Pedants' Paradise

[Don Petter]

"Go slow" is an idiom when it means a work to rule. But surely not when a truanting learner rider in Driffield wants cars to drive slowly.

While being on your side in this matter, EA, I just can't get out of my head the thought 'Do go gentle into that good knight'.

[jean]

Whatever meaning you want to attach to your misquotation, gentle could be taken as an adjective and therefore is not what we're talking about here.

[french frank]

"Go slow" is an idiom when it means a work to rule. But surely not when a truanting learner rider in Driffield wants cars to drive slowly.

I said your example was odd (but I'd never come across such an example myself). Is it a frequent sight oop no'th?

My guess is you didn't teach a language?

[Don Petter]

Whatever meaning you want to attach to your misquotation, gentle could be taken as an adjective and therefore is not what we're talking about here.

Isn't slow an adjective?

slow - slowly
gentle - gently

seem parallel cases to me?

Sorry it couldn't raise a little smile with you.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I said your example was odd (but I'd never come across such an example myself). Is it a frequent sight oop no'th?

My guess is you didn't teach a language?

Only the one with blobs on telephone wires.

[jean]

Isn't slow an adjective?

slow - slowly
gentle - gently

seem parallel cases to me?

Not at all - slow is both adjective and adverb.

Read Pabmusic's posts about flat adverbs over the last page or two.

[french frank]

Only the one with blobs on telephone wires.

You probably have to teach - or have a reason to study a language in some depth - to realise they don't stick to the rules. Cads!

[jean]

I'd prefer to say the rules are not always what you thought they were.

[Pabmusic]

Not at all - slow is both adjective and adverb.

Read Pabmusic's posts about flat adverbs over the last page or two.

Yes Jean. Slow was certainly one of those many cases where confusion has been caused by the 17/18th-Century Latin Grammar Police adding -ly where it wasn't required. Now we can say "I'll go slow now" as well as "I'll drive slowly, there's a 50 limit ahead", where slow and slowly are both adverbs. But Shakespreare could only have said "I'll drive slow, there's a 50 limit ahead". Which would have been quite remarkable in itself, of course.

But there are common English idioms. We say Go slow as well as Go slowly (your example seems odd but I've never seen it - we don't see many horses in the city).

The great characteristic of English is how, idiomatically (not 'incorrectly' or 'informally), words can be used in a variety of grammatical ways. This flexibility is a particular eccentricity of English, not necessarily sloppiness. You might just as well say that dough, cough, tough, bough SHOULD all rhyme if pronounced correctly.

I've just noticed this FF, sorry. "Go slow" is actually adverbial (and old) rather than an idiom.

[Bryn]

You probably have to teach - or have a reason to study a language in some depth - to realise they don't stick to the rules. Cads!

Surely the 'rules' are essentially descriptive rather then prescriptive. With the principal exception of Esperanto, spoken languages evolved,and continue to evolve organically, rather than a set of rules being constructed and then words invented to follow those rules.

[Pabmusic]

Surely the 'rules' are essentially descriptive rather then prescriptive. With the principal exception of Esperanto, spoken languages evolved,and continue to evolve organically, rather than a set of rules being constructed and then words invented to follow those rules.

Absolutely. English does have some rules - subject and verb should agree, for instance - but almost all 'rules' most people know are artificial ones made up during the dictatorship of the Latin Grammar Police 2-300 years ago.

[gurnemanz]

Surely the 'rules' are essentially descriptive rather then prescriptive. With the principal exception of Esperanto, spoken languages evolved,and continue to evolve organically, rather than a set of rules being constructed and then words invented to follow those rules.

As I understand it (it was many years ago that I studied all this) deep structure rules are the hard-wired syntax which we master intuitively as babies and which governs the way human language behaves and generate the sentences that emerge on the surface in the form of the words of a specific language. Where the deep structure rules operate at an unconscious level and are fixed, the surface structure is much more changeable (all languages do indeed change historically) and can be the subject of both prescriptive and descriptive grammar.

[vinteuil]

. Slow was certainly one of those many cases where confusion has been caused by the 17/18th-Century Latin Grammar Police adding -ly where it wasn't required. Now we can say "I'll go slow now" as well as "I'll drive slowly, there's a 50 limit ahead", where slow and slowly are both adverbs. But Shakespreare could only have said "I'll drive slow, there's a 50 limit ahead". Which would have been quite remarkable in itself, of course.
.

... but in the 16th century "slowly" was also available -

"Ah! when will this long weary day have end,
And lende me leave to come unto my love?
How slowly do the houres theyr numbers spend?
How slowly does sad Time his feathers move?"


Spenser, 'Epithalamion' [1595]




.

.

[Pabmusic]

... but in the 16th century "slowly" was also available -

"Ah! when will this long weary day have end,
And lende me leave to come unto my love?
How slowly do the houres theyr numbers spend?
How slowly does sad Time his feathers move?"


Spenser, 'Epithalamion' [1595]
.

Very good. It only goes to show that nothing's certain…


Shakespeare used "I pray you have a continent forbearance till the speed of his rage goes slower…" (King Lear, Act 1 Sc. 2). It's interesting that we've ended up with slow and slowly as adverbs, but just fast (not fastly).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Very good. It only goes to show that nothing's certain…

For certainly.

Perhaps it also demonstrates there were different grammatical (?"grammatic"?) conventions in the Sixteenth Century between those of someone born in London and those someone from the Midlands?