Edgar,
And what could be better than the last two lines of Stevens' "The Snow
Man"?
"And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is."
I also couldn't help myself in thinking of replacing Teddy Roosevelt's
famous "walk softly" statement with "tiptoe". "Tiptoe, but carry a big
stick." I don't mean that as a disparagement of the advice. It helps to
remember that, at some level, there are no synonyms.
Craig>
All,
> Herb is right. Here is one of my all-time favorite poems (by Wallace
> Stevens). Read it without thought of the verbs, just for its beauty.
>
> Debris of Life and Mind
>
> There is so little that is close and warm.
> It is as if we were never children.
>
> Sit in the room. It is true in the moonlight
> That it is as if we had never been young.
>
> We ought not to be awake. It is from this
> That a bright red woman will be rising
>
> And standing in violent gold, will brush her hair.
> She will speak thoughtfully the words of a line.
>
> She will think about them, not quite able to sing.
> Besides, when the sky is so blue, things sing themselves,
>
> Even for her, already for her. She will listen
> And feel that her color is a meditation.
>
> The most gay and yet not so gay as it was.
> Stay here. Speak of familiar things a while.
>
> Now look for the linking verbs: IS, IS, IS, WERE, IS, IS, BEEN, BE,
> IS, IS, IS, WAS.
> BTW, the remaining main verbs are sit, rising, brush, speak, think,
> sing, listen, feel, stay, speak. "Strong" verbs? And this poem is by
> no means unusual in the work of a poet who was once called "a mighty
> hunter of the word."
>
> Ed S
>
> On Apr 17, 2009, at 10:58 PM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F wrote:
>
>> Different types of verb fulfill different functions in discourse,
>> and, while linking verbs can get overused, just as passive voice
>> can, they exist in language because language needs them to
>> communicate effectively. I suspect coaching writers on how to use
>> linking verbs effectively would produce better writing—and writers—
>> than banning them.
>>
>> Herb
>>
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]
>> ] On Behalf Of Linda Comerford
>> Sent: 2009-04-17 19:05
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: An expert speaks? was ATEG Digest - 14 Apr 2009 to 15
>> Apr 2009 (#2009-86)
>>
>> Much to my dismay, I used to recommend using adjectives and adverbs
>> for more colorful writing--until I learned that the two most
>> powerful parts of speech are the subject and the verb. Now, I
>> emphasize using active versus linking verbs. When I used to teach
>> at our local university, one of the professors used to give his
>> students an assignment of writing a paragraph without any linking
>> verbs. Although the students struggled with it, they valued their
>> resulting learning from it. I'm now a true fan of active verbs!
>> (Ooops, I just noticed I used a contracted form of a linking verb in
>> my previous sentence.)
>>
>> Linda
>>
>>
>> Linda Comerford
>> Comerford Consulting
>> 317.786.6404
>> [log in to unmask]
>> [log in to unmask]
>> www.comerfordconsulting.com
>>
>>
>>
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]
>> ] On Behalf Of Paul E. Doniger
>> Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 6:44 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: An expert speaks? was ATEG Digest - 14 Apr 2009 to 15
>> Apr 2009 (#2009-86)
>> For the record, although I never analyzed this in any statistical or
>> methodical way, many of my (high school - honors level) students'
>> papers seem to run into trouble when they get carried away by
>> adjectives and adverbs (I'm talking about academic, not creative
>> writing here). I wonder if anyone else has any experience with this.
>>
>>
>> Paul D.
>>
>>
>> "If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an
>> improbable fiction" (_Twelfth Night_ 3.4.127-128).
>>
>>
>> From: Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 9:05:43 AM
>> Subject: Re: An expert speaks? was ATEG Digest - 14 Apr 2009 to 15
>> Apr 2009 (#2009-86)
>>
>> Bill, Scott,
>> If the corpus grammars tell it accurately, writing with nouns and
>> verbs is good advice for fiction (Biber found a negative correlation
>> for attributive adjectives), but not for journalism or academic
>> writing, which build lots of meaning into the noun phrases. Of
>> course, saying adjectives should be used sparingly is not the same
>> as saying they are unimportant. The lone adjective may be the most
>> important word in the sentence. But English teachers especially seem
>> to equate literacy with literature.
>> I thought Pullum was a bit arrogant in the review, a bit
>> disrespectful of the writing teacher's perspective. And it may very
>> well be that linguists are much to blame for not giving us a
>> discourse friendly grammar to work with. There's some good advice in
>> the little book, but enough problems to negate that out. I usually
>> tell students who own the book not to pay attention to anything but
>> the style sections.
>>
>> Craig
>> Spruiell, William C wrote:
>> > Scott:
>> >
>> > I've had similar students --- but the advice they need is more
>> along the
>> > lines of, "use specific nouns, not fluffy ones." The problem really
>> > isn't the adjectives and adverbs. And at least some of those
>> students
>> > aren't deliberately being verbose, or displaying signs of functional
>> > illiteracy (they probably know a fair number of highly specific
>> > nouns...but they're part of the students' passive vocabulary, rather
>> > than being part of the active pool that is deployed when writing).
>> > Instead, they've adopted a common strategy of marking out a
>> general area
>> > with the noun and then using modifiers to home in on a particular
>> spot
>> > in within it.
>> > In fact, it's the same thing professional writers do when they
>> come out
>> > with sentences such as "The fact that these results have been
>> observed
>> > indicates that the phenomenon is real." "Fact" is fluffy -- but
>> since I
>> > know the genre, I know when I can get away with using it (if that
>> > sentence bothers you, all I can say is that amazing numbers of
>> articles
>> > have been published with near-equivalents). Students pick up on that
>> > kind of practice, but they don't yet have enough exposure to
>> scientific
>> > genre to know which words can be used in particular cases without
>> coming
>> > across as "gauche."
>> >
>> > This simply highlights one of Pullum's points: One of S&W's major
>> > injunctions is that writers should be clear and concise, but they
>> wrote
>> > THEIR OWN RULE in a way that attacked a side effect of the actual
>> > problem rather than the problem itself, and implied there was
>> something
>> > wrong with entire classes of words that are only problematic when
>> > they're used as part of a compensation mechanism. It's as if I
>> watched
>> > someone using glue to connect two pieces of wood that should instead
>> > have been nailed together, and then proclaimed that glue is a bad
>> thing.
>> > I'd probably figure out my mistake once I saw people trying to nail
>> > wallpaper.
>> >
>> > Bill Spruiell
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> > [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott
>> > Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009 1:08 PM
>> > To: [log in to unmask]
>> > Subject: Re: An expert speaks? was ATEG Digest - 14 Apr 2009 to 15
>> Apr
>> > 2009 (#2009-86)
>> >
>> > Pulliam is the stupid one if he does not understand what The
>> Little Book
>> > means by "Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and
>> adverbs," they
>> > insist.
>> > (The motivation of this mysterious decree remains unclear to me.)
>> >
>> > Anyone who had ever graded English themes, especially descriptive
>> > writing,
>> > has been exposed to students who use plain verbs and generic
>> nouns, both
>> > of
>> > which are accompanied by a plethora of adverbs and adjectives
>> > respectively
>> > when more descriptive verbs and nouns would do a far better job with
>> > less
>> > effort. The only explanation that I can give for such students is
>> > either
>> > functional illiteracy or sheer laziness (many theme assignments
>> have--or
>> > used to have--a minimum number of words). The slovenly among them
>> use
>> > any
>> > gimmick to expand their impoverished thoughts and expression.
>> >
>> > I cannot believe that Professor Pulliam has taught English without
>> > having
>> > encountered such students: his extreme prejudice towards The
>> Little Book
>> > seems to have blinded him to the extent that he can only see vices
>> and
>> > never
>> > virtue. The Little Book has its faults; however, I would trust
>> Shrunk
>> > and
>> > White over a "grammarian" who has had too little contact with
>> writing to
>> > understand the motivation for the very sound advice:
>> >
>> > "Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and
>> adverbs." (The motivation of this decree is quite clear to me and
>> has been since
>> > Freshman English.)
>> >
>> > Scott Catledge
>> > Professor Emeritus
>> >
>> > During the "God is dead" fad of the 60's, I had a bumper sticker
>> that
>> > said,
>> > "My God is alive--sorry about yours."
>> >
>> > My understanding of the "motivation" is clear to me--sorry it's not
>> > clear
>> > to him. Perhaps he should teach a Freshman English course sometime.
>> >
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