Life and death and birthdays

[Duncan Powrie]

You may not have explicitly "disagreed/agreed with any opinion of the sentence", John, but your appeals to other "authorities" (the girl on another forum, and your lecturer) - authorities whom, I am simply imagining and trying to say, have probably not given the issue as much thought as Stephen or I on this very thread, not that they would necessarily be incapable - rather made me wonder if you were prepared to accept or discuss what me, or Stephen, and now, potentially, Larry (I was going to invoke his name like an incantation, but with this old devil, you don't even need to say his name and he appears!), all might have to say.

I know that I was too sarcastic and must've seemed very dismissive at first, but I can assure you now that whatever opinions I (or others) have has been formed by a wider consideration of the notions of "acceptability" than you might imagine. So, let's all calm down now, try not to read too much into each other's phrasing, and concentrate instead on the wider points that are or aren't being made.

For example, Stephen saying that his faliure to notice a mistake was instrumental in him losing a job once, concerns me greatly. I think it is ridiculous that so much can be at stake over one little word, and that a teacher has to be an infallible authority. We have all probably lost count of the number of times we have been asked to decide which of two perfectly acceptable sentences is acceptable, or to explain to a student a fine distinction of meaning/use=function, when what is ultimately needed is a bit more time, exploration and digging to uncover the truth (truths?). However, with the examples on this thread, there should be less doubt or indecision, if we have taken a wider look at "acceptability" and pondered the implications...

Larry is very good at discussing distinctions between tense, aspect and time, and has written a great deal on these matters in other, past threads. I hope he won't mind summarizing the main points again, in specific relation to the original sentences on this thread - I for one could do with a reminder (and a good read!).

Lastly, John, I will take a good long look at the definitions of "birthday" in my dictionaries and re-read this thread, just to satisfy myself that I haven't overlooked anything unfairly.

[john martin]

"I know that I was too sarcastic and must've seemed very dismissive at first, but I can assure you now that whatever opinions I (or others) have has been formed by a wider consideration of the notions of "acceptability" than you might imagine. So, let's all calm down now, try not to read too much into each other's phrasing, and concentrate instead on the wider points that are or aren't being made. "

That is the first point of issue. Your dismissive post was the first. Then you consider. My only reason to post the other opinions was to point out that they had responded in a manner that was addressing the issue without judgement of "obviousness" or not. They had an opinion, which was obviously not going to be expressed here, so I posted it.

I actually find the point really interesting. It is so far outside the realm of common usage, but with the definition of birthday, is it possible? THAT IS MY POINT. I had never seen that definition of birthday, or heard it in usage before. Probably much more of an academic point than one of interest to a student...but this forum should move far beyond what should be useful to a student..it used to be about people discussing possibilities, nuances and lots of stuff in between. To assure you; when I come here and ask for advice or consultation, I have already been through lots of thought processes, and I come here because it may be interesting, or at least fun ( given my warped sense of fun) to look at such stuff. So lets look again at the issues involved, far past the original "correctness" of the sentence.

[Stephen Jones]

Larry's point about the Present and Past Simple is that, despite their names, their usage is not confined to the present and past, but also is affected by the degree of closeness/remoteness (Lewis fanatics like Larry will even claim that the Present/Past dichotomy is merely a sub-system of this).

Thus the Present Simple is conventionally used in the telling of anecdotes where you want to stress the feeling of closeness to the happenings, and we will use the Past Simple for the Present when we want to establish a distance due to deference as in a hotel receptionist saying "What was your name again".

Thus I said that we are unlikely to say "My date of birth was" because we feel a closeness to our own date of birth, but we might use "was" for Shakespeare towards whose date of birth we do not have such a close emotional attachment.

Also, it is not at all clear that the sentence "My date of birth .......... 1989" is in the past at all. The theme of the sentence is "My date of birth/birthday" and there is no suggestion that it was one thing in the past and another now, and thus we would use the unmarked form for a universally valid statement.

The truth is that it is doubtful if what determines the choice of a particular form is a black or white decision. I am more and more coming to the conclusion that a method akin to the way that Bayesian software works is in operation. The decision centre weighs up vairous "tokens" of information and assigns a weight to each one, finally making the decison according to the accumulated score.

[Duncan Powrie]

Dear John

From what I can remember you said the student produced the sentence
My birthday is on ...1989 and a colleague wrongly suggested that the correct sentence should have been My birthday was on.....1989"

Your colleague is in fact advocating changing an unusual sentence to an even more unusual one, and his advice should be ignored. Whether you decide to correct the student's original sentence is a pedagogical decision and entirely up to you - I would probably told him to rephrase it as I was born on...., but I can see myself letting it pass.

I have been reading back through this thread carefully, and I can find no mention of a colleague of John's saying that using "was" would be wrong (or even that simply knocking off the year would result in an acceptable sentence), Stephen.

In fact, if you look at John's very first post, you will see that John has always seemed to prefer to not only keep the year, but also to actually use "was" (and all just to convey, using "birthday", the meaning of "date of birth")! Here it is, again, to save everyone clicking back pages:

Is this acceptable;

"My birthday is on the the 25th March 1989".

My problem is with the use of the "is". I feel is should be "was" as the definition of birthday, at least as far as I can find from the many sources I have checked, seems, in essence, to come down to the day of one's birth or the anniversary of ones birth. Given that putting a year would imply the actual date and year one was born, and so not the annual anniversary, can we use "Is"?

Of course, it is great that you are attending to the student's intended meaning rather than jumping on every little mistake with an immediate correction (you didn't say 'My problem is with the student's use of "is".'), but let's be clear about something, John. When you go on from this to say things like:

I decided to not to mark it wrong, but gave the much more common usages and said that they should be used instead. But I think there is a danger in just marking these things wrong when what we really mean is that they do not follow convention.

and:

And I still think you are missing the whole point. If we take the definition of birthday to be the "day of origin" as is one of the definitions in all of the dictionaries I have checked, can we use the sentence "My birthday was..."
"MY date of origin was ....". Direct substitution makes it seem possible.
All responses, provided they are not not aimed at belittling anyone of aggrandising the poster, gratefully received.

and more recent still:

I actually find the point really interesting. It is so far outside the realm of common usage, but with the definition of birthday, is it possible? THAT IS MY POINT. I had never seen that definition of birthday, or heard it in usage before. Probably much more of an academic point than one of interest to a student...but this forum should move far beyond what should be useful to a student..it used to be about people discussing possibilities, nuances and lots of stuff in between. To assure you; when I come here and ask for advice or consultation, I have already been through lots of thought processes, and I come here because it may be interesting, or at least fun ( given my warped sense of fun) to look at such stuff. So lets look again at the issues involved, far past the original "correctness" of the sentence.

are you suggesting that it is the student, or you yourself, who has such a good grasp of the meanings underlying the words of English (although, in the student's case, not the English itself) that the rest of us should seriously consider rethinking such basic concepts as "birthday" (in relation to the student's usage at least)? No, silly of me, of course you aren't suggesting either, and I am just jokingly suggesting it to develop my line of reasoning...just as I am now saying that Stephen and I have simply been arguing that the student is probably going to end up confused if we read more into their words (actually, and let's be clear about this, mistakes) than the student intentionally intended (!) and thereby almost encourage them to feel that "anything goes". Hence, as you have suggested, perhaps the issues of "correctness" can now be forgotten...

So, yes, somebody could well be willing to enter a debate with you about the meaning of words, but it would, as you say, be in danger of becoming purely academic (and there I was, right at the beginning, thinking you wanted practical answers! From where, and why oh why did I ever get that idea?! A-HA, this is an Applied Linguistics Forum, isn't it! ).

Anyway, you still want us to more consider the adequacy of (dictionary) definitions, and to what extent their meaning contrasts with actual usage ("understanding" of meaning evinced through use), rather than whether a student is or was correct or not in this single, particular instance. Hmm...any takers? I might enter that debate, provided we don't start saying that any "findings" should find their way into what students are actually taught to say (I guess the main outcome of the debate would be to discover which dictionaries have unsatisfactory definitions? That is maybe what I myself would concentrate on). I might however ultimately argue that many words do not need anything more than a translation equivalent and authentic examples in bilingual(ized) dictionaries, and could perhaps be omitted (at least, not need to include a definition) from native ones if they are, upon investigation and subsequent reflection, actually pretty clear meaning/use=function-wise (the only reasons to include anything other than their form/spelling in an "alphabetical listing" would be if such words have a particularly interesting etymology, extended/figurative meaning, idiom, grammatical controversy etc associated with them). (As I've said before, why are e.g. "dogs" the pet hate of lexicographers? Their number one bone of contention? Still, it is obviously useful practice for lexicographers to define the meanings and decide on the appropriate number of senses/entries for even the most "obvious" words, and I am not that interested in dictionaries of only "hard" words).

John, you must've at some time or other considered that dictionaries can be confusing, unrepresentative, dated or even plain "wrong" (to an individual user at least, even though another user might swear by them), despite their advantages overall. I doubt if any of them agree entirely in their treatment and presentation of meaning, even when they have the same facts at their disposal (one reason for this is avoiding plagiarism, another that more entries/text to wade through=more "clout" with the impressionable customer, but the main reason is that no two people will agree as to what something means exactly, and/or how many distinct senses a word should have, even if they ultimately both "understand" the word and can use it perfectly well).

Could be an interesting academic debate, then...

P.S. Interesting allusion to things Bayesian, Stephen!

[LarryLatham]

You're right, John, about the link not working. I'm sorry about that. It used to work fine, but apparently COBUILD has made some changes. You might try to get there through the Collins website which is:

http://www.collins.co.uk/books.aspx?group=140

I must admit I find this particular thread rather dreary, I'm afraid. It's not that I'm never up for fights (indeed, I often get into them), but somehow this one seems so... unnecessary.

Stephen has, as Stephen does, already decided what my point is regarding the distinction between time and tense, so I don't think I'll bother to get into that again here (despite the distortions in Stephen's retort). Well, maybe just one tiny observation in hopes of shedding a ray of light:

"My birthday is March 27th, 1986" is grammatically acceptable (i.e. "correct") because it is a simple statement of fact. It is, as Stephen alluded to but did not explain, "unmarked", since a speaker/writer would have no reason to mark it. It is fact...period! And that is exactly the purpose of Present Simple Tense. Time is not, directly, an issue here.

Larry Latham

BTW, Stephen, I rather dislike being labelled a "Lewis fanatic." That implies a religious zeal that I do not have. Not everything Michael Lewis says arrives to me in an echo from on high. But I do believe he has the English tense system "righter" than anyone else I have read. When I read his critics, including you, I find that they have invariably distorted his intents, and it is their own distortions which they find fault with.

[Duncan Powrie]

I must admit I find this particular thread rather dreary, I'm afraid. It's not that I'm never up for fights (indeed, I often get into them), but somehow this one seems so... unnecessary.

...

"My birthday is March 27th, 1986" is grammatically acceptable (i.e. "correct") because it is a simple statement of fact. It is, as Stephen alluded to but did not explain, "unmarked", since a speaker/writer would have no reason to mark it. It is fact...period! And that is exactly the purpose of Present Simple Tense. Time is not, directly, an issue here.

Yeah, it has dragged on a bit, and I feel a bit guilty for having "started" it!

I still can't resist saying, though, that the year really should be knocked off that "simple statement", unless you really do think the English language can scrap the concept of "date of birth is/was born on" entirely (I guess there isn't really much use for it outside of formal applications or procedures, or telephone conversations where they ask you those kind of questions and fill in the forms for you, and in any case, just the date plus year - without "My date of birth is...", and certainly not necessarily "birthday" - would do just fine as an answer).

Incidentally, the reply by the female poster on the "help" forum appears to contain an oddity to my ears:

Is it acceptable to say: "My birthday WAS the 21st of March
: 1985"

It is okay, but sounds a little strange. It is more usual to say "date of birth" when you say the day, month, AND YEAR when you were born.

My date of birth was the 21st of March 1985.
My birthday is the 21st of March.

I believe we would generally say:

(My DOB is) the 21st of March 1985. (ellipsis due to fact it is probably an answer)

I was born on the 21st of March 1985. (autobiography?!)

My birthday is/was on the 21st (of March). (for factors that might affect the exact form chosen, see my earlier posts).

This all links with what Stephen and Larry said immediately above, and has tied up a final loose end rather nicely.

'Nuff said.

[LarryLatham]

Of course, Duncan, you are right about the application that is most likely here. But you are putting yourself in the awkward position of telling somebody else what they should say. I think we are most often better off starting with what someone does say, and then figuring out what was meant by it. If a speaker feels the necessity, for whatever reason occurs to him, for adding the year on such a statement, then we, as listeners must deal with it. (I am assuming here, of course, that we judge the speaker as at least "competent" in basic use of the language). Native speakers, at least, wouldn't make a "mistake" here. If the year was left off, we could imagine why. If it was appended, we could try to imagine why he felt that necessary.

Larry Latham

[Duncan Powrie]

Well, Larry, if a native speaker says something odd, there are at least 3 things we can do:

1) Label it as an error, stick it in the "performance" bin (like Chomsky does with everything he doesn't like), and pretend it never existed. (Of course, it goes without saying that if it really is a very rare error only ever made, and then perhaps made only once or twice, by the dipsh*t concerned, then it won't be ultimately of much concern to linguists, although I suppose you could argue that they have a duty of sorts to record each and every anomaly that comes their way).

2) Prod HARD with a ten-foot barepole until either the example and/or the person who uttered it dies from the abuse and neglect (Bill Bryson RIP!).

3) Excitedly proclaim that a new form exists and study the hell out of it until you either go crazy trying to incorporate it into the system that is English (at least, as you yourself understand it), or you somehow successfully incorporate it into "your" system without going crazy (and even if you are successful in wrestling it into submission, there is however then still the teensy problem of getting everybody else to accept the new usage).

When it comes to students (which is what most of these posts are ultimately about, even after loads of native speakers have added their prescriptions to the vile concoction), it is much much harder to figure out what they are saying, and I don't think we can assume that these kind of basic mistakes are anything other than...well, mistakes! That is, regardless of what the student intended to say, if their choice of form implies a confusion on their part, and could potentially cause confusion or even just a raised eyebrow or the cross of a red pen in an "unfairly tough" assessment, they simply have to learn (or be taught!) a better and clearer way of expressing themselves even if we think we understand what they "meant". We could then leave the student to try especially the standard form out...I am sure they would notice their communication was going much more smoothly with the corrected form.

[Duncan Powrie]

BTW Larry, I'd like to know what's been so "dreary" about this thread. Haven't we touched upon at least a few pretty central issues along the way (rock-strewn and winding though it has been)?!

Be honest now, you were riveted every time you stopped by Dave's, and couldn't wait for the next cliffhanging installment!

[LarryLatham]

I guess it's the "rock strewn and winding" path that makes me feel it's been sort of dreary, Duncan. On the other hand, it may just be my own attitude of late. I find that my interest in these threads waxes and wanes to some degree, and I haven't had the energy to determine exactly why. I suppose we senior citizens must yield when we come up against our limitations. (Maybe my attention span is deteriorating!) At any rate, sometimes, when going through this thread, I found myself too impatient to read all the way through some of the posts...not those from any one poster in particular, but everyone's. I suppose I thought the original question that John posed could have been dealt with neatly and been done with, but it seems to go on and on and on. Now that's just my own view, mind you, and no one else should feel any need to agree. At my age, I'm permitted occasionally just to be crappy! No questions asked!

I do agree that you've summed things up pretty well there at the end.

Another point that I might like to make here, Duncan (and anyone else who may be listening) is that it seems to me that too often, people here and in many other places try to advance the view that there is a single, unassailable, defensible, language called English. Sometimes, people do not even realize they are encouraging this notion. But most of us also know that there really are many Englishes, and not just the ones that can be identified as British, or American, or Scottish, or Australian, etc. There also is the English of Larry Latham, which is rather different from the English of Duncan Powrie, which is turn differs from the English of Stephen Jones, and so on. There are many reasons for this, and some of them are so self-evident that it seems unnecessary for me to go into them here. If this point is accepted, then it becomes quite a lot more "difficult" to label something I say as "incorrect" or "wrong." Students, are, of course, a special case, but as they study and learn they get so they belong more and more to the group of people who have their own brand of English. When someone with basic competence says something, it seems sort of grotesque to pounce immediately upon it from the point-of-view of grammatical accuracy as if that were somehow separate and distinct from the meaningful intent of the speaker. We, even as teachers, ought, in my view, to first weigh the statement in terms of its communicative success: did I (and perhaps others listening) understand clearly what was meant? If so, there is either no error, or if so, it is immaterial to the purpose of language. If there is ambiguity, or inappropriateness, or if the intent cannot be grasped, then there is probably an error worth considering. Despite the likely objections of some "purists" who may be reading here, I don't really think picking nits is the proper business of English language teachers. At least, we ought to be somewhat discriminating about which nits we pick.

Larry Latham

[Duncan Powrie]

Sure, Larry, these threads can run away from themselves, and I'll be the first to admit that we might realize we may not actually be arguing over very much at all if we'd (I'd?!) stop typing for just a minute. But I for one have not been arguing over minor points of grammar or regional preferences (e.g. Did you see that movie yet? vs. Have you...?). I've just been trying to point out that the meanings of "birthday" vs. "date of birth" vs. "be born" are pretty clear, and that they all have a function to play in almost any variety of English that you might care to name. It is unfortunate, yes, that the lexical semantics of these words/phrases entail constrains as to what is "acceptable" grammatically, and I wouldn't shoot a student for making a minor mistake in the exact grammar or collocations. What I would be wary of though is getting into an academic debate over basic, almost indispensible meanings and their corresponding forms unless it was very clear that is was just academic, and I don't think it was clear at all in John's original post exactly what it was that he wanted.

I am reminded of something that I think it was Carter and McCarthy said regarding the reductionist and idiosyncratic paraphrase of Ogden's Basic English - something along the lines of: "...that if they were going to be taught Basic English, it should, in fact, actually be basic English." I think if we start compromizing on what are indisputable meanings of words (perhaps to make sense of and ultimately excuse errors), then we really will be actively encouraging rather than simply witnessing a Babelization of the language at least as far as the individual student's English is concerned (sounds a little apocalyptic, but I think you get the point). I know that all this is not what John has explicitly said or recommended, but it seemed implicitly to be there nontheless, and I felt compelled to at least try to see if that was indeed what he meant (and to be absolutely clear, it now appears that that is not what he was saying: he really does just want an academic debate with no strings attached).

[LarryLatham]

I do indeed get the point, Duncan, and note the intent. I wouldn't want anyone to misjudge my ideas here, and assume that I have no standards in basic English. I certainly do, and want to emphasize that "communicative success" means, for me, something which any regular user of English can comprehend clearly. I also realize that EFL teachers, as a group, are perhaps better than average (due to exposure) at deciphering the sometimes "tortured" English of our students. This is not what I have in mind as acceptable.

I also want to make it clear, Duncan, that my comments above were meant as generalization, and not to point at any particular thread or post.

Larry Latham

[Duncan Powrie]

Okay, Larry, thanks for that. I will do my best to call off the balaclava-wearing heavies that I arranged to come "visit" you.

[coffeedecafe]

in the case of the 18 year old person, who accepts the fact of his historical birth on march 27th, 1986 not on the basis of his own knowledge at the time, but upon hearsay evidence of his parents and others; that is his accepted present tense birthdate. since he has continued to live beyond that time, it is acceptable to state that his birth is past tense as his birthday was on that given date. as far as that being his point of origin, it was not. his parents celebrate with him the day they got to see him for the first time. they would have just as much right to privately celebrate the day of his conception. [so we may be older than we know]. if the year was left off, it would be just as clear to accept the word birthday as meaning the day of yearly celebration- which would be past tense if the reference was back, present if spoken on the day, and future tense if spoken as an invitation to an upcoming party or something. i do not think a phrase being stilted is wrong, or much oratory would be wrong. as long as we are attempting to assist people to be understood in a new language the best service we can offer is guidance to simple phrasing. this means my whole paragraph really should be rewritten. oh well.

[revel]

Hey all!

My birthday is, always has been, and even after my death, will be the 4th of July. Being a truth that can not be changed, being an ESL teacher who is constantly guiding his students from using the simple present to talk about things that should be expressed in some other combination of sounds (present continuous, for example), I say: "My birthday is the 4th of July". It falls into the truth, custom and habit function of the present simple.

I've just turned 45. Oh? When was your birthday? (It, that is, the celebration of the one that marked me as 45 years old, was) last Sunday. (It, with the same reference as the previous example, was) this past 4th of July. My birthday is next week. My birthday was last week. I was born the 4th of July (in which case, I'm talking about my birth and not when the day was).

Sorry, there, but CONTEXTMAN! has been whispering into my ear, saying "Don't take that sentence out of its universe, you'll only get in trouble with the resulting generalizations!" Thank you, CONTEXTMAN!

peace,
revel.