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/