I am not getting you at all, could you please point out where the verb forms are mixed? In addition, where is the zeugma you propose?
I think it’s pretty clear from what I wrote that that is exactly my point, and that I wasn’t talking about the English language itself. I was talking about the way it’s taught.
Guizot,
So, what should be taught about function and the role of semantics in grammar?
Right–I should have specified more clearly that I was referring to the way EL (“English language”) courses are taught, as opposed to what usually are called “language arts” now, in secondary, or just “English.” I’m assuming you’re a native speaker–it makes sense that you wouldn’t have been exposed to it. I’m talking about the classes for those who don’t already speak the language.
Didn’t read all posts, but the original quote does not fit the classical definition of “passive voice.” as already stated above. If anything, he was passive in the sense of not taking responsibility for his actions.
I don’t want to hijack this thread on a tangent, but very briefly, functionally oriented language curriculum is based on the purpose of the language use. So, for example, instead of saying, “This week you’re going to learn past tense modal auxiliary verbs,” you say, “This week you’re going to learn how to make requests in English.” Part of that, of course, involves past modals, but learning past modals itself is not the objective. (And as I noted above, this is in regard to teaching the language itself. Native speakers for the most part don’t need to study this.)
The role of semantics in grammar is just something that should inform how it’s taught, and that’s evidenced here by this very thread, because it’s the semantics that make Duggar’s apology “passive,” but some people still perceive it as a purely grammatical issue, because they have this vague awareness of something called the “passive voice” as being something “bad” or manipulative. But you can’t effectively treat grammar as some kind of pure, abstract, decontextualized thing, any more than you can eat a bowl of calories for breakfast.
One of the clearest examples of this is that verbs aren’t transitive or intransitive by way of an intrinsic grammatical nature, but rather by way of their semantics. You can’t separate the two. A transitive verb without an object is grammatically incorrect because of its semantics, not because of an abstract grammatical quality. But there are many more less obvious ways in which semantics shapes grammar, and which are often ignored in the teaching of grammar, often because, in my opinion at least, so much energy gets focused on things like verb forms for their own sake, especially with regard to verb “tenses.”
Nice try. Passive is a technical term meaning the doer of the action is in the object place of the sentence:
I drove the car.
This car was driven by me.
Nobody above confused this. Everybody above made this distinction and agreed it was not the grammatical definition of “passive.”
I read it too fast the first time, but you are correct. Excuse my last response.
To translate for everybody else: Guizot is saying “passive voice” is not the same as being passive. Passivity includes other aspects such as word choice, use, tense, etc.
Well, I was referring to Savage and Wonkette as the ones who thought it was passive voice, not the posters here.
Thanks to Senegoid for bringing this up. One would think that as professional writers they would be more precise with their terms. I believe in an earlier thread here it was noted that Strunk and White made the same conflation in The Elements of Style, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Savage and Wonkette were influenced by that.
Wow. Ok. I do not excuse my past post.
My first post assumed you were a poser throwing around terms that they didn’t know hoping to look smart.
My second post gave you a benefit of a doubt.
That you would bring up Strunk and White to support you in grammar vs ettiquette disgusts me. Strunk and white had no idea about sociolinguistings or anything you talked about.
I have no idea who savage nor wonkette is, but my guess would be your usual style of throwing mystifying vocabulary into a bbs discussion to try and mystify plebes.
Huh? Please re-read. The whole thread. Or get some sleep.
I’m agreeing with you but at every step you seem set to misunderstand me so that you can disagree.
No, I will not excuse you for using Strunk and White to prove a dubious point about sociolinguisitics that did not exist during their lifetime.
WOW.
Let’s see if I can provide some clarity here.
“Savage” refers to Dan Savage, who in the original post is quoted as having written “Josh Duggar has issued an apology—in which he blames porn and uses the passive voice:”
“Wonkette” is mentioned in the original post as possibly being the source that called the use of the passive voice “abhorrent”. (This was later found to be an error: it was not Wonkette but rather Yahoo Celebrity that said of the second apology that it “corrects the abhorrent use of passive voice in the original”.)
guizot pointed out that both Dan Savage and whomever wrote the other article seem to have conflated a passive tone with “the passive voice”, and noted that he thinks a previous thread on this site mentioned that the same conflation had appeared in the (much used) style guide for writers The Elements of Style, and that perhaps the the authors of those articles learned that conflation there.
So guizot was not “bring(ing) up Strunk and White to support (him)”, but rather was saying they had been wrong on this issue, and others being wrong might be due to following their mistaken lead.
A personal aside to Superhal: E.B.White has only been dead for 30 years. I am no kind of expert on sociolingusitcs, but I would be interested to learn what developments in that field, referenced in this thread, you think did not exist during his life.
“…whoever wrote…”
Do you think English should have a better system of verb tenses? Why? Or else please explain because otherwise I guess I am missing your point.
If one wishes to be pedantic (and, if one wishes to be pedantic, one should begin one’s discourse with “If one wishes to be pedantic…”), English has just two verb tenses:
[ol][li]Past[/li][li]Non-past[/ol][/li]
What some other languages accomplish using the future tense, English accomplishes using a variety of auxiliary verbs. Here is a good Wiki article regarding English verb forms. In particular, note this nifty tidbit:
Moderator Warning
Superhal, personal attacks of this kind are not appropriate for General Questions. You’ve been around long enough to know this. This is an official warning for being a jerk.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Is this a woosh? I don’t know what more to say than what I said in the very post you quoted. I’ll requote it:
Is the distinction not clear? The way the language is taught. The pedagogy.
I can’t understand how you get–from what I posted–that I was suggesting that English should have a “better system of verb tenses,” whatever that may mean.
Yes, thank you Monty, and to be clear, my concern with this common usage of the term tense is not so much out of pedantry, than how it often limits the classroom concern with these verb forms to issues of time frame, (because that’s what tense essentially means). The result is that the students start to think that that is the only function of these various forms: to convey various time frames. In fact, grammar, including the various “tenses,” (in the common usage), is not always representational. Sometimes grammatical forms serve affective, or psychological, purposes. The past tense is not always used to talk about the past. The continuous is not always used to refer to something happening in the moment. But I’ve seen so many instructors completely ignore this, (probably just because it’s easier to just ignore this), and the result is that the students adapt a very narrow perspective of these forms, limiting their full competency.
I’ve always been fond of the tense system for Ulleran (from Sci-Fi novel by H. Beam Piper):
Too bad Piper committed suicide before he could’ve fleshed that out some more.