Craig et al.

When I used the term "level of formality" I was using it as a paraphrase
for "register" a term less familiar to many on this list.  Register is a
standard linguistic term with a long pedigree.  Perhaps the seminal
treatment of it for English was Martin Joos' The Five Clocks (1967).  On
vocabulary, Geoffrey Hughes' A History of English Words (Blackwell 2000)
demonstrates how English vocabulary tends to fall into three registers
that correlate nicely with historical development.  The Old English
vocabulary we preserve in Modern English is the common level.  This
includes not only some of our taboo vocabulary but also words like
"scared" as an adjective.  Words that came in through Norman French,
after the Conquest, comprise a more formal, upper class vocabulary.  A
good example of this is the preference in formal writing from French and
Latinate borrowings over verb-particle constructions, so "surrender"
rather than "give up".  The third group is words that came in during the
Renaissance and Enlightenment, words that have a scientific or technical
cast to them.  This has nothing to do with correctness and has a great
deal to do with becoming an effective user of English, knowing which
word to use in which social and discourse context.  Notice that Hughes'
lexical registers correlate with both social and educational variables.

Herb

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Monday, February 19, 2007 10:42 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Linda to RMMedley"to scare"

Linda,
    My computer has been balking, so I apologize for not replying to
your
earlier post. I'll try to catch up here.
   I was actually replying to Herb's early response to Cynthia, in which
he said we should shy away from "parts of speech" explanations because
students aren't aware of them enough to follow the explanation, and
edge toward levels of formality. I'm sure I wasn't overly clear. Herb
of course is right in his observbations about what people are likely to
know, but then I thought about how we may enable this sort of ignorance
by giving people what they think grammar is all about, rules for use
that don't trouble them with understanding. I don't mean to imply
criticism to any of us, especailly Herb, who has been an advocate of
public grammar as long as I have known him, just an observation about
how we get caught up in the "you don't need to know about language"
syndrome of the times. We try to be helpful, but become complicit.
   Halliday has some neat observations about the reciprocal nature of
mental processes. When something scares us, we can feel active and
passsive at the same  time. "I am scared of it. It frightens me." "I
admire Ghandi. He impresses me." I think the notion of agency shifts
when we move to emotions and thoughts. It's not as cut and dried as it
is in a mechanical process. When w elove someone, we are both agent and
patient.
   I worry that "level of formality" is just a substitute for "correct"
or
"incorrect", with some slight mitigation.
   This is partly a response to Johanna's post. When we say "wasted" on
the witness stand, we are not just using taboo words, but insulting our
audience by using words than may not be "shared". It violates some sort
of maxim of communication. Academics do it on the other end of the
spectrum, using technical terms that shut out much of the public, but
not at the expense of the speaker.
   It's interesting that "scared" is an official adjective in the two
dictionaries I consulted. That would be a neat assignment for a class,
looking through a dictionary to discover which participles have been
granted full adjective status and which kind of hang on as verbs in
adjectival roles. How would a dictionary maker decide?
   "Scare" is a noun as well. We need to find ways to make "parts of
speech" explorations much more interesting and flexible.
   At what point does "level of formality" become a euphemism for
"incorrect"?
   Sorry to mix a number of comments in a single post.

Craig

   >


 Great data, R Michael Medley!
>
> And I would say that it supports my point more than not. I'm sorry if
I
> was
> not clear (but these are very involved issues, aren't they? Fun to
talk
> about
> though.)
>
> I wasn't really relying on introspection to make an argument about
data
> here; I was simply generating sentences that might illustrate my point
> about
> lexical semantic structure: that we inform our usage of particular
verbs
> with our
> own understanding of what they mean and how they work. In particular,
our
> understanding of the meanings of some verbs includes a stronger notion
of
> agency. And this is why some grammatical constructions seem odd with
some
> verbs
> and acceptable with others.
>
> Certainly, numerous contexts can be generated to use  verbs in all
sorts
> of
> ways, as your data shows precisely. But I was  trying to explain the
> question
> from the instructor about how and why certain  grammatical structures
> might be
> 'preferred' , especially in writing.
>
> When we say that a photo scares us, we do not mean that the photo
stood
> up
> and took the initiative to attempt to frighten us.  We mean that  we
> viewed a
> photo and that viewing caused some sort of reaction in  us.  But the
photo
> did
> nothing. And the photo did not change. The photo  does not act at all.
>
> When we say a person scared us, we typically understand that a  person
> actually DID something to INTENTIONALLY scare us.  While  action,
> intention, and
> control are not part of every event of 'scaring  by a person', the
> potential is
> there. It is NOT there in the 'scaring by  a photo' event.
>
> This difference in the type of scaring events plays out in the
grammatical
> structures we use with verbs.
> I hope this makes my point more clearly.
>
> And your data was quite entertaining!
>
> Linda Di Desidero
>
>
> (If you are interested in event semantics, I wouldn't turn  to
Chomsky,
> but I
> would recommend people like Beth Levin and a  ton of others I could
give
> you
> off-list if you like.)
>
>
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