Linguistic Pet Peeves

damnit. my one typo for the month. why does everyone do that?!11?!one

Well, I can't speak for anyone else. But in my case, it's because I'm an asshole.

that's ok. i am as well.

No way, no sirree, are you you going to get me to analyse, our one and only, the gem in EVC`s crown, Brad`s sentence construction. :-)

For me, the biggest gaffe with the spoken word is when people say quote-unquote. God but I hate that!!! Sadly, I even hear professional journalists say it. They might just as well be wearing big buttons that say, "I'M AN IDIOT!!"Or for them I guess it would be, ""I'M AN IDIOT!!Verzem

You are both wrong, though Crashfrog has almost got it right. Lam's sentence has nothing to do with subjunctive mood. If he would ask about God's taste for cheese instead of his having free will, he might ask: "Likes God cheese?". But that would not be the right way to phrase it. In proper English, to change "God likes cheese" into a question, the auxiliary verb 'to do' is used, and the question becomes: "Does God like cheese?". You will notice that the third person form has been transfered to the auxiliary verb 'does', and the verb 'like' (which, incidentally, is not the auxiliary, but indeed the main verb of the sentence, since it carries its meaning), has lost its 's', to become the infinitive form. Back to the question of God's free will: 'Does' is the auxiliary verb that changes the somewhat odd "Has God free will?" (though, admittedly, less odd than "Likes God cheese?") into the more familiar form "Does God have free will?".

I just noticed what you guys discussed about. To be honest, everything you talked about just went way over my head. I usually just write and revise based on my instinct (if it sounds good, it must be right), but I never actually think if it as "subjunctive" or whatever the hell else you guys referred to it. Heck, I don't even know what subjunctive mean.

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He's not dead. He's electroencephalographically challenged.

Verbs have mood; in English, there are four verb moods.Subjunctive is when something would have happened, if something else had happened."Had I known you were going to the store, I would have given you the shopping list."Compared to the conditional: "If you are going to the store, I'll give you the shopping list." Conditional is when something will happen if something else happens.Then, there's the imparitive: "Go to the store." And the declaritive is the simplest of all, it's really just the default mood, and is almost always in the active voice: "Lam goes to the store."

crashfrog responds to me:

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It has to do with the fact that we're in the subjunctive mood through the use of the word "does."

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Are you sure it's subjunctive mood?

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On more reflection, I think it's emphatic mood, but that follows the same construction: Use the infinitive form. You normally would say, "God has." But in emphasizing it, you switch to the infinitive: "God does have."

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when you contrast "God has" and "God does have", it becomes pretty obvious that we're dealing with declarative mood in both cases

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No, not declarative (and did you really mean "indicative"?) Declarative would simply say, "God has." The fact that you're using another word in there indicates you're shifting mood. I'm switching my claim from subjunctive to emphatic mood, but it's still a different mood from declarative.

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After all, you could just as easily say "Has God free will?"

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True, but you'd be changing the mood which is why I'm saying that I was wrong to say subjunctive and I really meant emphatic (which is even more silly on my part considering that I mentioned the emphatic mood in one of my posts about this and should have noticed it right then and there.)

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Subjunctive...use the infinitive form.

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Subjunctive, according to the Wiki, uses the continuous form, not the infinitive.

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Um, if I recall correctly, "continuous form" is another way of saying what I was taught to call "progressive" which is "be [conjugated] + present participle."That is, the Past Progressive of "to walk" isI was walking
You were walking
He/She/It was walking
We were walking
You were walking
They were walkingEven Wikipedia says this: Grammatical tenseAnd I have to wonder which Wikipedia article you were looking at because the article I found there says that: But even so, this isn't quite right. This is, for most regular verbs, the infinitive form of the verb. However, Wiki's rule fails in the case of the verb "to be." If we follow Wiki's rule, the present subjunctive of "to be" would be "is." But it isn't. It's "be." "The boss asked that I be here."The only exception to the rule of infinitive is the past subjunctive of "to be" which uses "were."

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The presence of the infinitive "have" in Lam's second phrase implies, to me, that it is an auxillary verb to the main verb "does."

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No, because the action of god is having, not doing. Ah, the joys of having more than one definition to a word! The English verb "have" has multiple meanings. One is that of auxilliary and one is that of possession. When we say, "God has free will," there is only one word in that sentence that can be considered the verb: "Has." And it is being used to show possession. We could rephrase it to, "God is in possession of free will."Similarly, "do" has to functions: Auxilliary and showing action. When we say, "I did it," there is only one word in that sentence that can be considered the verb: "Did." And it is being used to show action. We could rephrase it to, "I carried out the actions required to accomplish it."In the question, "Does god have free will," we are not talking about action but possession. Thus, "have" is the primary verb and "does" is the auxilliary.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

1.61803 writes:

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"Dressed to the nines" = Dressed to thine eyes.
"Spitn image" = Splitting image
"Egads" = Ye Gods

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Alas, these have become the actual phrases in modern English. Lazy pronunciation over the years have changed the words we actually spell out. Look at all of the variations of "god's wounds" we have out there such as "zounds" and "gadzooks."Besides, if we get rid of "dressed to the nines," we have to rewrite Evita and one of the better lines in it:All you will see is a girl you once knew,
Although she's dressed up to the nines,
At sixes and sevens with you.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Parasomnium writes:

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Lam's sentence has nothing to do with subjunctive mood.

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Agreed. It was my mistake.It is, however, emphatic mood.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

None of the grammar sources I'm using suggest that there is such a thing as "emphatic mood", in any Indo-European language. English only has four moods, declaritive, imperative, conditional, and subjunctive. Ok, but the subjunctive mood uses the continuous form, not the infinitive form. No, I meant declarative. Both of those statements make simple declarations of what is true; they just do so with two different main verbs.But I guess some sources call that "indicative." Mine refer to it as "declarative", and I think that makes a bit more sense. Fair enough:
English grammar - WikipediaWell, it wouldn't be the first time that the Wikipedia wasn't quite right. Mine says this:

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The subjunctive mood is used to express counterfactual (or conditional) statements, and is often found in if-then statements, and certain formulaic expressions. It is typically marked in the present tense by the auxiliary "were" plus the continuous aspect () form of the verb.

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I'm not entirely certain that matters. I may be wrong, and I'm open to correction if you can cite your source, but I understood that the main verb was the verb that was inflected to match plurality of subject, etc. It has nothing to do with having or doing.This is a sticky wicket, though, for sure. But I'm not really convinced you're not making up moods as you go along. Can you cite a source for your purported "emphatic mood"? None of the grammatical sources I've been reading give any hint of such a thing.

crashfrog responds to me:

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On more reflection, I think it's emphatic mood

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None of the grammar sources I'm using suggest that there is such a thing as "emphatic mood", in any Indo-European language. English only has four moods, declaritive, imperative, conditional, and subjunctive.

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Weren't you at the Wikipedia site? Didn't you see the huge list of moods?1 Indicative mood
2 Imperative mood
3 Subjunctive mood
4 Conditional mood
5 Negative mood
6 Optative mood
7 Cohortative mood
8 Potential mood
9 Eventive mood
10 Dubitative Mood
11 Hypothetical MoodNot every mood is used in English, but many of them are. Negative mood in English is used by adding "do + not" as in "I did not go there."I admit that my use of the term "emphatic" comes from my 8th grade English class, but I've not forgotten it. That's also why I call it "progressive" rather than "continuous" because that's what I was taught (yes...I still have my 8th grade notebook of this stuff.)

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but that follows the same construction: Use the infinitive form.

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Ok, but the subjunctive mood uses the continuous form, not the infinitive form.

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No, it doesn't! "Continuous" form uses the present particple. In other words, you need to have a verb ending in "-ing" somewhere in the sentence. "I wouldn't do that if I were you" is in the subjunctive, but there is no "-ing" verb anywhere to be found. "The boss asked that I be here" is in the subjunctive, but there is no "-ing" verb anywhere.

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And I have to wonder which Wikipedia article you were looking at

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Fair enough:
English grammar - Wikipedia

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You need to re-read it. It says: That doesn't mean that it is only and always formed by using the present participle. It simply means that it is TYPICALLY INDICATED through that construction. It then goes on to list examples, some of which don't use that construction: Those last two do not use the present participle. Therefore, by simple observation, we see that the subjunctive is not formed by using the present participle. It can, but it doesn't have to be.Notice that all of the examples given use "be" as the verb which is the only exception to the use of the infinitive. Look at what happens when we change the verb:"I asked that he stop the exploitation of the workers."That's subjunctive. You use the infinitve form. Note that in British English, it tends to get pointed out by using "should":"I asked that you should lock the house at night."

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No, because the action of god is having, not doing.

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I'm not entirely certain that matters.

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Well, it determines which verb we should be looking at for how to construct the mood we're interested in. Take a look at the claim of the use of the present participle in the subjunctive:"Were I eating, I should sit."The verb in question there is not "eating." It's "were." The phrase is about a state of being, not the act of eating.

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I understood that the main verb was the verb that was inflected to match plurality of subject, etc.

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No. Not with moods. Instead, the auxiliary is the one that gets conjugated to match the plurality of the subject, etc. while the main verb maintains a specific format. Take the progressive. It is formed by conjugating "to be" and then adding the present participle of the main verb:First Person Singular Present Progressive: I am walking.
First Person Singular Past Progressive: I was walking.
First Person Singular Future Progressive: I will be walking.
First Person Singular Present Perfect Progressive: I have been walking.
First Person Singular Past Perfect Progressive: I had been walking.
First Person Singular Future Perfect Progressive: I will have been walking.Third Person Plural Present Progressive: They are walking.
Third Person Plural Past Progressive: They were walking.
Third Person Plural Future Progressive: They will be walking.
Third Person Plural Present Perfect Progressive: They have been walking.
Third Person Plural Past Perfect Progressive: They had been walking.
Third Person Plural Future Perfect Progressive: They will have been walking.The main verb is "walk," but it isn't the one changing to match the subject. The auxiliary "to be" is. And this is what should have clued me in that "does" wasn't making the statement subjunctive but rather emphatic. The emphatic is constructed in English by adding "do" as an auxiliary.

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This is a sticky wicket, though, for sure. But I'm not really convinced you're not making up moods as you go along. Can you cite a source for your purported "emphatic mood"? None of the grammatical sources I've been reading give any hint of such a thing.

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My eighth grade English teacher won't help, I know, but here: GUIDE TO ENGLISH GRAMMARAnd here's one that's kinda cosmic: No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.pennywiselearning.com/cat--ACE-English--ace_englishIt's a course for eighth-graders and I learned this in eighth grade. Note, also, they call it "progressive" just like I do. It could be that my eighth grade teacher was of this school of terminology.Here's another along those lines: Principal Parts of Verbs SE/TWE p. 575Same thing: They call it "progressive" and "emphatic."And one more for good measure: Emphatic Tenses

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Rrhain writes:

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As I said: "Fewer" is plural. "Calories" is plural. Therefore, you use "fewer." "Fat" is singular, therefore you use "less."

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I've never thought of it that way, but I would have considered the term 'fat' to be one of mass and thus not precisely singular or plural. I don't remember the exact rule, but I always thought 'less' was to be used with terms of mass and 'fewer' with terms of quantity.There are also certain idiomatic uses of 'less than' where the usual rule doesn't apply. Thus 'less than ten dollars' or 'less than five miles' would be correct, I think.

berberry responds to me:

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As I said: "Fewer" is plural. "Calories" is plural. Therefore, you use "fewer." "Fat" is singular, therefore you use "less."

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I've never thought of it that way, but I would have considered the term 'fat' to be one of mass and thus not precisely singular or plural. I don't remember the exact rule, but I always thought 'less' was to be used with terms of mass and 'fewer' with terms of quantity.

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Well, I can see your point. You're dealing with an aggregate that is treated as a single thing. A "mob of people" is a single thing even though it is made up of individuals. Thus, you say the mob "is" doing something rather than "are."The quantitative aspect gets reduced to the dichotomy of "singular" and "plural." It's nuance and I see your point...I may be being inappropriately picky.

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There are also certain idiomatic uses of 'less than' where the usual rule doesn't apply. Thus 'less than ten dollars' or 'less than five miles' would be correct, I think.

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Nope..."fewer than ten dollars" and "fewer than five miles." Those things are plural and require the use of "fewer." I agree that quite a lot of people use "less," but they're wrong. Everything in that utterance is plural, so you need to use "fewer."

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!