atw: Re: Apostrophes; long long L-O-N-G [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

Hi Michael

First let me apologise if my response to your post was a bit aggressive.
I felt somewhat indignant that you were so dismissive ('Wrong, wrong,
wrong ...'!) of what Jill Nicholson said, yet proceeded to throw around
grammatical terms in a way that I felt didn't lend support to your
dismissal - and didn't even make much sense. (Sorry, Jill - I didn't
intend to involve you. It isn't a personal thing at all!) 

I'll try to respond to your points in a civilised manner. 

First, I'm afraid you misinterpreted my remark 'I appreciate your
obvious commitment to correct [NOT prescriptive] grammar', which you saw
as accusing you of being (gasp!) a prescriptivist, a term which I know
has some odium attached to it nowadays. It was actually an
acknowledgment of you - I could see that you shared my attitude that
grammar is important. And that's really all I meant.

I think the main point at issue between us is a terminological one -
what is the correct domain of application of the term 'dative'? For me,
the key terms in our discussion are those that describe the functions or
roles (direct object, indirect object, subject, etc) in grammar. At
least for the Western languages that we're generally more familiar with,
these don't change when we translate a sentence to a different language.
The cases are just one way some languages go about distinguishing or
identifying some or all of these functions. 

I completely disagree with your assertion that '"case" is the term for
the functions, not for the forms'. I would describe the situation like
this, if you'll excuse my going right back to basics. 'Indirect object',
'direct object' and 'subject' are terms indicating the roles or
functions of words or phrases in a sentence. Each word or phrase itself
refers to an 'object' (person or thing), and we can generally identify
the referent without looking at the rest of the sentence. However, to
make sense of the whole sentence, we need to know, not just the meanings
of the constituent elements, but also what their roles are in relation
to the whole sentence. So the language has to have some way of
indicating the role of each of the sentence's elements. In particular,
certain verbs, including 'give', can be associated with three different
'agents' - the subject (giver), the direct object (the thing given) and
the indirect object (the recipient). To allow the reader or hearer to
interpret the meaning unambiguously we need a way to identify which is
which. More specifically (to bring us back to our discussion of the
dative), we need a way to identify which is the indirect object. There
are different ways in different languages (and also within the same
language) to indicate which of the words or phrases making up a
particular sentence serves the role of indirect object. One way is to
define a convention based on word order. But another important way, in
some languages, is to *inflect* the word or phrase somehow. (Again, I'm
going to spell out the details, even though I know you'll already know
them well.) This means that the language associates a number of
alternative forms with every word, and there's a scheme that singles out
one of these to be used whenever the word is to have the role of an
indirect object. (The scheme also singles other forms to be used when
the word is to have another role - say, the subject of the sentence).
The particular form of the word to be used when it serves the role of
indirect object is generally what we refer to as the 'dative case'. It
*is* a *form*, which in this situation corresponds to, and is used to
indicate, a particular *function* (the indirect object). Or we could
just as well describe it as a 'mechanism' used to 'implement' that
function. 

The important point is that case is just one possible way a language can
solve the problem of associating a role with a lexical item. The roles,
or functions, are the more fundamental concept (I'm using 'role' and
'function' interchangeably.) If we were talking about a language with no
case system, we could, I suppose, still say that a certain phrase is 'in
the dative', meaning just that the phrase stands for an indirect object
and so *would* be inflected as dative if the language *did have* a
dative case. In other words, we'd be borrowing the terminology of cases
and applying it to a language in which there are none. That's a little
ridiculous, but it's similar to what you're doing if you say that, in
the sentence 'the man gave the woman a flower', the word 'woman' (or the
phrase 'the woman') is dative - you're just transferring 'dative' from
its normal context of cases and using it instead of the functional term
'indirect object', which is what really expresses the role. The fact is
that, in English, while there are cases, there isn't *any word at all*
(noun, pronoun or article) that has an inflected form that we can use to
mark the word as an indirect object. So case is simply unavailable as a
mechanism in English for indicating the indirect object - which is what
I mean by saying that 'English has no dative case'. 

You say 'Perhaps Howard would like to say that the distinction between
direct and indirect objects has disappeared, because we don't use
different forms of the words to mark the two functions'. But, if you
understood what I was saying above, you'll see that that's definitely
NOT what I would like to say. The distinction between direct and
indirect objects is still important, if not critical, in avoiding
ambiguity. In the sentence 'the man gave the woman a flower', which I
used as an example before, we have three 'players' - a man, a woman and
a flower - and one verb connecting them. Each of the players has a
different role and switching them around changes the meaning totally, so
to avoid ambiguity we need to have some way of distinguishing them. In
English we use word order and/or auxiliary words and we don't 'use
different forms of the words to mark the two functions'. But whatever we
do, we need to do it in a way that maintains the distinction, because it
affects the meaning. You sum it up well in your statement 'The fact that
English uses word order rather than word form to indicate different
functions does not mean that the functions have ceased to exist' - but
then you go on to make the assertion that the 'case' describes the
function, not the form, which to me is completely unsupportable. 

To sum up again, I'm saying that the functions labelled 'subject',
'direct object' and 'indirect object' are alive and well and need to be
distinguished, but in English we can no longer use cases to do this, as
the dative case (which would be needed to mark the indirect object) has
long ago disappeared. And I'd now like to propose that, if what I've
said is right, even referring to the dative in discussions of Modern
English usage is at best unhelpful and at worst confusing.

You also say 'Perhaps Howard would like to say that the subjunctive mood
has also virtually disappeared'. Well, I don't know if I'd *like* to say
that, but I don't mind, and I'd agree with the statement. But is the
subjunctive mood a function or a form/mechanism? It's another mechanism
and therefore, in a way, is parallel to case. The meanings associated
with the subjunctive are expressible in languages that don't have a
subjunctive mood, but you do it using other methods. And, indeed, when
we talk about the subjunctive disappearing, we mean that we're
increasingly using other methods *in English* to express the hopes,
wishes, hypotheticals, etc, that were traditionally expressed by the
subjunctive. We don't any more say 'Would that it were Friday!', but the
same thought is now expressed just as often using other linguistic
constructions. As you say, 'it's a legitimate functional distinction
that simply isn't reflected in the form most people use'. 

But I can't see that the virtual disappearance of the subjunctive backs
up your case ('the same argument applies'). The parallel is simply that
the dative case has already disappeared, while the subjunctive is merely
on the way to disappearing. But they're both mechanisms - and the
corresponding functions are still there. We still have indirect objects
and we still have sentences that express the various ideas that we used
to convey through the subjunctive. Using the label 'dative' for an
indirect object in English is a bit like saying the sentence 'I wish it
was Friday!' is an example of a subjunctive. The latter sentence has no
remnant of the subjunctive mood in it, but expresses one of the meanings
formerly associated with the subjunctive, in a different way. 

I'm happy to apologise for my incorrect assumptions about what led you
to talk as if datives were still alive in English. I was guessing that
most people who talk about datives these days must have learnt Latin or
German or another language where the dative is still important. Sorry if
I misrepresented you. I agree with what you say about the unsuitability
of German and Latin grammar for describing English and hadn't realised
that it was you who'd said that in earlier posts.

As for the original point about the genitive case - well, I don't think
I have much to add. I agree with you that it's a pity if the trend
towards dropping apostrophes gains any more momentum - if that is,
actually, what you're saying (don't want to make more assumptions!). 

That's way too many words, so I'll leave it there for now. (Would that
it were Friday!)

Best wishes

Howard

-----Original Message-----
From: "Michael Lewis" <mlewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 15:56:50 +1000
Subject: Re: Apostrophes; long  [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

Howard Silcock takes me to task for my "obvious commitment" to
prescriptive grammar, and seems to want to put me in conflict with my
fellow linguists. 
Well, like just about every other modern academic linguist (outside the
more extreme Chomskyan positions, I suppose), I'm a descriptivist, but I
will always react to violations of the "rules" -- using language in a
way that doesn't actually accord with any observed linguistic
(grammatical) patterns.

Howard says that the accusative and dative cases have "effectively
merged", and that the labels are therefore meaningless. Depends on how
you use those labels. 
While it's true that they don't look any different (nouns are inflected
identically in the two cases), they represent different grammatical
functions
-- and only the dative can be substituted by a prepositional phrase, so
the distinction is still worth making, although I agree that _many_
modern linguists have adopted the term "objective" to cover both.
Perhaps Howard would like to say that the distinction between direct and
indirect objects has disappeared, because we don't use different forms
of the words to mark the two functions. The fact that English uses word
order rather than word form to indicate different functions does not
mean that the functions have ceased to exist; and "case" is the term for
the functions, not for the forms.

Perhaps Howard would like to say that the subjunctive mood has also
virtually disappeared. Well, the same argument applies; it's a
legitimate functional distinction that simply isn't reflected in the
form most people use.

Howard's comment that I have "been  taught - perhaps from learning Latin
or German, or languages with similar grammars, or perhaps from learning
to parse sentences in an English class" is wildly incorrect. I have made
numerous postings to this list where I point out that the grammar of
Latin has never been relevant to English. The grammar of German stopped
being relevant at around Chaucer's time.

I'm not sure what other points Howard is trying to make, but I stand by
my assertion that leaving the apostrophe out of the genitive inflection
is always ungrammatical.


Michael Lewis

--------------------------------------
Brandle Pty Limited, Sydney, Australia
www.brandle.com.au
--------------------------------------




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