Thank you, Michael. This is the sort of post that raises ATEG above the level of a lot of lists I've been on. Thoughtful, informative, carefully researched. Herb -----Original Message----- From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of R. Michael Medley (GLS) Sent: 2009-02-21 12:30 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 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/