Pedants' Paradise

[Don Petter]

Now that the concert has taken place, this sentence has become grammatically correct.

Predictive text?

[LeMartinPecheur]

...the BBC is in the van.

The outside broadcast van presumably?

[mangerton]

The outside broadcast van presumably?

Though in fact I think that's one place where they're not. OBs these days seem to be done by people who don't know what they're about - see posts passim on these boards - and not by the BBC.

[Flay]

Predictive text?

[jean]

There was discussion up-thread about 'lie' & 'lay'. This from the blurb on the R3 website about tonight's concert (ie something that hasn't happened yet) -

"Four of Gustav Mahler's Ruckert lieder lay at the heart of this concert "

I am shocked and appalled, but not surprised. As we have said, standards of English nowadays are dropping like a stone...

I did give you an eighteenth-century example of this one upthread.

[french frank]

I did give you an eighteenth-century example of this one upthread.

That probably illustrates the line where the language police have some justification for being aghaaast. Contemporary usage that is on the way to becoming the norm, even if 'ungrammatical', will have to be grudgingly accepted. Eventually. An odd usage in the eighteenth century would not quite justify an eccentric usage now, perhaps.

OED sayeth:

"In the earliest examples the verb [to lay = to lie] appears to be intransitive for reflexive or passive. Now (exc. in Nautical lang., see 43b) it is only dialectal or an illiterate substitute for lie, its identity of form with the past tense of the latter no doubt accounting largely for the confusion. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it was not app. regarded as a solecism. (For lay in wait see wait n.)"

However, as a possible dialectal form, perhaps diversity considerations mean we must not be judgemental ...

[gurnemanz]

The ungrammaticality of one Bob Dylan's most famous lines "Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed" has always been a bit of talking point. I assume that he knew that it was ungrammatical and was more interested in the effect of the assonance and in deliberately espousing an "incorrect", but more idiomatic and street-wise way of talking. "Lie, lady, lie" doesn't really work.

[jean]

...Contemporary usage that is on the way to becoming the norm, even if 'ungrammatical', will have to be grudgingly accepted...

I'm glad you put ungrammatical in quotes, because this one isn't a matter of grammar at all, is it?

I am never too bothered by ex-'incorrect' usages that are becoming standard where there is no loss of distinction in meaning, though as someone noted above, I tend not to perpetrate them myself, which is a sort of dishonesty I suppose.

I was a bit disappointed though that no pedant here wanted to address the problem I raised here, in #202:

Would anyone care to look at it now?

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?799-Pedants-Paradise/page7

[Flosshilde]

Perhaps he was also thinking of the use of the word 'lay' to denote a person with whom one has sexual intercourse? (As in 'He was a good lay.')

Bob Dylan, that is.


No, I don't mean that he was a good lay.

[vinteuil]

Jean - your #338 referring back to #202 -

It has a particular resonance with me as I had an argument stretching over months on another board with someone who disagreed with Fowler that the perfect infinitive was unnecessary in cases such as these, but claimed that, on the contrary, if Thackeray had written With whom on those golden summer evenings I should have liked to take a stroll in the hayfield he would have meant something substantially and identifiably different from what he meant when he actually wrote With whom on those golden summer evenings I should have liked to have taken a stroll in the hayfield.

But he could never explain what the difference was.

Do any of the uberpedants here have any ideas?

First rapid thoughts might include - if Thackeray was having a Wordsworthian ("Tintern Abbey") or Proustian sort of reflection - me at time T (now) referring back to the thoughts I might have had at time T minus Y, of an anterior time [T minus Y minus even more]...
In other words not the primary thought ("I should have liked to be having experience Z") but the secondary reflection ("I should have liked to be the person who had previously had the experience Z").

[french frank]

I'm glad you put ungrammatical in quotes, because this one isn't a matter of grammar at all, is it?

No, I was speaking of general evolutionary changes.

I've just been reading a news story on the BBC website:

'Officer Timothy Smith said: "I could observe that [Mr Zimmerman's] back appeared to be wet and he was covered in grass, as if he had been laying on his back on the ground[...]" '

The fact that both Bob Dylan (cf Floss's 'Lay, lady, lay' example) and Officer Timothy Smith are both American could indicate a usage commoner in the US than here (though the coincidence of surnames is probably significant only in indicating that Zimmerman is also more common in the US).

I was a bit disappointed though that no pedant here wanted to address the problem I raised here, in #202:

Would anyone care to look at it now?

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...Paradise/page7

My first thought was 'sequence of tenses', on which the point is discussed in Wikipedia. The point (I think) is made that this is either considered a matter of meaning, or differentiation of meanings; or it is a matter of formal grammar, as in the rules on sequence of tense in Latin or French, i.e. a rule is a rule: question it not.

The question does remain: is there a valid distinction? (I'm afraid the answer from is - I don't have time to think about it just at the moment - mus' go )

[Pabmusic]

...OED sayeth:

"In the earliest examples the verb [to lay = to lie] appears to be intransitive for reflexive or passive. Now (exc. in Nautical lang., see 43b) it is only dialectal or an illiterate substitute for lie, its identity of form with the past tense of the latter no doubt accounting largely for the confusion. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it was not app. regarded as a solecism. (For lay in wait see wait n.)"

However, as a possible dialectal form, perhaps diversity considerations mean we must not be judgemental ...

There is so much confusion because we have two irregular verbs (the transitive 'to lay' and the intransitive 'to lie') that share one form (lay), but with different functions. Lay is the past participle of 'lie', but the present of 'lay'. That's bound to be confusing, and there's really no hope that people will suddenly see the light and start differentiating between them after all these years. It's one thing to say that the following are 'correct' (at least according to convention) but it's quite another to encourage people to use them. There's no apparent logic to them, so the only thing to do is memorise them, which people don't do nowadays, of course:

I lie down/I am lying down; I lay down yesterday; I have lain all day in bed.

I lay the book down/I am laying the book down now; I laid the book down yesterday; I have already laid the book down.

[jean]

First rapid thoughts might include - if Thackeray was having a Wordsworthian ("Tintern Abbey") or Proustian sort of reflection - me at time T (now) referring back to the thoughts I might have had at time T minus Y, of an anterior time [T minus Y minus even more]...
In other words not the primary thought ("I should have liked to be having experience Z") but the secondary reflection ("I should have liked to be the person who had previously had the experience Z").

But then, wouldn't he have said With whom...I should like to have taken a stroll in the hayfield?

That construction is available for thoughts in the present about what was not done in the past. But the positioning of on those golden summer evenings makes a present verb awkward, or impossible.

[jean]

My first thought was 'sequence of tenses', on which the point is discussed in Wikipedia.

from the article:

"Improper sentences, in this view, do not correctly express the author's intent. In the following two examples (the first from Macaulay) only the latter expresses the author's meaning clearly and correctly:[4]

I had hoped never to have seen [the statues] again when I missed them on the bridge.
I had hoped never to see [the statues] again when I missed them on the bridge.

The rule for writers following the natural sequence of tenses can be expressed as follows: Imagine yourself at the point in time denoted by the main verb, and use the tense for the subordinate verb that you would have used at that time."

That's exactly Fowler's point, I think.

[vinteuil]

But then, wouldn't he have said With whom...I should like to have taken a stroll in the hayfield?

.

Not necessarily.
Let us construct an example.

Dramatis Personæ : me, my one-time friend J
Time: now 2012
In retrospect, I no longer like J.
J died in 1994.
I liked J then; and I liked his memory in 1995.
I took a stroll in a hayfield in 1995, regretting that J was no longer alive, and that we had missed out on a chance of a stroll in 1993.

So - "With whom on those golden summer evenings I should have liked to have taken a stroll in the hayfield."

It is not the case now that "I should like to have taken a stroll" - because I now have antagonistic feelings concerning J.
But it is the case that then (in 1995) - when I was still fond - I should have liked to have had the chance of a stroll when he was alive in 1993.