is now on her way to getting an undergraduate degree, possibly with the highest or second honors, in a good Catholic university abroad. That is actually as near to a miracle that a family in a Third World country, with the countryside for its roots, can hope to bring about in another nation so far but so great and so blessed with modern civilization’s amenities, but that miracle is right now unfolding to my own amazement. Apart from being in the dean’s list, my daughter also works as staff writer (and with a digital camera her own photographer) for her university’s English-language college newspaper; every now and then she would proudly e-mail me an entire page carrying her feature stories and color photographs, which talk with the campus journalist’s authority about such things as the culture of the Hopi Indians and the art of Andy Warhol. She has, for good measure, given me the website of her college paper, so that I can read through it at my leisure on my computer, page for page, and understand her creations in the context of the whole campus journalism production. It really does seem that the good English and the good writing sense she had acquired back home are working quite well even in another land. My eldest son, meanwhile, who is in third year high in an exclusive but not so ridiculously expensive Catholic school, speaks and writes so fluently in English that my wife Leonor and I sometimes get into arguments as to who he has taken after, the mother or the father. In any case, I have no doubt that he could very well stand on his own when compared to his public school counterparts, but I do worry how he will fare when ranged against the products of the more expensive exclusive schools when the time of reckoning comes. The problem, I can assure you, is not in the person but in the instruction. The other night he confirmed to me that his school, although private, had adopted this school year something like the Makabayan or “Millennium Curriculum” of the Department of Education, Culture, and Sports, which is mandatory for all public schools. What it really means is that practically 65% of his subjects in school are now being taught in Pilipino, the official Tagalog variant, instead of English. I am baffled to learn that they now teach the following subjects in straight Pilipino: Values Education; Araling Panlipunan (Social Studies); Technology and Home Economics; Physical Education, Health, and Music; and Computer. The only holdouts in his school still being taught in English are English and Literature, Science, and Mathematics. In Computer, my son thankfully said as an aside, his teacher was bungling his Pilipino teaching so much that he gave up altogether and started teaching it in English, which is actually doing himself and my son a great favor. And what about my youngest son, a generation straddler who is only in Grade II in a Catholic private school? Well, no matter what the leading government educators do to confound the curriculum, I am seeing to it that he will be largely impervious to its shocks. I made sure that my son was already computer-literate at five, and for his reading materials I have kept a steady stream of English-language books and comics. (Sometimes he pines for the Tagalog-language comics that his elder brother used to enjoy, but I told him flatly that he has already outgrown that and should now be reading more interesting adventures in English.) For his viewing fare, I gently made it clear to him that he is free to watch the better local TV programs, but that he would learn better English and see better, more entertaining, and more wholesome shows on cable than on local TV. And although he told me that his own school used Pilipino to teach Sibika (Social Studies) and Pilipino itself, I am confident that our English-language-orientation formula for him at home is working. At less than nine years of age, his grasp of English was already astonishing. I sometimes hear him giving instructions to his classmates on the phone in a straight, didactic, and flawless English that would put many English teachers to shame. And one morning, on the couch, I discovered a touching story written on Oslo paper recounting the adventures of the French comics character Asterix visiting the Holy Family in Bethlehem. It was painstakingly written in block letters in halting but essentially straight English, and it gave me such pleasure to know without being told that it was my little boy who did it. (Written circa 2007) From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times. This essay subsequently appeared as Chapter 151 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge, © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. | ||
open letter on news stories
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A daunting question about the usage of noun clauses and relative clauses (1)
A new member of Jose Carillo English Forum who goes by the username Kal recently asked me this daunting grammar question: “What are the types of noun clauses and relative clauses and what are their functions, forms, and usages?”
I say daunting because to answer it adequately will need an extensive review of two of the most complicated grammar forms in English. In fact, the forms and usage of noun clauses and relative clauses have been the most-often asked and most lengthily discussed over the seven years that I’ve been moderating the Forum. To answer Kal’s question, what I’ll be attempting therefore is a consolidation and distillation of those running discusssions. Let’s begin the review by first defining what a noun clause is. A noun clause is a subordinate clause that functions within a sentence as a noun, whether as subject, direct or indirect object, or complement. It can’t stand alone as a complete thought because it’s typically preceded by a subordinating conjunction as a dependency marker. The subordinating conjunctions are, of course, “that” (it can be elided or omitted in certain cases); “if,” “whether,” the “wh”-words (“who,” “what,” “which,” and “where”), the “wh-ever” words (“whomever,” “whatever,” “whichever,” and “wherever”) and, in some sentence constructions, “for.” Depending on the form of the verb they are using, noun clauses come in two general forms: the finite noun clause and the nonfinite noun clause. A finite noun clause is a subordinate clause in which the operative verb is in its normal form—meaning that it’s inflected or marked for tense, person, and number. This is the case in the sentence “Some are unnerved that hundreds of suspects have been summarily killed in the ongoing campaign against illegal drugs.” Here, the noun clause “that hundreds of suspects have been summarily killed in the ongoing campaign against illegal drugs” is finite because the verb “have been summarily killed” is marked for tense (present perfect passive), person (third person), and number (plural). In contrast, a nonfinite noun clause is a subordinate clause in which the operative verb is not inflected or not marked for tense, person, and number; instead, it takes the form of a verbal noun, which is a word or phrase that combines the properties of a verb with those of a noun. A nonfinite noun clause can take three forms, with the operative verb of the noun clause taking any of these three forms: 1. The operative verb is in the infinitive form (to + verb). This is the case in “The President wants the Philippines to have a more responsive Constitution.” Here, the noun clause “the Philippines to have a more responsive Constitution” works as the direct object of the verb “wants.” The object pronoun “the Philippines” of the sentence serves as the subject of the nonfinite noun clause. 2. The operative verb is in the gerund form (the present participle that ends in “-ing”). This is the case in “With bated breath, they listened to the singer straining to hit a very high note.” Here, the noun clause “the singer straining to hit a very high note” works as the object of the preposition “to.” The object noun “the singer” of the sentence functions as the subject of the nonfinite noun clause. 3. The operative verb is in the verb’s base form (the infinitive form without the “to”). This is the case in “Our general manager demands that we change the product specifications.” Here, the noun clause “that we change the product specifications” works as the direct object of the verb “demands” (in answer to the question, “Your professor demanded what?”). The object noun “we” of the sentence functions as the subject of the nonfinite noun clause. Next week, we’ll take up the eight functions that noun clauses can perform in a sentence. This essay appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in its August 6, 2016 issue, © 2016 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved. | ||
A daunting question about the usage of noun clauses and relative clauses (2)
In this column last week, we defined a noun clause as a subordinate clause that functions within a sentence as a noun, whether as subject, direct or indirect object, or complement. The noun clause comes in two general forms depending on the form of the verb it is using: the finite noun clause and the nonfinite noun clause.
A finite noun clause is a subordinate clause in which the operative verb is in its normal form, inflected or marked for tense, person, and number as in this sentence: “The Philippine president has come up with a list that identified seven trial court judges allegedly involved in the traffic of illegal drugs.” In contrast, a nonfinite noun clause is a subordinate clause in which the operative verb is not inflected or not marked for tense, person, and number; instead, it takes any of three verbal forms: the infinitive form, as in the “Human rights groups are firmly opposing moves in Congress to restore the death penalty”; the gerund form, as in “After catching him red-handed, the police listened incredulously to the illegal drugs courier trying hard to profess his innocence”; and in the verb’s base form (the infinitive minus the “to”), as in “Some people were shocked to hear the President speak of demolishing oligarchs.” Now let’s take up in some detail the eight functions that noun clauses can perform in a sentence, namely (1) as subject, (2) as subject complement, (3) as direct object, (4) as object complement, (5) as indirect object, (6) as prepositional complement, (7) as adjective phrase complement, and ( 1. As subject, either performing the action of the verb or acting upon that verb: (a) Finite clause subject: “That”-clause: “That profits are down is not surprising.” “What”-clause: “What’s remarkable is that the boxer is now a senator.” “Whether”-clause: “Whether she won fair and square is in doubt.” “Whatever”-clause: “Whatever happens tonight is your sole responsibility.” (b) Nonfinite clause as subject: Infinitive clause: “To win this fight is a must.” Gerund clause: “Treating her ailment has been difficult.” 2. Noun clause as subject complement describing the grammatical subject with which it is connected by a linking verb: (a) Finite clause as subject complement: “That”- clause: “The unintended outcome of the business shakeup was that they lost their principal partner.” “Whoever”-clause: “The winner will be whoever gets there first.” “Wherever”-clause: “Our first rest stop is wherever we need to gas up.” (b) Nonfinite clause as subject complement: Infinitive clause: “It’s a must to ensure we get there on time.” Gerund clause: “Our goal right now is raising adequate working capital.” 3. Noun clause as direct object, receiving the action of the transitive verb in the main clause: (a) Finite clause as direct object: “Whatever”-clause: “We will sell whatever you produce.” “If”-clause: “She wondered if she had chosen the correct course.” “For”-clause: “She is praying hard for you to win.” (b) Nonfinite clause as direct object: Infinitive clause: “The partners preferred to travel together.” Gerund clause: “He loved jogging one mile every morning.” 4. Noun clause as object complement, which immediately follows and describes the direct object: (a) Finite noun clause as object complement: “Whatever”-clause: “You can give your beach resort whatever name is suitable.” (b) Nonfinite noun clause as object complement: Infinitive clause: “The patriarch asked his sons to be role models as businessmen.” 5. Noun clause as indirect object to indicate to or for whom or what the action of a transitive verb is performed: (a) Finite noun clause as indirect object: “What”-clause: “The company owner refuses to give what the manager has initiated any importance.” (b) Nonfinite noun clause as indirect object: Gerund clause: “Her parents consider participating in beauty contests totally irrelevant.” We will continue this discussion of the functions of noun clauses next week. This essay appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in its August 13, 2016 issue, © 2016 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved. | |||
Time for a quick review of the English prepositions (1)
Early this month an English grammar enthusiast who follows me on Facebook, Edward G. Lim, suggested that I write about prepositions. I promised to take them up sometime soon, and I think that right now is as good a time as any to do a quick review of this part of speech in English.
I’ll do away with a rigorously formal definition of this part of speech, which I fear might just lead us to difficult grammatical terms and concepts. Instead I propose to look at them simply as a word or group of words for showing where a noun or pronoun is located in space and time. This way, we can divide the common run of prepositions into the following five groups that establish a space or time relationship between ideas within a phrase, clause, or sentence: 1. Prepositions of place and location: “in,” “at,” and “on” 2. Prepositions of motion: “to,” “toward,” “in,” and “into” 3. Prepositions of movement and direction: “to,” “onto,” and “into” 4. Prepositions for specific points of time: “on,” “at,” “in,” and “after” 5. Prepositions for periods or extended time: “since,” “for,” “by,” “from…to,” “from…until,” “before,” “during,” “within,” “between,” and “beyond.” It then becomes conceptually simpler to specify rules of usage for each of the prepositions. Prepositions that indicate place and location in space: The general rule is to use “in” for an enclosed space, “at” for a point, and “on” for a surface. In American English, here are some specific guidelines for their use: 1. Use “in” for spaces: “They always meet in a secret room [in a suburban hotel, in a parking lot, in a farm, in a ricefield].” 2. Use “in” for names of specific land areas: “She lives in a quiet town [in Tagaytay, in Cavite, in Southern Tagalog, in the island of Palawan, in Southeast Asia]. 3. Use “in” for bodies of water: “That kind of fish thrives in freshwater [in the river, in the lake, in the sea].” 4. Use “in” for lines: “The registrants are in a row [in a line, in a queue].” 5. Use “at” to indicate points: “You’ll find us at the entrance [at the taxi stand, at the supermarket, at the intersection].” 5. Use “at” for specific addresses, as in “She lives at 40 Lilac St.” 6. Use “on” for names of streets, roads, avenues, and boulevards: “Her apartment is on San Pablo Street [on Ortigas Avenue, on Roxas Boulevard].” 7. Use “on” for surfaces: “There’s a large stain on the floor [on the wall, on the ceiling].” The prepositions “in,” “at”, and “on” for indicating people in space: 1. Use “in” in these cases: “The children are in the kitchen [in the garden, in the car, in the library, in the class, in school]. (The article “the” is mandatory except for the fourth and last example.) 2. Use “at” in these particular cases: “She was at home [at the library, at the office, at school, at work] when we arrived.” 3. Use “on” in these particular cases: “They are on the plane [on the train, on the boat].” Prepositions that establish motion and direction: The prepositions “to,” “toward,” “in,” and “into” link the verbs of movement—“move,” “go,” “transfer,” “walk,” “run,” “swim,” “ride,” “drive,” “fly,” “travel,” and many more—to their object destination. All of these verbs (except “transfer”) can take both “to” and “toward.” Use “to” to convey the idea of movement toward a specific destination; use “toward” to convey movement in a general direction that may not reach a specific destination: “Please take me to the bus station.” (The speaker obligates the listener to specifically take him to a particular place.) “The speedboat headed toward the harbor.” (The speaker indicates only a movement in a general direction.) We’ll continue these discussions next week. This essay appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in its September 17, 2016 issue, © 2016 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved. | |||
Time for a quick review of the English prepositions (2)
Last week, as suggested by English grammar enthusiast Edward G. Lim on my Facebook page, I started a review of the prepositions. I began with the prepositions “in,” “at,” and “on” for indicating place and location in space, then proceeded to the prepositions “to,” “toward,” “in,” and “into” for establishing motion and direction. I explained that these four prepositions link the verbs of movement—“move,” “go,” “transfer,” “walk,” “run,” “swim,” “ride,” “drive,” “fly,” “travel,” and many more—to their object destination.
I’ll now resume by pointing out that when used with verbs of motion, “in” and “into” can be used interchangeably more or less freely, as in “The swimmer dived in the pool” and “The swimmer dived into the pool.” There are notable exceptions, though. “In” can only be used when it occurs right before an adverbial of time (“yesterday,” “last night”), as in “The woman came in yesterday”; when it occurs right before an adverbial of manner (“quickly,” “hurriedly”), as in “The new tenants moved in hurriedly”; when it occurs right before an adverbial of frequency, as in “The woman went in twice”; and when it’s last word in the sentence, as in “The new tenants moved in.” In a question, on the other hand, the preposition “into” can be the last word as well, as in “What sort of rigmarole has that senator gotten herself into?” However, “in” should be used instead if that question is asked in this form: “What sort of rigmarole is she in?” It’s also worth noting that “in” and “into” have two unique uses with the verb “move.” The first is when “move in” is followed by a clause indicating purpose or motive, as in “The hunters moved in for the kill”; “in” is integral to the verb phrase “moved in,” so “into” can’t be used. The second is when “into” is used with “move” to convey the idea of simple movement, as in “The firemen moved into the burning building.” “To” and “toward,” “onto,” and “into” as prepositions of direction. These prepositions correspond to the common prepositions of location: (a) “to” and “toward” for “at,” (b) “onto” for “on,” and (c) “into” for “in.” As in prepositions of location, each of them is defined by the same space relations of point, line, surface, or area. “To,” the basic directional preposition, signifies orientation toward a goal. If that goal is physical, like a specific destination, “to” conveys the idea of movement in the direction of that goal, as in “The troops returned to their base.” “Toward” also works as a directional preposition, and means the same thing as the directional preposition “to.” If the goal isn’tt a physical place, as in an action, “to” simply puts the verb in the infinitive form to express a particular purpose, as in “She sings to earn extra money” and “She cut her hair to show displeasure.” In the case of the directional prepositions “onto” and “into,” they are compounds formed by “to” with a preposition of location: (a) on + to = onto, to signify movement toward a surface, and (b) in + to = into, to signify movement inside a finite three-dimensional space or volume. When used with many verbs of motion, however, “on” and “in” already have a directional meaning. They can therefore be freely used instead of “onto” and “into.” Indeed, “on” and “onto” work equally well: “The cats fell on [onto] the floor.” “The whales washed up onto [on] the beach.” “The girl jumped into [in] the river.” Notice that the compound locational prepositions “onto” and “into” always convey the consummation of an action, while the simple locational prepositions “on” and “in” indicate the subject’s end-position as a result of the action. We’ll examine these aspects of “on,” “in,” and “into” more closely next week. This essay appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in its September 24, 2016 issue, © 2016 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved. | ||||
Time for a quick review of the English prepositions (3)
Last week, in our review of the prepositions of direction, I said that the compound locational prepositions “onto” and “into” always convey the consummation of an action, while the simple locational prepositions “on” and “in” indicate the subject’s end-position as a result of that action.
These examples clearly show this: Consummation of an action: “The boy fell onto the ground.” “The woman dived into the pool.” The subject’s end-position: “The boy is on the ground.” “The woman is in the pool.” As a rule of thumb then, the directional prepositions “onto” and “into” serve to convey the idea of cause, while the locational prepositions “on” and “in” serve to convey the idea of effect. The least specific of the prepositions for space orientation is “at.” It works in two ways: (a) to mark a verb of motion directed towards a point, as in “The marksman aimed at the hostage-taker with precision”; and (b) to indicate direction, as in “The guard leaped at the pickpocket to stop him.” Let’s now move on to the prepositions that establish relationships in time. The prepositions for specific points in time: “on,” “at,” “in,” and “after”: “On” is used with the days of the week: “We are going out on Monday.” “On” is used for specific dates (optional in informal usage): “The trade fair will start on March 12, 2003 [on March 12, on the 12th of March].” “At” is used with clocked time: “She comes to work promptly at 8:30 a.m.” “At” is used with these times of the day: “noon,” “night,” “midnight,” “sunrise,” “sunset”: “We sail for Palawan at noon.” “At” is used with certain major holidays (without the word “Day”) as points of time: “The family always gets together at Christmas.” “In” is used with these times of the day: “morning,” “afternoon,” “evening”: “She waters her roses in the morning.” “In” is used with dates that don’t carry the specific day: “Magellan reached the Philippines in March 1521.” “In” is used with months, years, decades, and centuries as points of time: “Rizal was born in June [in 1861, in the 1860s].” “In” is used with the seasons as points of time: “He promised not to leave her in winter.” “After” is used with events that happen later than another event or point of time: “The overseas worker came home only after New Year’s Eve.” The prepositions for periods or extended time: “since,” “for,” “by,” “from...to,” “from...until,” “during,” “within,” “between,” and “beyond”: “Since” is used with an event that happens at some time or continuously after another time: “She has been writing poetry since her teens.” “For” is used with particular durations: “Our President went to Viet Nam for a two-day state visit.” “By” is used with an act completed or to be completed by a certain time: “She expects to finish her dissertation by yearend.” “From...to” is used to refer to the beginning and end of an activity or event: “The weather will be stormy from today to Monday.” “From...until” is used to refer to the beginning of one period to the beginning of another: “They traveled from March until October.” “During” is used to refer to a period of time in which an event happens or an activity is done: “We toured Vigan during the semestral break.” “Between” is used to refer to an action taking place between the beginning and the end of a period: “The debate lasted between 9:00 and 12 noon.” “Within” is used to refer to an action that must take place or be completed within a given period: “You must leave within the day.” “Beyond” is used to refer to a period of time after a particular event has taken place or a particular time has elapsed: “Beyond October all hostilities stopped.” This ends our review of the prepositions. This essay appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in its October 1, 2016 issue, © 2016 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved. | |||
Pronouns as subject complements always take the subjective form
I’d like to take up an intriguing follow-up question on inverted sentences posted recently on my Facebook page by grammar enthusiast Marianne Freya Gutib. The question refers to my July 30, 2016 column where I picked the pronoun “they” as the correct pronoun in this inverted sentence that she presented: “The winners of the contests were (they, them).”
Marianne asked: “If that’s the case then, how many subjects are present in the sentence? Which is the subject and which is the predicate? (In such inverted sentences) we usually think of the subject as being in post-verb position. But according to inverse copular construction, the normal subject has inverted to a post-verb position, and the predicative nominal has inverted to the pre-verb position.” My reply to Marianne: Let me answer your first follow-up question first: “How many subjects are present in the sentence?” The answer is only one subject—the entity described by the noun phrase “the winners of the contests,” with the noun “winners” as the operative subject modified by the phrase “of the contests.” The predicate of that sentence is the pronoun “they,” linked to it by the linking verb “were,” which of course is the past-tense plural form of “be.” Regarding the grammar of that inverted sentence, I identified “they” as a subject complement, which by definition is a word or phrase that follows a linking verb and describes or renames the subject of a sentence; in effect, it serves to provide more information about that subject. I then cited that in English grammar, the rule for pronouns as subject complements is to use their subjective form rather than their objective form. I also pointed out that a telltale sign of a subject complement is that the information it provides is always preceded by a form of the linking verb “be,” which is the case in “The winners of the contests were they.” Thus, although it may sometimes seem or sound better to use the objective “them” in such sentences, as in “The winners of the contests were them,” this usage is actually grammatically incorrect. Let’s now examine this notion you cited in your follow-up question: “(In such inverted sentences) we usually think of subject as being in post-verb position. But according to inverse copular construction, the normal subject has inverted to a post-verb position, and the predicative nominal has inverted to the pre-verb position.” (Just keep in mind that “copula” is simply a variant of the term “linking verb,” and “inverse copular construction” a variant of “inverted sentence construction.”) You correctly described what happens in inverted sentences: the normal subject goes to a post-verb position and the predicative nominal goes to the pre-verb position. This reconstruction admittedly makes it difficult for nonspecialists to distinguish between the subject and predicate of a sentence, but this doesn’t really doesn’t violate the fundamental rules of English grammar. In the sentence you presented, “The winners of the contests were (they, them),” it’s clear that you correctly considered “(They, them) were the winners of the contests” as the normative sentence and “The winners of the contests were (they, them)” as the inverted sentence. However, whether a sentence is normative or inverted, we must always keep in mind that the pronouns it uses as subject complement should always take the subjective form rather than the objective form. Thus, in the normative sentence, given the grammar rule I cited at the outset, “They were the winners of the contests” is clearly called for because “they” as subject is already in the subjective form. On the other hand, in the inverted sentence, “The winners of the contests were they” is clearly the correct usage because this time, “they” is the subject complement and so must likewise take that subjective form. Next week: A subject-verb agreement peculiarity of inverted sentences. This essay appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in its October 8, 2016 issue, © 2016 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved. | |||
The Historical, Literary, and Eternal Present
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What follows is Chapter 51 of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge (Manila Times Publishing, 2009). I have decided to post it here in the Forum to answer the many lingering concerns and doubts—all understandably valid in the absence of specific guidance—of Forum member Michael Galario about the normal sequence-of-tenses rule in English. I am sure that other Forum members will find this essay instructive and revealing about one of the thorny and confusing aspects of reported (indirect) speech and inverted sentences.
We deal with the here and now by using the simple present tense: “I work as a translator for a publishing house.” “She sees something sinister in this.” And when we want to express an action that’s happening right now, we use the present progressive tense: “Can’t you see? I am working as hard as I can.” “She is seeing something moving at the ceiling.” Of course, we can also use the simple present to express an often-repeated action or permanent condition: “She takes a break at precisely 10:00 a.m.” “He is totally deaf in the right ear.”
The present tense is obviously the most basic the tenses can get, but we must be aware that in English, this tense takes three more special forms not necessarily dealing with the immediate present. They are the historical present, the literary present, and the “eternal present” of scientific principles and general truths.
We deal with the here and now by using the simple present tense: “I work as a translator for a publishing house.” “She sees something sinister in this.” And when we want to express an action that’s happening right now, we use the present progressive tense: “Can’t you see? I am working as hard as I can.” “She is seeing something moving at the ceiling.” Of course, we can also use the simple present to express an often-repeated action or permanent condition: “She takes a break at precisely 10:00 a.m.” “He is totally deaf in the right ear.”
The present tense is obviously the most basic the tenses can get, but we must be aware that in English, this tense takes three more special forms not necessarily dealing with the immediate present. They are the historical present, the literary present, and the “eternal present” of scientific principles and general truths.
The historical present. This form recounts past events in the present tense to make them more vivid and immediate. Often used in third-person and first-person narratives as well as in dialogue, the historical present is a story-telling technique designed to make audiences or readers imagine they are right at the scene of the unfolding action. Feel the immediacy of this passage from Alphonse Daudet’s short story, “A Game of Billiards”:
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The game is fascinating. The balls roll, graze, pass; they rebound. Every moment the play grows more interesting. A flash of light is seen in the sky, and the report of a cannon is heard. A heavy rumbling sound shakes the windows. Everyone starts and casts an uneasy glance about. The Marshal alone remains unmoved.
We all know, of course, that the historical present is common fare in magazine journalism. Take this lead passage from a 2004 Time magazine feature on the U.S. presidential campaign:
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In the bleak midwinter, Bill Clinton sits in the two-story garage out back, kneading memory into history. He scribbles his memoirs in longhand on legal pads, poring over notes and transcripts of his White House years. For the moment, the deadline is more pressing than raising money for India’s earthquake victims or promoting peace in Northern Ireland or touring Miami nightclubs with Julio Iglesias.
The historical present is also the stuff of dialogue: “And so what does he say about your proposal?” “Well, he says it’s great and needs only a little fine-tuning. He’s particularly delighted by the high potential savings in production costs.” “So what does he tell you about implementation?” “He says it’s a ‘go’ for the second quarter.” “Amazing! That sounds like your idea really knocked him over! He usually first shoots proposals like that to the Corplan guys to see if they can tear it apart.” The literary present. As a rule, the English language uses the simple present when discussing literature. This follows the academic concept that fiction exists in a timeless world that is best described in the present tense, particularly in discussions of theme, plot, or author’s intent. Take this passage about Filipino novelist N.V.M. Gonzalez’s novel, The Bamboo Dancers:
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In the first chapter, the first-person narrator begins his story by recounting that early summer he was in New York. He has a room all to himself in a place called Fairfield House. He is through with what he calls his ‘American year,’ having just completed work at the Harrington School of Fine Arts...
Then this blurb for the British novelist John Fowles’ novel, The Collector:
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The setting is a lonely cottage in the English countryside. The characters are a brutal, tormented man and the beautiful, aristocratic young woman whom he has taken captive. The story is the struggle of two wills, two ways of being, two paths of desire…”
The “eternal truth” present. This is the English-language convention for stating scientific principles and general truths in the present tense: “Newton’s First Law of Motion holds that a body continues in its state of motion unless compelled by a force to act otherwise.” “The meter is the base unit of length that is equal to the distance traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458th of a second, or about 39.37 inches.” “The sum of the angles of a triangle is always equal to 180 degrees.” “The distance from Earth to Mars is at least 56 million kilometers.” On the other hand, principles that have proven false must be stated in the past tense: “The phlogiston theory held that an elementary principle, called phlogiston by its proponent, G. H. Stahl, was lost from substances when they burned.” (This theory has been displaced by Antoine Lavoisier’s oxygen theory.) “The ancients believed that Earth was flat, and that one who stepped beyond its edge would fall into a bottomless abyss.” (We know now that Earth is spherical or, more accurately, spheroid due to the flattening at its poles.) |
How Verbs Behave in the Exceptional Sequence
What follows is Chapter 52 of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge (Manila Times Publishing, 2009). I have decided to post it here in the Forum to answer the many lingering concerns and doubts—all understandably valid in the absence of specific guidance—of Forum member Michael Galario about the normal sequence-of-tenses rule in English. I am sure that other Forum members will find this essay instructive and revealing about one of the thorny and confusing aspects of reported (indirect) speech and inverted sentences.
In these troubled and troubling times when people’s utterances—whether expressed in private or aired through the broadcast, cellular, or print media—are increasingly being viewed with mutual suspicion, it would be useful to make a quick review of the grammar of reported speech. This would require a reacquaintance with how verbs behave in the normal sequence of tenses and in the so-called exceptional sequence. People should clearly understand this behavior of verbs so they can have a clearer, unbiased perception of the chronology and logic of fast-breaking events as they happen in time. Reported speech or indirect speech is, of course, simply the kind of sentence someone makes when he or she reports what someone else has said. For instance, a company’s division manager might have told a news reporter these exact words: “I am resigning to join the competition.” In journalism, where the reporting verb is normally in the past tense, that statement takes this form in reported speech: “The division manager said he was resigning to join the competition.” The operative verb in utterances obviously can take any tense depending on the speaker’s predisposition or intent. However, when an utterance takes the form of reported speech and the reporting verb is in the past tense, the operative verb of that utterance generally takes one step back from the present into the past: the present becomes past, the past usually stays in the past, the present perfect becomes past perfect, and the future becomes future conditional. This is the so-called normal sequence-of-tenses rule in English grammar. Now let’s see how this rule applies when that division manager’s utterance is reported using the various tenses: Present tense to past tense. Utterance: “I am resigning to join the competition.” Reported speech: “The division manager said he was resigning to join the competition.” Past tense to past tense. Utterance: “I resigned to join the competition.” Reported speech: “The division manager said he resigned to join the competition.” (The past tense can usually be retained in reported speech when the intended act is carried out close to its announcement; if much earlier, the past perfect applies as shown below. Present perfect to past perfect tense. Utterance: “I have resigned to join the competition.” Reported speech: “The division manager said he had resigned to join the competition.” Future tense to future conditional tense. Utterance: “I will resign to join the competition.” Reported speech: “The division manager said he would resign to join the competition.” Exceptional sequence. But there’s one very rare instance when the operative verb in reported speech doesn’t conform to this normal sequence of tenses. In the so-called exceptional sequence, which applies if the information being reported is permanently or always true, the operative verb in reported speech doesn’t take a tense backward but retains the present tense. For instance, to prove a point, the division manager might have surprised his subordinates by saying an eternal verity like this: “A square has four sides of equal length.” This time, using the normal sequence-of-tenses rule to report that statement would be silly: “Our division manager said a square had four sides of equal length.” All squares will forever have four sides of equal length, so the exceptional sequence applies: “Our division manager said a square has four sides of equal length.” But should the reported speech for habitual things also follow the exceptional sequence rule? Say, for instance, that right after declaring his intention to resign, that same division manager adds: “I am always loyal to the company I work for.” Would this reported speech for that utterance be correct: “He said he is always loyal to the company he works for”? Definitely not. By his very words, the speaker has shown that loyalty is such a fickle thing, so the normal sequence-of-tenses rule applies to his reported speech: “He said he was always loyal to the company he worked for.” | |||
A subject-verb agreement peculiarity of inverted sentences
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In my column last week, I discussed why the pronoun “they” rather than “them” is the correct form of the subject complement in this inverted sentence: “The winners of the contests were (they, them).” In reply to an interesting follow-up question on my Facebook page by grammar enthusiast Marianne Freya Gutib, I explained that the operative grammar rule in such situations is that in English, a pronoun acting as a subject complement always takes the subjective form whether the sentence is in its normative or inverted form.
The normative or regular form of the inverted sentence “The winners of the contests were they” is, of course, “They were the winners of the contests,” where there’s perfect subject-verb agreement between the plural subject “they” and the likewise plural past-tense form “were” of the linking verb “be.” In an earlier column, I pointed out that what unmistakeably marks a subject complement is that the information it provides is always preceded by the linking verb “be” in the appropriate form.
We need to be aware though that inverted sentences in English have a subject-verb agreement peculiarity when their predicate is a noun phrase, and I would like to acknowledge that this must have been what was bugging Marianne Gutib when she raised her follow-up question about inverse copular or linking verb construction. However, this peculiarity doesn’t become apparent when there’s no difference in number between subject and predicate, as in the inverted sentence she presented, “The winners of the contests were they,” which, of course, has the normative form “They were the winners of the contests.” (In contrast, the inverted form has “the winners of the contests” as plural subject, the subject complement “they” as plural predicate, and the past-tense plural “were” as linking verb.)
But what happens when a normative sentence like, say, “Her pretrial antics are a needless complication” takes the inverted form? Do we say or write “A needless complication are her pretrial antics” or “A needless complication is her pretrial antics”?
This may come as a surprise to some, but when an English sentence is inverted, the form of the linking verb should agree with the number—and of course also with the tense—of the singular noun phrase to its left instead of the plural subject to its right. Thus, the grammatically correct inverted construction of the normative sentence “Her pretrial antics are a needless complication” is “A needless complication is her pretrial antics.”
Let’s look at another example for good measure: “Those women parading in swimsuits are definitely a pleasant sight” inverts to the form “Definitely a pleasant sight is [not are] those women parading in swimsuits.”
Perhaps a clearer, more practical way of describing this subject-verb agreement peculiarity of inverted sentences is that when the subject and predicate of a sentence differs in number, the linking verb agrees with the number of the noun phrase to its left. The normative “What I need is two-round trip bookings to Puerto Princesa” thus inverts to “Two-round trip bookings to Puerto Princesa are what I need.”
Even if no sentence inversion is involved, we must keep in mind that this subject-verb agreement rule in English normally also applies when the subject and predicate of a sentence are both in the form of noun phrases (as opposed to stand-alone nouns or pronouns) and differ in number or person as well. In such cases, the form of the linking verb “be” agrees with the preceding noun phrase—the one on the left of the sentence—even if that noun phrase is not logically the subject. Thus, we say that “The immediate cause of her unsettling predicament is the lewd video clips discovered in her cellular phone,” not “The immediate cause of her unsettling predicament are the lewd video clips discovered in her cellular phone.”
This essay appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in its October 15, 2016 issue, © 2016 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved.
We need to be aware though that inverted sentences in English have a subject-verb agreement peculiarity when their predicate is a noun phrase, and I would like to acknowledge that this must have been what was bugging Marianne Gutib when she raised her follow-up question about inverse copular or linking verb construction. However, this peculiarity doesn’t become apparent when there’s no difference in number between subject and predicate, as in the inverted sentence she presented, “The winners of the contests were they,” which, of course, has the normative form “They were the winners of the contests.” (In contrast, the inverted form has “the winners of the contests” as plural subject, the subject complement “they” as plural predicate, and the past-tense plural “were” as linking verb.)
But what happens when a normative sentence like, say, “Her pretrial antics are a needless complication” takes the inverted form? Do we say or write “A needless complication are her pretrial antics” or “A needless complication is her pretrial antics”?
This may come as a surprise to some, but when an English sentence is inverted, the form of the linking verb should agree with the number—and of course also with the tense—of the singular noun phrase to its left instead of the plural subject to its right. Thus, the grammatically correct inverted construction of the normative sentence “Her pretrial antics are a needless complication” is “A needless complication is her pretrial antics.”
Let’s look at another example for good measure: “Those women parading in swimsuits are definitely a pleasant sight” inverts to the form “Definitely a pleasant sight is [not are] those women parading in swimsuits.”
Perhaps a clearer, more practical way of describing this subject-verb agreement peculiarity of inverted sentences is that when the subject and predicate of a sentence differs in number, the linking verb agrees with the number of the noun phrase to its left. The normative “What I need is two-round trip bookings to Puerto Princesa” thus inverts to “Two-round trip bookings to Puerto Princesa are what I need.”
Even if no sentence inversion is involved, we must keep in mind that this subject-verb agreement rule in English normally also applies when the subject and predicate of a sentence are both in the form of noun phrases (as opposed to stand-alone nouns or pronouns) and differ in number or person as well. In such cases, the form of the linking verb “be” agrees with the preceding noun phrase—the one on the left of the sentence—even if that noun phrase is not logically the subject. Thus, we say that “The immediate cause of her unsettling predicament is the lewd video clips discovered in her cellular phone,” not “The immediate cause of her unsettling predicament are the lewd video clips discovered in her cellular phone.”
This essay appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in its October 15, 2016 issue, © 2016 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved.
Jumat, 27 Juli 2018
Great Titles in the Making
Great Titles in the Making
By Jose A. Carillo
My wife Leonor was out doing the groceries when I put the finishing touches to “Lost in Translation” and e-mailed it to the newspaper running my columns. When she came back and had laid down her foodstuffs and goodies, she casually picked up the printed manuscript on the computer table and started reading. “This is charming,” she said. “You use the phrase ‘salad days’ to describe yourself when you talk about Jacques Prévert talking about pâte foie de gras. And I think you explained pâte foie de gras quite well. But are you sure your readers will understand ‘salad days’? For all you know, some of them might think you were a rich kid eating nothing but salad and caviar in those days, which I know you were not.”
Oh, I said, I’m sure they would know what I mean by “salad days.” That’s an allusion to my youthful, inexperienced times, which I actually look back on with great fondness. I’ve used that phrase often since, well, my salad days, and I know that a lot of other writers have used it themselves in their memoirs and in their newspaper features. But Leonor pointedly said: “That’s right, but are you sure they knew exactly what they were talking about when they used it and how they got to using it in the first place?”
In my case I said “Yes,” but for the others—? Her question intrigued me. It gave me the idea to write precisely this chapter you are reading now. There must be some value in talking about the English idioms and figures of speech that modern writers have not tired of using again and again. And what a better way to start the effort by tracing their genealogy, beginning with “salad days” with which I was already familiar.
For those who just happen not to know it yet, one of the earliest written works that used the phrase “salad days” was William Shakespeare’s play Anthony and Cleopatra. That was in the year 1606 when the Stratford tanner’s son was about 43 years old, no longer a tyro in dramatics himself. He used the idiom in that scene where Cleopatra was ruing past mistakes and miscalculations in her personal affairs: “My salad days, when I was green in judgement, cold in blood, to say as I said then.”
With that remark, many Shakespeare lovers have paid tribute to the Bard by using “salad days” to mean rank inexperience and cupidity (this last word, by the way, despite the allusion to the winged god of love, does not mean “lovestruck” but, in this context, “a very hearty appetite”). And as far as I know, at least one modern-day writer got his inspiration from another phrase in that one-line lament. The novelist Truman Capote, writing about the final days of the two doomed young killers of a Kansas family in 1959, entitled his classic non-fiction novel In Cold Blood. It is, I am almost sure, a quiet but powerful allusion to Shakespeare in 1606 talking in Cleopatra’s voice.
There is another English figure of speech that had fascinated me since my salad days, but I was always so in a hurry to ever bother looking it up. It is the intriguing idiom “woman of straw.” My first encounter with it was in the 1964 film Woman of Straw, which starred a much more voluptuous Gina Lollobrigida than today and what was then a still amateurish but handsomer Sean Connery. The movie blurb said “It’s so easy to set fire to a woman of straw,” and I took the idiom at face value: it must somehow mean a female scarecrow that you put in a ricefield to drive away the pesky birds, but that you can easily get rid of by setting aflame with a flick of a match. But the starstruck image of my salad days was totally wrong. Decades later, surfing the Web, I discovered something more elemental and profound and much deadlier about women and men of straw.
It turns out that in early England, certain poor men and women would loiter around the law courts offering themselves as false witnesses for a fee. To show to prospective litigants they were available, they would wear a piece of straw in one of their boots. They were people of no substance or capital, very much like the alert, bright-eyed palabuylaboy (loiterers) we can see even today around local police headquarters, waiting for a cue from a police sergeant who is not convinced that you have a strong enough witness or testimony to have a “fileable” or “winnable” case. They no longer mark themselves with straw on their shoes, though; now they often wear fake Hilfiger shirts and possibly genuine Nikés. But people like these were—and still are—the real “people of straw” of this world, not the overly pliant women and men who would fold and crumble at your gentlest touch.
And talking of figures of speech about court cheats and scalawags, I am reminded of the idiom “baker’s dozen.” I still use this idiom to test how good the English of applicants to my company is, and I am distressed to find that less than 30% are supplying the correct answers. How many items, indeed, are in a baker’s dozen? Are there 12 or 15 or double the ordinary dozen? No, not at all. It is the unlucky number 13. In old England, bakers were fined heavily for shortchanging customers with less than the correct weight of bread. To guard against being brought to court, which was such a bother, they began making it a point to add an extra loaf to every 12 they sold. That’s actually how the baker’s dozen came about.
Now, before closing, I would like to bring up the idiom “giving something the whole nine yards,” the last four words of which is the title of a fine Bruce Willis and Natasha Hensridge black comedy shown on cable every now and then. You would think that “the whole nine yards” is a measure of the cloth for a bride’s impossibly long wedding train, or simply making it to the finish line in an interscholastic race. Wrong. It precisely means giving “absolute maximum effort” when trying to win or achieve a goal. It is vintage World War II, when American B-17 aircraft guns exhausted their ammunition belts nine yards long to bring their enemy targets in Europe and elsewhere to their knees. (circa 2002-2003)
This essay first appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times circa 2002-2003 and subsequently appeared in Jose Carillo’s book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today’s Global Language. Copyright © 2004 by Jose A. Carillo. Copyright © 2008 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved.
By Jose A. Carillo
My wife Leonor was out doing the groceries when I put the finishing touches to “Lost in Translation” and e-mailed it to the newspaper running my columns. When she came back and had laid down her foodstuffs and goodies, she casually picked up the printed manuscript on the computer table and started reading. “This is charming,” she said. “You use the phrase ‘salad days’ to describe yourself when you talk about Jacques Prévert talking about pâte foie de gras. And I think you explained pâte foie de gras quite well. But are you sure your readers will understand ‘salad days’? For all you know, some of them might think you were a rich kid eating nothing but salad and caviar in those days, which I know you were not.”
Oh, I said, I’m sure they would know what I mean by “salad days.” That’s an allusion to my youthful, inexperienced times, which I actually look back on with great fondness. I’ve used that phrase often since, well, my salad days, and I know that a lot of other writers have used it themselves in their memoirs and in their newspaper features. But Leonor pointedly said: “That’s right, but are you sure they knew exactly what they were talking about when they used it and how they got to using it in the first place?”
In my case I said “Yes,” but for the others—? Her question intrigued me. It gave me the idea to write precisely this chapter you are reading now. There must be some value in talking about the English idioms and figures of speech that modern writers have not tired of using again and again. And what a better way to start the effort by tracing their genealogy, beginning with “salad days” with which I was already familiar.
For those who just happen not to know it yet, one of the earliest written works that used the phrase “salad days” was William Shakespeare’s play Anthony and Cleopatra. That was in the year 1606 when the Stratford tanner’s son was about 43 years old, no longer a tyro in dramatics himself. He used the idiom in that scene where Cleopatra was ruing past mistakes and miscalculations in her personal affairs: “My salad days, when I was green in judgement, cold in blood, to say as I said then.”
With that remark, many Shakespeare lovers have paid tribute to the Bard by using “salad days” to mean rank inexperience and cupidity (this last word, by the way, despite the allusion to the winged god of love, does not mean “lovestruck” but, in this context, “a very hearty appetite”). And as far as I know, at least one modern-day writer got his inspiration from another phrase in that one-line lament. The novelist Truman Capote, writing about the final days of the two doomed young killers of a Kansas family in 1959, entitled his classic non-fiction novel In Cold Blood. It is, I am almost sure, a quiet but powerful allusion to Shakespeare in 1606 talking in Cleopatra’s voice.
There is another English figure of speech that had fascinated me since my salad days, but I was always so in a hurry to ever bother looking it up. It is the intriguing idiom “woman of straw.” My first encounter with it was in the 1964 film Woman of Straw, which starred a much more voluptuous Gina Lollobrigida than today and what was then a still amateurish but handsomer Sean Connery. The movie blurb said “It’s so easy to set fire to a woman of straw,” and I took the idiom at face value: it must somehow mean a female scarecrow that you put in a ricefield to drive away the pesky birds, but that you can easily get rid of by setting aflame with a flick of a match. But the starstruck image of my salad days was totally wrong. Decades later, surfing the Web, I discovered something more elemental and profound and much deadlier about women and men of straw.
It turns out that in early England, certain poor men and women would loiter around the law courts offering themselves as false witnesses for a fee. To show to prospective litigants they were available, they would wear a piece of straw in one of their boots. They were people of no substance or capital, very much like the alert, bright-eyed palabuylaboy (loiterers) we can see even today around local police headquarters, waiting for a cue from a police sergeant who is not convinced that you have a strong enough witness or testimony to have a “fileable” or “winnable” case. They no longer mark themselves with straw on their shoes, though; now they often wear fake Hilfiger shirts and possibly genuine Nikés. But people like these were—and still are—the real “people of straw” of this world, not the overly pliant women and men who would fold and crumble at your gentlest touch.
And talking of figures of speech about court cheats and scalawags, I am reminded of the idiom “baker’s dozen.” I still use this idiom to test how good the English of applicants to my company is, and I am distressed to find that less than 30% are supplying the correct answers. How many items, indeed, are in a baker’s dozen? Are there 12 or 15 or double the ordinary dozen? No, not at all. It is the unlucky number 13. In old England, bakers were fined heavily for shortchanging customers with less than the correct weight of bread. To guard against being brought to court, which was such a bother, they began making it a point to add an extra loaf to every 12 they sold. That’s actually how the baker’s dozen came about.
Now, before closing, I would like to bring up the idiom “giving something the whole nine yards,” the last four words of which is the title of a fine Bruce Willis and Natasha Hensridge black comedy shown on cable every now and then. You would think that “the whole nine yards” is a measure of the cloth for a bride’s impossibly long wedding train, or simply making it to the finish line in an interscholastic race. Wrong. It precisely means giving “absolute maximum effort” when trying to win or achieve a goal. It is vintage World War II, when American B-17 aircraft guns exhausted their ammunition belts nine yards long to bring their enemy targets in Europe and elsewhere to their knees. (circa 2002-2003)
This essay first appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times circa 2002-2003 and subsequently appeared in Jose Carillo’s book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today’s Global Language. Copyright © 2004 by Jose A. Carillo. Copyright © 2008 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved.
Looking back to the past 15 years that I’ve been writing this column
As the year 2016 drew to a close, I looked back to see how many columns I’ve already written for The Manila Times since I started writing for its op-ed page in mid-2002. The running total for “English Plain and Simple,” which used to run Mondays to Fridays during the first two years and then weekly thereafter, was 1,023; add to that my “Silent Fire” columns, its Saturday reader-feedback companion piece during those first two years, and the figure goes up to more than 1,125 all told.
I honestly find it incredible that I have written that much material about English and its usage despite my initial misgivings that I wouldn’t be up to the task, having been only a campus journalist and college editor, very briefly a newspaper reporter, and for some 20 years a company editor and corporate communications executive. At the start I even used to wonder how I could keep it up with the meager formal instruction I had obtained in English, but over the years, I discovered that you could go a long way when you use your own life and love affair with English as raw material, distilling your learnings, experiences, successes, failures, and heartbreaks into 800-word and later 650-word lessons in expository or narrative prose. And so there it is: My regimen of writing the column for almost 15 years, to my own astonishment, also has produced three English-usage books: English Plain and Simple (2004), Give Your English the Winning Edge (2009), and The 10 Most Annoying English Grammar Errors (2008). Then it gave rise in 2011 to an interactive online English-usage site, Jose Carillo’s English Forum, that has since become a home and repository of my columns and my interactions with its target audiences. Looking back to the happy evolution and expansion of my columns into English-usage books and into an online forum, I thought of coming up with two more initiatives to further heighten the spirit, thrust, and goals of this effort to provide continuing lessons in English self-improvement. The first initiative is to give the Forum a more current, more interactive, and more convenient entry point. Through its reformatted and easily accessible Gateway to Great English on Facebook (tinyurl.com/j5j2ggq), the Forum now instantly provides running capsule introductions to its postings of English grammar critiques and general-interest readings, both current and old. This new interactive Facebook gateway keeps members updated 24/7 of new postings the very moment they are uploaded. The second is to pilot this January a special 2016 year-end offering—an online folio of six of what I consider my best personal essays of enduring significance, plus six intellectually stimulating general-interest readings featured in the Forum. The six personal essays exemplify the wide range of subjects and themes that I’ve written about in this column since 2002. (All interested readers can directly access this special year-end folio of my essays by clicking this link: http://josecarilloforum.com/YES/. Alternatively, registered Forum members can go to the Forum homepage as usual and look for the link to the folio.) The six personal essays featured in the folio are “Rediscovering John Galsworthy,” “How I Discovered Gabriel Garcia Marquez,” “Indignities in American Minor,” “The Roots of English,” “A World Without English,” and “The Evil That Ignorance and Incompetence Can Do.” The six general-interest readings are “A Recovered Ancient Manuscript Changes the Course of Human Thought,” “A Great Teacher Shares Her Secrets To Persuasive, Compelling Writing,” “Antedated by 230 Years, A Poem’s Noble Thoughts Get Placed in Jeopardy,” “A Father’s Letter to His Son’s Teacher,” “A Taste of Vintage Mencken,” and “The Real Wonder is That Humans Ever Discovered Science at All.” I’m confident that you’ll find all 12 essays in the special year-end folio not only very instructive about language and communication but very enjoyable as well. This essay appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in its January 7, 2017 issue, © 2017 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved. | |||
Conversations (1): DO KINGFISHERS EAT BUTTER?
Do Kingfishers Eat Butter?
By Jose A. Carillo “Dad, do kingfishers eat butter?” I thought my 12-year-old son was kidding me when he asked me this question sometime ago, but he wasn’t. As proof, he showed me the front-page newspaper item that had this curious passage: “The Silvery Kingfisher . . . thrives in aquatic habitats and eats fish, insects, butter and dragon flies, and small crabs.” [italics mine] “No, Jack,” I said, “The kingfisher couldn’t be that fastidious as a food connoisseur. A butter-eating kingfisher? No way! I think it’s simply a bad case of elision. What that statement really meant was that the kingfisher eats butterflies and dragonflies.”  “Mmmm . . . I think you’re right, Dad. I just wish the writers of this piece were more organized and careful with their English. You see, I was thinking that since butterflies and dragonflies are insects, and fish and crabs are both aquatic animals, that passage would read much better if written this way: ‘The Silvery Kingfisher. . . thrives in aquatic habitats and eats fish and small crabs as well as insects like butterflies and dragonflies.’ Everything would have been in its proper place.” “Right, Jack! That’s a neat organizing touch—putting together fish and small crabs in a single phrase, and putting together butterflies and dragonflies as the insects that they are. You’ve made the statement much clearer by grouping similar things together instead of the helter-skelter way they were presented in that passage. Now you should get going for your football practice.” “OK, Dad, but just one more question. You used a word that’s new to me—‘elision.’ What does it mean?” “In general, Jack, elision is the omission of one or more sounds from a word or phrase—maybe a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable—to produce a more easily pronounced or euphonic statement. In the kingfisher case, however, it was the omission for brevity’s sake of something presumed to be obvious. But the writer made a serious mistake. He or she thought that since the term ‘flies’ is common to the words ‘butterflies’ and ‘dragonflies,’ that term can be detached from each of them to stand as a generic word for both. This is a wrong and deadly case of elision. ‘Flies’ couldn’t be a generic term for ‘butterflies’ and ‘dragonflies.’ That word is an entirely different genus, or a class, kind, or group marked by common characteristics. ‘Butterflies’ and ‘dragonflies’ are generic on their own, with insect flight—not flies—as a common characteristic.” “I get it, Dad. But is elision always bad for language?” “Only if done badly as in that kingfisher passage. Elision actually works very well in informal conversations, as when people make contractions like ‘I’m’ for ‘I am’ and ‘shouldn’t’ for ‘should not,’ or in poetry, when it becomes necessary to omit or elide an unstressed vowel or syllable to achieve a uniform metrical pattern.” “I see. But does elision have any practical uses in day-to-day writing?” “Definitely, son! In written compositions, when things in an enumerative sequence are modified by the same compound adjective, it’s much better to elide or take out the common term in that compound adjective and use it only once at the end of the enumerative sequence. For instance, professional business writers will never be caught writing statements like this one: ‘The strawberry-flavored, apple-flavored, cherry-flavored, and mint-flavored drinks sold very well during the summer months.’ They would elide the common term ‘-flavored’ to produce this more concise, streamlined statement: ‘The strawberry-, apple-, cherry-, and mint-flavored drinks sold very well during the summer months.’ Keep in mind, though, that the intended effect of the hyphens is difficult to achieve when such statements are spoken, so elisions like this work well only in writing.” “Well, Dad, I guess I’ll just have to be very careful with elisions. I’d hate to end up writing about fastidious birds like that butter-eating kingfisher without really meaning to.” (circa 2003-2004) This essay in conversation form, which first appeared in my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2004 and subsequently formed Chapter 141 of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge, is part of a collection of my personal essays from 2003 to 2006. The Forum will be running one essay in conversation from a selection of my 2002-2016 essays every Wednesday starting January 11, 2017. | ||||
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