<p>Wis75:</p>
<p>Actually, it’s the Yanks that say “Have you got a screwdriver.” The Brits say “Have you a screwdriver?” At least, they did when we lived in England and complained about the Americans’ use of “have got.”</p>
<p>Brits do say “going to hospital” and “going to university.”</p>
<p>For anyone going to school in NYC, be sure you never refer to “Avenue of the Americas” … it’s Sixth Avenue. No one ever says Ave in NYC; it’s Avenue. And that street down in the village is not pronounced the same way as the city (Houston) in Texas.</p>
<p>The thing that drives me the absolute craziest is the misuse of the apostrophe.</p>
<p>How about when you see a sign that says, “Bagel’s for Sale!”</p>
<p>And the dog chased its tail - not “it’s” tail.</p>
<p>Ugh.</p>
<p>Check out this book:</p>
<p>Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation</p>
<p>My #1 pet peeve with the kids is when they drop their G’s. I can’t stand it. I tell them, “you wouldn’t write a word without the G, so why drop it when you speak it?” “I’m goin’ down to the store”…aarrghhh!! To me when someone speaks that way their IQ goes down about 50 points.</p>
<p>Once upon a time, a friend of mine went on a blind date with a young man who had graduated from Harvard. During the course of the evening she used the word “nauseous” in a colloquial fashion as was her habit. (As in: He makes me nauseous!) Her date interrupted her story to correct her usage of the word–you mean to say “nauseated.” Needless to say there was no second date. Funny thing–she had been an English major at Columbia.
People are funny!</p>
<p>Ba, that’s hilarious. My mother ALWAYS corrected me when I used “nauseous”…</p>
<p>What about when people say, “I’m going to Andersons’” instead of “THE Andersons’”…? or how about, " Are you coming with?" My husband does that when he’s with his siblings. I always say, “WITH WHO??”</p>
<p>My H and S’s have always said that my accent becomes more pronounced when I’m talking to a family member from back home.</p>
<p>Naom Chomsky (grammar consisting of “deep structure” (semantics) and “surface structure” (syntax)) argued that the concepts of “grammatical” and “ungrammatical” need to be defined in a meaningful and useful way. </p>
<p>A “behaviorist” linguist would argue that language can only be studied through recordings or transcriptions of actual speech, the role of the linguist being to look for patterns in such observed speech, but not to hypothesize about WHY such patterns might occur, nor to label particular utterances as either “grammatical” or “ungrammatical”. </p>
<p>Although few linguists actually took such an extreme position, Chomsky was at an opposite extreme, defining grammaticality in an unusually (for the time) mentalistic way: He argued that the INTUITION of a native speaker is enough to define the grammaticalness of a sentence; that is, if a particular string of English words elicits a double take, or feeling of wrongness in a native English speaker, it can be said that the string of words is ungrammatical (when various extraneous factors affecting intuitions are controlled for). [Thus “ungrammatical” is what makes you feel uncomfortable as you listen to it.]</p>
<p>This (according to Chomsky) is entirely distinct from the question of whether a sentence is meaningful, or can be understood. It is possible for a sentence to be both grammatical and meaningless, as in Chomsky’s famous example “Colourless green ideas sleep furiously”. But such sentences manifest a linguistic problem distinct from that posed by meaningful but ungrammatical (non)-sentences such as “man the bit sandwich the”, the meaning of which is fairly clear, but which no native speaker would accept as being well formed.</p>
<p>^____(adapted from another source).</p>
<p>The world of grammars is wonderful, deep, and moves from the concept of diagramming sentences to one of a language (and its structure) being an encapsulation of knowledge of a people and the ability to share that among themselves.</p>
<p>Really cool stuff. Grammars are cool.</p>
<p>I thought of this thread last week when I heard the president of a highly-selective LAC say, “our faculty do not…” as he addressed parents at an orientation meeting. I believe this is an an example of lacking subject/verb agreement when using a collective noun; but I was surprised such a mistake was made in that particular setting. I know this is fairly common among the British, but I believe most English teachers in American schools would mark down your average 6th grader for such usage! </p>
<p>Am I missing something? Isn’t this a collective noun used as a single unit? Shouldn’t it be “our faculty does not…”?</p>
<p>Could have meant “faculty members” with the word “members” implied. It’s not unheard of.</p>
<p>
I agree! I almost wish she weren’t quite so polite, that way I could hear it less!
(Sorry, fender, I couldn’t resist :))
I’m not the world’s brightest person when it comes to grammar, but there are things that annoy the heck out of me, too.</p>
<p>You see? Once we start down that road, the grammar goblins start chasing us, too.</p>
<p>My favorite head-scratcher is ‘ad coms’, as used on cc to describe an individual admissions officer. We really need to get rid of this.</p>
<p>Around the University of Buffalo, I sometimes get lost because I-90 ramps are very close to 290 ramps. On the streets, the directional signs say “To 90” with an arrow. If someone has given me verbal directions, “Go on to 90…” this causes me to wonder at that moment: did they mean I should go “to 90” or take route 290?</p>
<p>Even worse, there’s a 190 that’s near the I-90. </p>
<p>Long Live Mapquest. </p>
<p>Canadians also say “She’s in hospital” to indicate someone’s in that state of existence. It doesn’t matter which hospital.</p>
<p>rutgersmamma:</p>
<p>The Brits are neither correct nor incorrect. When referring to bodies in which there are more than one member, they use the plural to denote that fact. “Her Majesty’s Government take the view that…” Americans tend to focus on subject verb agreement rather than on actual meaning when dealing with collective nounrs.
In the instance you described, it is perfectly correct for the president to speak of faculty (members) in the plural because “faculty members” is exactly what he means. He could have said “our professors, preceptors, lecturers.are dedicated to their students, immersed in research, always available.” It is understood that faculty here means members of the faculty.
There are other situations in which the singular is more appropriate as, for example, “The Faculty of Arts and Sciences is governed by a Senate” or “The Faculty of Arts and Sciences is the body that awards degrees” because the word faculty here does not refer to individual members of the Faculty.</p>
<p>Marite, I’m not understanding your point. </p>
<p>It would not be correct to say “our family do not…” We may well mean our family (members) do not… Our brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles do not celebrate certain holidays…??? But that’s not the same as saying “our family do not…” Why isn’t it a simple case of subject/verb agreement? One family DOES not…Two families DO not… Why isn’t this is a basic rule of grammar?? Just seeking information and trying to understand…</p>
<p>The Canadians say ‘she’s in hospital’ because that’s the way the British say it. Same with ‘he’s gone to university’. I think – without evidence – that it’s a leftover from the medieval period when ‘the’ was in short supply due to the great article famine of 1322.</p>
<p>marite, the SAT would not validate your approach.</p>
<p>marite is exactly right:</p>
<p>From Merriam-Webster, the definition of faculty (in an academic sense):</p>
<p>*“3 a : the members of a profession b : the teaching and administrative staff and those members of the administration having academic rank in an educational institution c faculty plural : faculty members *”</p>
<p>You would say: “The faculty were present at the meeting,” not “The faculty was present at the meeting.”</p>
<p>This is a word like data, the plural of datum. Correct usage “sounds” wrong: “The data validate that…”</p>
<p>Rutgersmamma:</p>
<p>first, about Brits vs. Americans, wasn’t it GB Shaw who said that they are divided by a common language? </p>
<p>Second about the use of faculty in the singular or plural. If it means profs, lecturers, preceptors, etc… as in the example given by Noobie, then it should take the plural. If it means the faculty as a collective body then it should take the singular, as in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (as opposed to the Law School, etc…).</p>
<p>Noobie: Data is different because it IS the plural of datum. </p>
<p>We do use family in the singular even though we mean family members. I’ll quote this French saying about grammar: "L’exception qui confirme les r</p>