(This was meant to be an addendum to my last post, not a response to Jodi’s)
Not just anything someone makes up is a legitimate rule of grammar. There are criteria by which a proposed rule of grammar can be judged, just as with proposed rules of physics or such. The main criterion would be accuracy in describing how people actually speak. And on that account, a rule proscribing such a construction as “Me and Joanie went to the mall” would clearly be inaccurate (at least, for modern standard conversational English). As linguistic scientists, we can see with empirical evidence that it is a flawed hypothesis and discard it.
The great thing about the descriptive point of view is that, if you disagree with me, you could bring evidence to the table, rather than personal dislikes and hoary superstitions. Maybe I’m wrong about how most people speak; you could conduct a study and find that, in fact, the “Me and Joanie went” construct is jarring and abnormal in conversation to most speakers’ ears. That’s how you determine what people really do and don’t find acceptable: by going and taking a look at it, seeing how they actually generally act and speak. Basically, when claiming something to be a rule of grammar, the onus is on the claimant to demonstrate that it is more accurate a rule of grammar than “It is ungrammatical to use words which contain the letter ‘k’.” Otherwise, there is little reason to give their proclamations any heed.
This gives equal value to all linguistical constructs, which has sociological value but disregards the realities of society. Speaking in generalizations, many societies tend to make judgments on how people speak, and there are perfectly valid reasons to want your children to speak one way instead of another.
For example, in the U.S., Black English or common features thereof (including double negatives) is considered by many to sound “less educated” or “poorer” than speech that doesn’t feature those markers. In the UK, an East End accent or Cockney acccent is considered lower-class than a plummy BBC accent.
We can deplore the existence of such judgments (though I don’t, I think they are no less valid than social markers like manners and dress, though equally subject to over-use), but I don’t think we can argue they exist.
Under those realities, which are not limited to whether or not other people use the construction, it is perfectly valid to proscribe usages such as “Me and Joanie” when you are raising your own children.
Fair enough. Here I make another empirical claim: conversational use of “can” to express permission is so widespread throughout even those particular varieties that can be called Standard English that the worst one will ever suffer for it is occasional episodes of schoolmarmish lecturing. (In this respect, it is unlike many features of American Black English or Cockney English, which are distinctive enough to acquire larger stigmas and thus to give one more pragmatic reasons for avoiding them in certain contexts)
Correcting this, however, has led to the unfortunate circumstance I mentioned earlier, which is that much of the general public now seems to think that the word “me” is inherently ungrammatical, when paired with another person’s name. Saying “mom drove Joanie and I to the mall” is just as ungrammatical as saying “me and Joanie went to the mall”.
Once again, your kids will be victims to any number of “school marmish” lectures, many of them – including this one – defensible. And lecturing other adults is rude in almost every case. Assuming you acknowledge both those points, I don’t think we actually disagree.
I suppose we may agree on everything except the defensibility of inaccurate schoolmarmish lectures (and perhaps the empirical reality of the “can”/“may” usage issue). I’d say this one is defensible only the way a lecture on the proper way to let toilet paper hang would be defensible: it’s not that big a deal (so it’s not specifically beyond the bounds of propriety so as to be indefensible), a person could be great overall even while having an irrational hangup over it, etc., but all the same, it is a bizarre and basically groundless insistence on adherence to a false standard.
And even here, I’d give a defensibility edge to toilet paper rants. I think the people who make them generally do so with a better sense of the perspective and scope under which their claims are legitimate than found in your average self-proclaimed defense of the English language.
(A) There is nothing “inaccurate” about drawing a distinction between “can” and “may”. They historically had different meanings; to some people and in some contexts, they still have different meanings. Just because you prefer it another way does not make another person’s preference “inaccurate.”
(B) If you have “empirical evidence of the can/may usage,” I’d be happy to look at it.
(C) How toilet paper hangs is a matter of true preference. It has not historically been done one way or another, and there is no hypothetical scenario in which it makes any difference. It is therefore a crappy analogy for “can/may.”
You certainly seem free to throw around loaded terms like “irrational hang-up,” “groundless,” and “false.” People who disagree with you lack “perspective” and “scope” (scope of what, you don’t say).
In fact, your position is no more defensible than mine. I see a useful distinction between “can” and “may” and it is a distinction I preserve, as is my right. When and if I have kids, I will teach them to make the same distiction, because I think it has value.
Now, unless you are in a position to prove that I am wrong in doing so – and you know damn well you can’t – you might want to be a little more gracious in accepting what is, at the end of the day, a difference of opinion only.
If you were to respond to uses of “can” for permission with “You know, in an earlier era and place, the use of ‘can’ for permission was not yet established. Thus, in an earlier era and place, it would have been incorrect to speak as you just did; people would not have understood what you were saying”, well, it would be an odd bit of trivia to inject, but accurate. If you were to go on “I prefer that manner of speaking”, well, alright, surely you are the most accurate about your own preferences.
But if you say “It is incorrect for a modern speaker to use ‘can’ in a permission sense. It does not mean that; only ‘may’ means that, and thus one is required to use ‘may’ instead”, that is an inaccurate claim. “Can” most definitely does have a meaning involving permission in modern standard English, as evidenced from the facts of actual usage.
Even among those who decry the use of “can” for permission, I imagine almost every native speaker understands and parses it naturally and fluently. It’s too common for it to be any other way. So what is the point of pretending it doesn’t now have the meaning it so clearly does?
The primary empirical evidence I have is my awareness that, in my own speech community, use of “can” in a permission sense is entirely unremarkable, extremely common, and accepted. (These are the reasons I involuntarily picked it up in my own speech through osmosis as a child). Beyond that, I would have to go hunting for linguistics papers, but I doubt you disagree that this is an extremely common construct in modern spoken English which many people use entirely intentionally. I can tell you that the Oxford English Dictionary has written citations for this use of “can” dating all the way back to 1879 by Tennyson. Are you asking us to revert to the norms of English as it was spoken more than a century ago? And if so… why? (See end of post)
It may well be a crappy analogy. My intention with it was to illustrate “Even if a hang-up is odd, it isn’t necessarily a big deal. It doesn’t make you (or your emotion-raising momma) a bad person”, not to say “See, just as toilet paper hangups are irrational, so is the can vs. may distinction, because of its manifold similarities”. My argument for the pointlessness of nitpickery about can vs. may is meant to be separate; the toilet paper was only invoked so that I could explain precisely in what sense pointless irritating nitpickery can still be defensible. But if it failed to do any clarifying in that way, I don’t particularly care to defend the analogy.
I do believe can vs. may nitpickery in this day and age is an irrational hang-up; it’s a very minor hang-up, a very, very minor bit of irrationality, but, yes, that is my position on it.
It is your right to speak however you like. I don’t think I’ve ever said differently. You can go around referring to ducks as “chimneys”, speaking purely in rhyme, avoiding the letter ‘k’, and affecting a German accent for all I care, and all you’ll get from me is “How odd… why do you do that?”. I am cool with much much more out-there ways of speaking and acting than simply maintaining an outdated or overly formal can/may distinction; I have no presumption to the right to tell you how you’re allowed to speak. There is some value to be found in having your own conventions match up with those of the larger speech community in which you find yourself, but it’s up to you to decide if you want to do so.
However, just what is it that you see as so useful to preserve in your can/may distinction? Is it the mere ability to express the statement “Am I capable of …”? I assure you, even though my “can” has taken on other meanings, I do not sputter in frustration when I desire to express such a thing. I simply say “Am I capable of …?”. Are you seeking to prevent ambiguity? I doubt one case in a hundred of permission-“can” results in honest ambiguity; people wouldn’t keep using it if it did. (And even if you can cook up some ambiguous constructions, why should we avoid using it in unambiguous situations?)
I truly do not see what value there is in preventing people from using “can” in a permission sense.
Hm, I submitted my previous post without fully commenting on this. Not everyone who disagrees with me lacks scope, of course. But one who claims that use of “can” for permission is erroneous, even in modern conversational English, his claims are being blown beyond the scope at which they would be accurate. One who believes people will suffer or be judged in life in any significant way for using “can” in this extremely common manner, well, he does lack perspective on this matter.
While I’ve never had “proofreader” in my official list of job titles, I’ve
helped my classmates with their spelling and grammar since we first started learning to write, as part of the school’s “method” (they paired us up for tutoring)
had my college training in the chemical field, where a typo can turn a quite-inert substance into an explosive
been a proofreader/editor in a text-based internet game for 8 years, the first 3 unofficially (other writers asked me to check their work before the official check)
proofread/edited grant submissions for the research team where I worked and for friends from other teams
reviewed corporate courses
and had to train my SMS-age juniors in “how to use a spellchecker” after clients returned their work because “I can’t read this shit! Bring it back when it’s in Spanish!” I also had to explain that finishing a business email to apologize for an upcoming delay with XXXOOOXXX is not particularly appropiate.
See, now I have to get my whoopin’ stick out again. Sheesh…
But seriously, I never dreamed there would be this much debate on this subject. It’s actually very interesting. For one, you guys are bringing up old language rules that I haven’t heard since High School. I can’t ever believe you guys REMEMBER these rules. But seeing as how a lot of people really are pretty big sticklers for proper spoken english, answer me one more question…
How do you guys feel about Snoop Dog and his fo’ shizzle bullshit?
I don’t care too much about people inserting a small correction at the end of a post. What I hate is when someone’s sole purpose for posting in a thread is to correct a grammar or spelling “error”. If you aren’t going to actually participate in the thread, please don’t post.
Does anyone else feel that the way language and grammar are taught in our schools is a bit odd? Five vowels, long and short? Diagramming sentences? I think we need to get some linguists in there to set things straight.
“If blah blah blah”. I have repeatedly said that I would not correct any adult on any grammar problem because it’s rude. So you can theorize your “if/then hypotheses” to your heart’s content, but I don’t bother to address responses based on things I never said.
First, pointing out that it was a crappy analogy did not really call for futher explanation of the analogy. I never said I didn’t understand it; I said it was a crappy analogy, a judgment you don’t argue with. Second, “can/may” IS a distinction worth preserving to some people – not sure if that constitutes a “big deal” or not. You have entirely failed to show that those people are wrong to preserve that distinction and to raise their children to do the same. You would like to phrase this in terms of whether it is widely understood – I never said it wasn’t – or should be widely corrected among adults or strangers – I never said it should – but you fail entirely to rebut MY point, which is that since choosing to distinguish between “can” and “may” is a preference – as are almost all language choices – you are hardly in a position to say that I or my mother or anyone preserving the distinction in non-nitpicking, non-correcting way, am/is “wrong” or “faulty” or “irrational” to do so. Honestly, this isn’t that hard.
First of all, I never advocated for “nitpickery.” Again, who exactly are you responding to? Second, here are rational reasons to choose to maintain the distinction:
It is a useful distinction. “Can” means “to be able to.” “May” means “to be able to.” Without the distinction, precision is lost in some communications. For example: She can bake a cake. Does that mean she is able to, or she has permission to? Now, you may say that the context will make the meaning clear, but it is the lack of precision in the term “can” (as so used) that requires us to look at context in the first place. There is nothing inherently “better” or more “rational” in making language less precise – especially as the chief argument in favor of the new imprecision is nothing more persuasive than language drift (i.e., more people are using in that way). Even if the distinction is useful in “one case out of a hundred,” at what point does that become an argument for tossing it aside if speakers prefer to retain it?
“Can” and “may” retain their different meanings in some contexts (technical and legal writing, to name two). In fields were careful writing is at a premium and precision in terms is crucial, the mushiness of conflating two different terms is rarely allowed. In these fields, it is simply inaccurate to say that “can” and “may” mean the same thing, because they simply don’t. Anyone attempting to use “can” for “may” (or vice versa) will quickly be corrected. And this happens a hell of a lot more often than in one case out of a hundred. You apparently would argue that people have some obligation to preserve the distinction professionally while dispensing of it in their own non-professional speech – as if that’s somehow easier or more rational than just using the terms with precision all the time.
And here’s one irrational one: To many people who continue to believe that “can” and “may” mean different things, and should be used accordingly, misusing one for the other sounds uneducated.
Gee, thanks. And it’s your right to make value judgments on others’ linguistic choices by describing them as “irrational,” “false,” and lacking perspective, even though none of those value judgments are accurate. But I am cool with much more out-there judgmentalism than those who choose to mount their high horse over grammar.
I never once said anything about “preventing” people other than your own children from doing anything, so feel free to have this argument with whomever did say this.
Point out to me where anyone in this thread has ever said anything approaching this. I think you’re just enjoying arguing with yourself, but I tend to wander away from discussions where people are talking past me, because they get very boring very fast.
