Song title: Love LIFT/LIFTS us up where we belong

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 2:34 pm

Stephen Jones wrote:Deletion-feletion! It's an imperative, as is the original example.

So I'm not as stupid as I thought?

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 12:15 pm

Surely, if it was an imperative, there would be a comma:

Love, lift us up where we belong.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 1:36 pm

While I wouldn't expect flawless punctuation from a song lyric I don't see it as an imperative as that would be an instruction; figurative or poetic language notwithstanding, how is one supposed to give an order to an emotion?

Surely it's the same construction as God bless America or Long live the King i.e. a subjunctive. It's used here as we're not saying it's necessarily a fact that God blesses America, the King lives a long time or, indeed, that love lifts us up where we belong (though it might be true nonetheless), simply that the speaker wishes it to happen. Ordering gods to bless your country or kings to live a long time might be considered rather presumptuous.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:56 pm

It's an invocation. Does it matter if we class an invocation as an imperative or a subjunctive?

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 5:32 pm

It's just that when I hear the word "imperative" I (and my students) think "instruction/order", so I think it's safer to keep the term for phrases like "shut up, sit down, open your books and stop looking out of the window."

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 6:17 pm

Sorry, I was looking out of the window - but I wasn't talking, honest, Sir/Miss!

I think this illustrates rather nicely the futility of a mania for exact classification/categorization/"naming". Informal labels might be necessary for a writer organizing examples within a prospective grammar or syllabus, simply to keep track of things or aid "provisional" thinking, but in the end we just have a string of words that we will most likely classify functionally. That functional label could be "invocation" or "ordering", or even something as general "Songs" or "Strange lyrics in need of a rewrite for everybody's sake" (could the absence of the -s be a quirk of Ccockker's singing and"personality"?).

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 6:22 pm

I think a comparison between two similar forms might be helpful here.

I expect everyone will agree that, "God save the Queen," is a a present subjunctive.

This is because as was said before, people of a religious persuasion would feel it presumptious to give God an instruction. Atheists might just think it's silly to address a non-existant being, but that's by the way.

Compare this to a fullback shouting to a goalkeeper, "Peter! Save the ball!"

"Peter!" is only used to get the goalkeeper's attention. "Save the ball!" is an imperative, an instruction to save the ball.

"Love lift us up where we belong" belongs to the first category, the present subjunctive. Clearly, "love" here is the emotion. You might want to compare this to, "Love, get us a cup of tea, would you," which is an imperative, an instruction being given to a person who is addressed as "Love".

I might not have made this clear before, but nobody is going to ask someone else to "lift them up where they belong" in the same way as they might ask them to get them a cup of tea. To do so would be just plain daft.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 6:39 pm

Andrew Patterson wrote:"Love lift us up where we belong" belongs to the first category, the present subjunctive. Clearly, "love" here is the emotion. You might want to compare this to, "Love, get us a cup of tea, would you," which is an imperative, an instruction being given to a person who is addressed as "Love".

I might not have made this clear before, but nobody is going to ask someone else to "lift them up where they belong" in the same way as they might ask them to get them a cup of tea. To do so would be just plain daft.

That's kind of like what I said (but a lot clearer, thanks!) at the beginning (although I wanted to make it a more general statement with -s, and therefore failed to concentrate on the possibility of it being a subjunctive...or should that be an "invocative", still? (A special subclass of the subjunctive?)):

I wrote:I recall the 's' being kind of hard to hear, but yes, 'lifts' makes a whole lot more sense than 'lift' ("we're" most likely talking about love's effect, rather than '?asking love to lift us up where we belong' - imperative).

I wonder what cft is making of all this...probably looking like this:

.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 8:38 pm

I wrote elsewhere recently that I'd consider changing 'Don't blame me if I'm fat' to 'Don't blame for being fat' - not that I'd have my reservations about altering and not "trusting the text" (this is where Sinclair's and similar ideas maybe have to give a little though, if the form is more marginal/not as frequent, and would consequently distract from or somewhat "displace" the more frequent functions of a form. I'd take a chance that the student would never meet 'Don't blame me if I'm fat', and leave it to them to "have fun" if they ever did

).

In this case, though, I think there can be less doubt about altering the text to make it make more sense generally - which is why I fancied 'Love lifts us up where we belong'. Problem solved.

Song lyrics are often rubbish to start with, then singers change what was written in the course of the "definitive" recorded performance, and who knows who actually decides what the title of the track should be (do they refer to the original lyrics, listen to the recording and rewrite the lyrics, what?).

What do you guys think about this kind of "reformulating"? I'm of the opinion that not enough of it goes on - even textbooks, which really cannot be viewed usually as being authentic and thus abstractly "valuable" text (versus textS - category: ELT coursebooks) in any real sense, are taught as if gospel; we often hear, 'I simply teach what's in the book, anything for an easy life', with the result that the students solemnly memorize reams of banal and often more-difficult-than-it-needs-to-be drivel, hard to apply 100% appropriately outside of the textbook's often "slightly" warped, weird world.

I believe reformulation makes life easier for everybody - it's not like our students are all going to go on to become exacting translators of sappy 80s movie songs.

The resulting form>meaning-use=function would seem easier for students to immediately use and "authenticate" for themselves. They could "be heroes" like Christian in Moulin Rouge: 'Love is like oxygen. Love is a many-splendored thing. Love lifts* us up where we belong. All you need is love...' (begins "singing").

I know this thread wasn't originally about teaching at all, but I just find it interesting to ponder that, whilst our job is "basically" to enable our students to understand pretty much whatever language they may generally encounter, we obviously cannot present every text-type and phrasing that has ever been produced, and many of those text types remain problematic if not unfathomable even for native speakers, as this thread proves (no offense to anyone who feels they have it all fathomed, thank you very much, you *fluffing* fluffyhamster!

).

*I just checked my DVD, and that is indeed what Ewan McGregor says (or rather, exclaims). Subtle (subconscious?) processes seem to have been at work in that screenplay's writers' minds also...

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 3:34 am

Andrew Patterson wrote:Compare this to a fullback shouting to a goalkeeper, "Peter! Save the ball!"

"Peter!" is only used to get the goalkeeper's attention. "Save the ball!" is an imperative, an instruction to save the ball.

I reckon by the time you shouted (and distracted) 'Peter!', the ball would've already gone into the net. But hopefully Peter would be a good enough goalie to keep his eye on the ball and not get distracted by people shouting tips from the sidelines.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 3:45 am

Andrew Patterson wrote:I expect everyone will agree that, "God save the Queen," is a a present subjunctive.

This is because as was said before, people of a religious persuasion would feel it presumptious to give God an instruction. Atheists might just think it's silly to address a non-existant being, but that's by the way.

Hmm, interesting. If believers don't want to be seen as commanding God, 'God saves the Queen!' would seem better (in context it could hardly be misinterpreted as a newspaper headline being spoken), but non-believers might object to saying that rather than 'God save the Queen' (a non-fact linguistically speaking, regardless of whether you view it as an imperative or a subjunctive); that is, I'm just wondering if the reasons for the form are religious or secular. I guess it is simply "traditional", and that the religious explanation you're offering is more somebody's afterthought or theory , Andy?

I must admit, it's not something I've really ever thought about beyond knowing it is often given as an example of the subjunctive form in grammars (which say little if anything really about its perceived as opposed to "obvious" - state(ly) - function), so I'm just wondering where you got you information from, that's all.

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 4:19 pm

Fluffyhamster wrote:

If believers don't want to be seen as commanding God, 'God saves the Queen!' would seem better (in context it could hardly be misinterpreted as a newspaper headline being spoken), but non-believers might object to saying that rather than 'God save the Queen' (a non-fact linguistically speaking, regardless of whether you view it as an imperative or a subjunctive); that is, I'm just wondering if the reasons for the form are religious or secular. I guess it is simply "traditional", and that the religious explanation you're offering is more somebody's afterthought or theory , Andy?

I think this might be a chicken and egg situation. From the dark ages until about the 18th centuary, just about everything was so wrapped up with religion as to be inseperable from it. The now fossilised forms of the present subjunctive with religious overtones presumably formed during this period. Secularism as such did not exist. Therefore it would be natural that any traditions that existed would have religious overtones.

Alternatively or perhaps additionally, there are certain forms of the present subjunctive that need a religious context to make sense. For instance person A wants to rebuke person B for something that they have done. A might exclaim, "God forgive you!" Now there is no point in A doing the forgiving because then it wouldn't be a rebuke. It is then an indirect way of telling B that they have sinned. Only God can determine what a sin is, or forgive it. Linguistically, this is true whether God actually exists or has to be invented for the sentence to make sense. In many ways this might indicate the interface between language and religion both of which I would contend are belief systems of a sort.

Most Fossilised subjunctive forms with religious overtones are also exclaimations. Other examples would include:
God/Heaven help us!
Devil take the high road!
God/Heaven forbid!
(God) bless you!

The last one is interesting because it remains a subjunctive even without the subject. The assumed subject in an imperative is "you" but the person is not being asked to bless themselves. In a manner that is similar to the forgiveness of sins, a real or invented God has to be invoked to do the blessing for this statement to make sense.

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 11:02 pm

...so I'm just wondering where you got you information from, that's all.

Apart from knowing it intuitively, it is reiterated in the Orlapubs links that I posted earlier.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sun Mar 06, 2005 1:32 am

'Bless you' is interesting...I guess people who want to say 'God forgive you' (=because I can't and won't, so heinous is your crime) are pretty much confined to apocalyptic (and not necessarily religious) Hollywood dramas, and that in real ife we are probably now more inclined to just say something like 'You %#$*@!!!'.

I'll take a look at the Orlapubs link now, I somehow missed or forgot it before.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sun Mar 06, 2005 5:05 am

Ah, Orlapubs, the site that JTT also posted about (a while ago now). Hmm this C-J N. Bailey guy is obviously intelligent, and there is doubtless some useful stuff to be had somewhere in his writings, but I for one feel like he is talking down to me and not doing much (if anything) to make his points clearer (if he indeed has a point beyond proving how clever he is). I feel he was lucky to get a book published by OUP (OUP USA, that is), note only the one, back in 1992. I might see how often he's cited (Google Scholar)...

For example, he solemnly says, 'One should not confuse "If she was there yesterday" with "If she'd been there yesterday" ' (from http://www.orlapubs.com/AL/L26.html ), as if anyone would confuse these sorts of 'contrasting hypothesis clauses' (from http://www.orlapubs.com/AL/L3.html ) with regard to only the latter being UNREAL only (the former will be shown to be true or not depending on the context e.g. we could ask a friend if they'd seen her there: If she was there yesterday she (would/must/might have/probably) met X, let's ask him...).

Generally, I find his praise of Chomsky worrying, one can be committed to a "cognitive" approach to grammar and language teaching without being a Chomsky-worshipper (that's probably why that whole movement called "Cognitive Linguistics" - as Taylor says, 'with a big C' - developed).