Re: THEORY: Natural language change (was Re: Charlie and I)

Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>=20
> alypius wrote:
>=20
> > >"Mom gave cookies to Charlie and me"
> > >
> > >becomes:
> > >
> > >"Mom gave cookies to Charlie and I"
I'm sure someone's already pointed this out... this is a classic case
of "hyper-correction."  One has heard that it's not correct to say
"Charlie and me went to the store," it should be "Charlie and I," ipso
facto it's not correct to say "Mom gave cookies to Charlie and me,"
it should be "Charlie and I."

> >
> > That's because our schools don't teach formal grammar anymore.  Stude=
nts
> > aren't taught that English prepositions take the accusative case.  He=
ck,
> > most students don't even know what an accusative case is.  In fact, I=
'll bet
> > some teachers don't even know!  ~alypius
This "confusion" has been around since Shakespeare's day and earlier;
not
even the eighteenth-century grammarians, who formally codified this
grammatical
rule, could change some trends.  In fact, that's why they made the rule,
because
there were case confusions of this sort.  They also prescribed "not
after so"
(which we don't pay any attention to anymore-- correct: "this apple is
not=20
so red as the other one"; incorrect: "this apple is not as red as the
other
one"), the differences between shall and will; proscribed double
negatives,
prescribed "I would prefer his writing beforehand" and proscribed "I
would
prefer him writing beforehand" (a "mistake" still made today), and
proscribed
the infamous split infinitive spoken about below.  Along with a host
of other things we consider to be "good" grammar.   All artificial, all
class motivated.  For instance: why is it "bad" grammar to split the
infinitive?
The infinitive with "to" is a modification of the REAL infinitive,
deriving
from the OE "inflected infinitive"-- _to habbanne_ "to have" instead of=20
the true infinitive_habban_, "have"?  We interpose modifiers between
auxiliary
and participle, why not between "to" and "infinitive"?  I think this
issue
has been argued ad nauseum on this list, though.
 =20
>=20
> But the history of language academies and mass education and
> other such forms of formal socialization have had a horrible
> trackrecord when it comes to getting people to use the forms
> they insist are correct.  L'Academie Francaise certainly hasn't prevent=
ed
> many French people from borrowing English words like "weekend"
> or "teeshirt", nor has there *ever* been a strong tendency even
> among hyperliterate English speakers to not split any ol' infinitive
> they want to [ :) ].  Indeed, I'd say it's much the opposite:  that lan=
guage
> changes on its own, from the ground up, and formal grammars are
> for the most part encapsulations of one person's or group's own,
> often arbitrary, decisions about what language should be like (much
> of English prescriptive grammar).
Exactly.  The Royal Academy had long been trying to "ascertain" the=20
English language; Jonathan Swift tried to make it certain, petrified,
unchanging, and was laughed at for his efforts.  But the Grammarians
came close.
=20
> The fact that more and more people are accepting such constructions
> as "Me and John went to the store" is indicative that something
> more fundamental is going on at the level of syntax and morphology,
> that it's not just a lack of education.  A point in case: generations o=
f
> people have been told to say "whom" as an objective relative pronoun,
> and yet its use has been in sharp decline at the same time as there
> has been a general increase in the availability of education to the
> common man.  I'd say that the decline in the instruction of formal
> grammar* is a result of, not a cause of, the general feeling that these
> changes are in many cases already so extensive that to counter them
> would require near-fascist tactics with respect to language (a la
> Atat=FCrk earlier this century), which most people would consider
> unacceptable, as government policies go.
"Good" grammar is a touchy, volatile subject these days.  Tell me about
it; I'm teaching History of the English Language right now.  "Who/whom";
that's fairly easy to understand.  It's "whomever" that interests me.
I think that's another example of hypercorrection!  "To Whomever it
concerns."
According to all my good rules of grammar way back when, "whoever" was a
construction that could function as both nominative and
accusative/dative.
"To whoever it concerns."  For those of you who've learned "whomever" in
non-nominative positions, which I think is more recent, that must sound=20
barbarous.  But "whomever" sounds terrible to me.=20

And sigh as I will, I think the "lie/lay" distinction is going to be
snuffed out within my lifetime.
=20
> * (and, as Nik has already clarified, it's a good question how much
> in decline it really is. =20
It's not a matter of decline, because non-standard English has always
been
at the very center of rules about standard English. =20

> Certainly my experience in the public education
> system was not without a good and more or less steady dose of formal
> prescriptive grammar.)
Me too.  But we're a minority.  I guess I'm back!  Teonaht has had to be
put on hold.  How is everybody? <G>  How is Matt liking his semester in
Wisconsin?  <G>
sally

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SALLY CAVES
scaves@frontiernet.net
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves (bragpage)
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html (T. homepage)
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/contents.html (all else)
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Niffodyr tweluenrem lis teuim an.
"The gods have retractible claws."
                                from _The Gospel of Bastet_
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