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johnslat
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
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 Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 7:36 pm Post subject: |
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Dear Isla Guapa,
But no man (or woman) is an island, beautiful or not. 
(And, of course, just as no man is an island, so, too, Oman is no island.)
Regards,
John |
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Sashadroogie
Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise
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| Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 8:01 pm Post subject: |
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| What's that John? Onan is an island? |
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johnslat
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
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| Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 8:08 pm Post subject: |
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Dear Sasha,
Nope, Onan is an "ism" (and one that may have more adherents than any other "ism" in the known universe - including Communism)
Regards,
John |
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Sashadroogie
Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise
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johnslat
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
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Isla Guapa
Joined: 19 Apr 2010
Posts: 1520
Location: Mexico City o sea La Gran Manzana Mexicana
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| Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 8:38 pm Post subject: |
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| johnslat wrote: |
Dear Isla Guapa,
But no man (or woman) is an island, beautiful or not.
(And, of course, just as no man is an island, so, too, Oman is no island.)
Regards,
John |
Great play on words, John.  Now, getting back to my main concern, the possibility of men and women being islands. In my case, it's all in the name, my name, my last name, to be exact, since in a language other than Spanish or English, it means island. So there you have it. I may not be a rock, but I am indeed an island! |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 1:29 am Post subject: |
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OK, so me and the_thinker/the_thinker and I (LGSWE has usage roughly split between the two in informal conversation at least  ) are willing to accept that "most people" won't flinch at (the relative formality of) 'My friends and I�', but surely the point of the whole thread is that there are a few too many people (though hopefully only a small minority) who flinch, completely unnecessarily IMHO, at the likes of 'Me and my friends�' simply because they don�t understand that Standard English can be informal as well as formal. (Huddleston and Pullum, in both their full-size CGEL and their A Student's Introduction to English Grammar spin-off, are perhaps the clearest and most insistent recent advocates of this very important point, but the_thinker sort of covered this in so many words already with his: "I think some of you are also somewhat overestimating the teaching implications of all this. I'm not suggesting we teach all forms in every dialect of English. I'm saying we shouldn't tell students a certain form is incorrect if it is a form that is used by native speakers very frequently. I want to teach English as it is actually used � that means teaching forms that are appropriate in formal contexts, but also those that are appropriate in informal contexts. This doesn't mean you have to teach slang used by minority groups � but it does mean teaching forms that are used � and accepted � in informal contexts, even if those might be best avoided in formal contexts.").
| AGoodStory wrote: |
| the_thinker wrote: |
"But I teach both 'My friends and I', and 'Me and my friends ...', pointing out the important register difference. It's considered incorrect only in certain contexts; in an informal email or conversation, it would go totally unnoticed by the majority of interlocutors/readers. In formal writing, you'd want to avoid it."
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You might want to gather more info about this "majority," and whether the above statement is, in fact, true. Shrugged off, yes; accepted, perhaps; but "unnoticed"--not around here. You are putting your students in a potentially difficult situation, in which, through no fault of their own, they sound poorly educated, and are forced to try to understand nuances of situations they might very easily misread. The kids on the street are not going to laugh if they hear, "My friends and I are going to a movie." But your student might lose a chance at job when he says "Me and my friends like to. . . " or "If I was you. . " (Or perhaps they will very reasonably extrapolate to "If me was you. . .") Your students are bombarded by variables and possible choices every time they open their mouth to speak English. Do them a favor, and eliminate a few for them. (Variables, not students!)  |
But there is no better test of items being "unnoticed" than in their spontaneous (i.e. unconscious) use by speakers and writers (and the LGSWE presents just such facts); the (single, individual?) listener's or reader's reaction, whilst "important" in its way (to certain people at least), is purely and can be no more than an afterthought, a possibly "contrary" and dissenting voice, and linguists such as Labov have quite clearly established that there isn't much if any real rhyme, reason or consistency to people's approval or disapproval, and use or claimed/supposed non-use, of any one form (see for example the quote on pages 3-4 of Sampson's Empirical Linguistics, in which a builder who had judged John is smoking a lot anymore [which showed a feature of a dialect] as ungrammatical was heard two weeks later saying Do you know what's a lousy show anymore? Johnny Carson [and if people can be mistaken about their "non-use" of such "stand-out" items, just think of how much more mistaken - hypocritical? - they could be about much more "easy-to-miss" items like 'me and my friends']: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zVm3tWDf-34C&dq=sampson+empirical&source=gbs_navlinks_s ).
| (Then) johnslat wrote: |
| And I'm as against "nonsense rules" such as the "never end a sentence with a preposition" and "never split an infinitive", (Does anyone really still teach that sort of thing?) But I'm afraid I can't go along with some examples you mentioned. |
I�m not sure if the following pickle of a puzzle ultimately stems from the injunction to never end a sentence with a preposition, but it is certainly indicative of what can happen (albeit due to the designs of Japanese writers of English grammars) when students are fed a rather too limited if not "complicated" (unnecessarily ~ ) range of exemplars - sooner or later some errant "outlawed" usage always makes an escape and/or an unwelcome appearance, and potentially tough questions are then asked, indeed unavoidable (such was the "demand" for "law and order"):
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=3332
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| Would you be willing to name a few (not a little) "respected linguists" who posit that it's OK to disregard the "count/non-count" rules, or, for that matter, who regard "Me and my friends________" sentences as acceptable? |
Regarding who are "respected" linguists, IMHO Biber and Leech are quite a way above Carter. I mean, whilst I respect the work that Carter & McCarthy have done with the CANCODE project, and would recommend their work to anyone, they don't always make strong enough arguments for the functional import of some of their chosen items, particularly their 'tails' (if interested, try a search on the Teacher Discussion Applied Linguistic forum for a start). As for countability versus uncountability, probably anyone who's worked in lexicography (e.g. Sidney Landau) could tell you a thing or two about meaning shifts, but one thing completely off of the top of my head is Jackendoff's (pfnarr pfnarr) 'universal grinder' (Saeed�s Semantics has something on this) � I bet one could feed almost anything into that! And of course the dictionary itself is perhaps the greatest grinder of all, in that countable nouns are pretty much uncountable in their decontextualized citation/entry-word/lemma forms ('book', 'cup', 'pen' etc). But perhaps such "phenomena" are really quite unextraordinary 'special uses/processes' that everybody is already well aware of. (Like I say, that was only off the top of my head!).
Last edited by fluffyhamster on Sat Aug 21, 2010 3:23 am; edited 6 times in total |
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jpvanderwerf2001
Joined: 02 Oct 2003
Posts: 1117
Location: New York
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| Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 1:31 am Post subject: |
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| Sashadroogie wrote: |
| Seriously? Who are they? From down on the farm? |
I was kidding (though I am from down the farm!). |
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Sashadroogie
Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise
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| Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 8:36 am Post subject: |
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| Oh Jeff! You need to warn me when you are having a laugh... |
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artemisia
Joined: 04 Nov 2008
Posts: 875
Location: the world
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| Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 8:05 am Post subject: |
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Call me pedantic but I would always correct "Me and my friends" though I often say such expressions are used in colloquial language and students may hear them. I point out that native English speakers don't speak perfect English (and ask them about their languages - how often do they hear grammatical mistakes?). One common example that comes up is that people usually say (these days) "Who has left their bag here?'' instead of his / her. 'If I was you' seem to be becoming more and more acceptable and that throws me a bit. How much of a stickler should you be about the subjunctive and not conjugating verbs?
Generally, what I emphasize is that students must make a distinction between colloquial / slang expressions and what would be expected of them in an exam (IELTS etc.) or another formal context such as writing a university essay. |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 1:57 pm Post subject: |
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| artemisia wrote: |
| I point out that native English speakers don't speak perfect English |
There isn't a single person in the whole world who speaks any language "absolutely perfectly"; those who insist otherwise are ultimately con artists.
But obviously you yourself aren't insisting on much, because you go on to say:
| Quote: |
| Generally, what I emphasize is that students must make a distinction between colloquial / slang expressions and what would be expected of them in an exam (IELTS etc.) or another formal context such as writing a university essay. |
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artemisia
Joined: 04 Nov 2008
Posts: 875
Location: the world
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| Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2010 3:20 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| obviously you yourself aren't insisting on much |
No, the only thing I ever insist upon in this life is that my own (near) perfection and great modesty be fully acknowledged and get its due. Luckily as this is already evident, I don�t feel the need to shove this in people�s faces.  |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2010 12:24 pm Post subject: |
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| The only things I myself ever "insist on shoving in people's faces" are empirical descriptive facts (such as in the LGSWE), and they are of course free to take or leave those facts whichever way they wish. |
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johnslat
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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