I overstated the claim. It would have been more accurate to say that
prescriptivism tends to make arbitrary category judgments about
particularly words, like, in this case, "before". One still
occasionally hears that "impact" is a noun and cannot be used as a verb
or that "hopefully" does not belong with "actually, sincerely, most
assuredly, etc." as a sentence adverb but can only modify the verb.
Herb
Could you point the list toward a prescriptive grammarian who makes the
claim that words cannot be used as more than one part of speech? That
strikes me as a genuinely wacky claim, and I'm not familiar with any
source that makes it. (Webster and Warriner, of course, do not.)
Kathryn
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stahlke, Herbert F.W.
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 11:04 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: using "before"
I'm not one of those linguists who dismisses prescriptive grammar out of
hand, but prescriptive grammar suffers from a number of problems. One
of these is its tendency to make absolute statements, statements
permitting no exceptions, and by that it dismisses the influences of
usage. Many of the cases where Fowler, for example, takes issue with
prescriptive judgments are cases where good usage by good writers has
been accepted even though it violates some prescriptive dictum. A
second problem is its general inability to acknowledge that a word can
belong to more than one category. It obviously allows this with "claim
(v/n)", but with function words like "before" it has difficulty. The
fact is that in Modern English, as the Oxford English Dictionary
attests, it can be an adverb, a preposition, or a conjunction.
Adverb: I wouldn't have done this before, but I can now.
Preposition: Don't snack before dinner.
We place these documents before the court.
Before moving to Indiana, we lived in Georgia.
Conjunction: Before we moved to Indiana, we lived in Georgia.
As a preposition, "before" will, of course, be followed by a pronoun in
the objective case.
In other words, "before" is all of the above, not just one thing.
Herb
Subject: Re: using "before"
Nancy,
I think our ears tell it all, and I love your new examples. All we
have to do is imagine Angelou's title changed to "Let's thank those who
came before we did" to see how weak this version would be, logically
correct or not. I'm not sure I know why "before us" sounds so much
better, but it does. Being the more natural choice (as Kathryn points
out, people rarely "honor the rule" when first person pronouns are
concerned), perhaps it draws less attention, allowing the emphasis to be
on "those" we are trying to thank and not "us/we" or "did". "Did" here
just seems like an empty place holder. Rules other than logic take
over.
Craig
Nancy Tuten wrote:
> Thanks, Kathryn, for taking time to help me think through this issue.
> This is the kind of question that astute students often pose, too, so
> I think it is worth considering. You (and Warriner) have addressed the
> point I find most interesting in terms of teaching: whether other
> subordinating conjunctions besides "than" and "as" can have an
> elided/elliptical verb.
>
>
>
> But I'm still not convinced that "before" cannot be a preposition in
> such a construction. My colleague sent a follow-up e-mail adding these
> thoughts to our discussion of the sentence "The Smiths received their
> invitation before (us) (we [did])":
>
>
>
> Here's something else that I've found: President Clinton and Governor
> Joe Manchin III both used the phrase "those who came before us" in
> their inaugural addresses, and Maya Angelou used the title "Let's
> Thank Those Who Came before Us." Doesn't the preposition "before"
> have the same sense in those phrases as in the sentence we're
analyzing?
>
>
>
> Those examples call into question our assertion that the prepositional
> phrase "before us" is illogical in reference to time. The
> prescriptivist in me wants to say that even presidents and famous
> authors can make mistakes, but the descriptivist in me must admit that
> both constructions seem defensible.
>
>
>
> I'm surprised we haven't heard from anyone else on the issue.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Nancy
>
>
>
> Nancy L. Tuten, PhD
>
> Professor of English
>
> Director of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program
>
> Columbia College
>
> Columbia, South Carolina
>
> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>
> 803-786-3706
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rogers, Kathryn
(HRW-ATX)
> Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 11:34 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: using "before"
>
>
>
> Hi, Nancy,
>
>
>
> Per Warriner's grammar and the part-of-speech labels for "before" in
> Webster's New World Dictionary, your analysis is correct. It is an
> incomplete construction with an elided verb (as you say, "before us"
> would be illogical as a prepositional phrase because "us" isn't really
> a time or an event in time). So, according to formal rules and logic,
> the correct pronoun is "we," though in common speech, people almost
> never honor the formal rule when first-person pronouns are involved.
>
>
>
> Warriner states that an incomplete construction occurs "most commonly"
> after the words _than_ and _as_, but does not rule out other
> subordinating conjunctions. It may be that the "rule" your colleague
> found about only "than" and "as" taking elided verbs is an attempt to
> remedy awkwardnesses like the one in the sentence in question. So it
> may be a style dictate rather than a rule of traditional grammar.
>
>
>
> At any rate, as a point of correctness, I would use "we," and as a
> point of style (at least), I would include "did" at the end of the
> sentence to avoid the awkwardness.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Kathryn
>
>
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nancy Tuten
> Sent: Monday, January 02, 2006 6:39 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: using "before"
>
>
>
> Happy New Year, listers.
>
>
>
> A retired colleague and friend called and asked me to weigh in on the
> following grammar question, which someone had posed to him:
>
>
>
> In the following sentence, is "before" a preposition, in which case
> the pronoun should be in the objective case?
>
>
>
> "The Smiths received their invitation before us."
>
>
>
> Or, is "before" a subordinating conjunction launching a clause with an
> elliptical verb, in which case the pronoun should be in the nominative
> case?
>
>
>
> "The Smiths received their invitation before we [did]."
>
>
>
> My first response was to vote for the latter choice, even though I
> cannot imagine ever using "we" in that sentence without also
> saying/writing the verb. Unlike the second clause of the sentence "She
> is three inches taller than I," the clause starting with "before"
> sounds really wrong without the verb plainly in sight (or earshot). We
> concluded that it probably sounds wrong precisely because "before" can
> be a preposition or a subordinator, whereas "than" can serve only in
> the latter role.
>
>
>
> We debated whether we could really say, though, that one choice was
> right and one wrong--or even that one choice was better than the
other.
>
>
>
> We also considered the notion that "before," when used as a
> preposition, isn't really logical in front of an object referring to
> people because it is not logical to speak of time ("sooner than") in
> relation to people. That is, "before noon," "before Tuesday," and
> "before next week" all make sense because those objects are all time
> designations. But is it logical to refer to time by saying "before
> [person/people]"? (Of course, we can use "before" to mean "in front
> of," but that is a different sense completely: "She gave the speech
> before a crowd of six thousand.")
>
>
>
> The next day, my colleague called back to tell me that he did some Web
> surfing and discovered a number of pages arguing that only "than" and
> "as" can have an elliptical verb. Is that so? I know that we use those
> two to point out a common pronoun error associated with their use, but
> are they the only two?
>
>
>
> I suppose that a little creative avoidance is in order here! Either of
> these sentences would avoid the problem:
>
>
>
> "The Smiths received their invitation sooner than we did."
>
> "The Smiths received their invitation before we did."
>
>
>
> I told him that I knew JUST the place to go with this issue, and I
> will forward your insights to him!
>
>
>
> Thanks for your thoughts,
>
>
>
> Nancy
>
>
>
> Nancy L. Tuten, PhD
>
> Professor of English
>
> Director of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program
>
> Columbia College
>
> Columbia, South Carolina
>
> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>
> 803-786-3706
>
>
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select
> "Join or leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this
> LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or
> leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this
> LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or
> leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
|
