Michael,
I *think* I encounter "aware + N" fairly often, but I still find it
awkward in most cases, so it may not just be a frequency effect. I
suspect it may be a guilt-by-association problem -- I usually encounter
it in "memospeak," and associate it with words like "impactful" and
"functionalities." Piers Anthony's usage only reinforces that for me,
but probably unfairly; I've disliked his writing for a very long time.
The prescriptive part of my brain keeps getting in the way of the
descriptive part.
Sincerely,
Bill Spruiell
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of R. Michael Medley (GLS)
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2009 12:30 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: more on attributive "aware"
I'd like to thank those of you who took the time to respond to my query
about the use of "aware" as an attributive adjective.
I have never in my career had a student who blew up in class and started
screaming at me until just the other day, and it was precipitated by a
discussion of whether "aware" was used attributively or predicatively.
Since I usually try to turn uncomfortable incidents like this into
educational opportunities, I did a little further research on "aware,"
including taking an informal poll from my colleagues and you. The
colleagues in my department at EMU voted 4-0 for answer B (meaning that
they consider phrases like "an aware person" as grammatically okay but
stylistically awkward). From both on- and off-list responses from ATEG
participants, I got a similar consensus.
What I was trying to do in posing this question was to find some
correlation between your intuitions and corpus data on the use of
"aware"
to which we all have ready access. I am learning to use Mark Davies'
Corpus of Contemporary American English www.americancorpus.org (though I
still know only rudimentary search codes). Here are the results from
Davies' 385 million word corpus:
Total occurrences of "aware" in the corpus: 24,619
Odds of "aware" being followed by "of" = 66/100
Odds of "aware" being preceded by a linking verb = 47/100
Odds of "aware" being followed by a noun = >1/100 (0.06%)
Upon closer examination of the data, you also begin to find that not all
instances of "aware + N" mean "aware" is being used attributively
because
the search also turns up items like this: "a teacher might be very
surprised to know how aware students are of what's going on...." --which
is really an example of "aware + of." And there are also quirks in the
database such as a spate of news stories about an abortion clinic called
"Aware Woman Center for Choice."
I believe that these statistics correlate with the judgments that my
respondents gave. Because the usage is very rare, we tend to judge it
as
stylistically awkward.
I was intrigued, however, by Brian O'Sullivan's comment about the role
of
audience and purpose" in making a usage like "aware + N" an appropriate
choice. I went back to see how the attributive use of "aware" was
distributed across the main sections of the corpus--spoken language,
fiction, magazines, newspapers, and academic writing. Academic writing
showed the highest usage of this structure compared with the others, and
the usage was found in all the other sections.
Although the attributive usage of "aware" is very rare, I think that
Brian
is essentially correct in suggesting that context can make this usage
feel
right. Here's a quotation from the longer passage that Brian mentioned
as
sounding "New Age." It's from a science fiction novel by Piers Anthony
entitled The Shame of Man (I've highlighted the key strings in caps).
This passage seems to be referring to a supposed stage in the evolution
of
the human mind.
"There was a need to share what went beyond vocabulary, however
sophisticated the language might be. This may have been where the arts
came in. The sophisticated symbolism of language was only one ability of
the new mind; it could appreciate the symbolism of a sculpture, or a
drawing, or a dance, or music. Music, perhaps more than any other art,
appealed directly to THE AWARE MIND, and stirred special emotions in it.
When ONE AWARE PERSON sang, and others listened, all of them knew that
the
others were experiencing similar awareness. They were sharing the
feelings
of their own kind. And so self-consciousness may have led to complex
language and all of the arts, including perhaps the art of love. Those
of
the new mind were not only able to communicate in ways others literally
could not dream of, they were able to share feelings others lacked."
I think if I had been reading this passage before doing this
investigation, I would not have blinked at this usage. What I have
discovered gives me some pause about making generalizations that
characterize certain usages as "bad" until I have seen the context. I
can
still tell students, it is not very likely for the string "aware + N" to
occur in English so be very careful that it is contextually appropriate
if
you decide to use it.
R. Michael Medley, Ph.D.
Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA 22802
[log in to unmask] (540) 432-4051
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