Michael, thank you for this excellent post! I'm going to reference this in
class next week as an example of how to do some research into language in
action.  I enjoyed your overview of your findings and hope you'll continue
to contribute so generously to ATEG!

John Alexander

On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 11:29 AM, R. Michael Medley (GLS) <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> 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
>
> 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/