Initial coordinators in technical, academic, and formal writing

Greg Morrow 3 months ago on Wordpress

Also, if the notion is true, then there's not much point going back to the Hebrew Bible and the like for anti-NIC ammunition; NIC would have been developed precisely because the ancient narrative structure would have been considered a flaw to be avoided.

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stilgherrian 3 months ago on Twitter

"If generations of Hollywood movies have taught us anything, it's that you can't reason with zombies." Ah, linguists! http://bit.ly/1JsFLZ

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Jerry Friedman 3 months ago on Wordpress

Okay, then what you've found isn't surprising, because I think most people who have an opinion on SICs would already know that they appear frequently in the King James translation. So examples in Shakespeare and Milton wouldn't convince them of anything. Its the continuation of that chain of polished prose to the present day that might convince them, and the reference books you cite probably go by that continuation.

On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised to see SICs condemned as an archaism (but I don't remember ever seeing that). ... See all content Hide content

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Jerry Friedman 3 months ago on Wordpress

@Roger Lustig: Hi, it must be what, almost thirty years?

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Roger Lustig 3 months ago on Wordpress

Along with grammar, syntax and usage there's style. And http://twitter.com/FakeAPStyleBook has suddenly sprung up to show us just how much fun it can be to prescribe this stuff.

If it hurts when you laugh, don't follow the link.

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Ken Brown 3 months ago on Wordpress

Your zombie grammarian is using the word "grammar" differently. What he means by "usage" is the way the language actually works, what you call "grammar" (or maybe "syntax").

What he means by "grammar" is a set of arbitrary rules about language which schoolkids are taught by rote and are expected to be able to reproduce as a sort of proof that they spend all those years in school. Its not really the study of language at all, more an entry ritual into a certain social class. The point of teaching it is so that some will pass and others fail.

I can sympathise with him - I was taught mathematics that way. No explanation or theory, just repetition of mechanical methods to answer trite questions. Not a good way to learn maths at all. But they seemed to think it important for some reason. ... See all content Hide content

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Peter T 3 months ago on Wordpress

I began writing intelligence analyses under a famously-strict grammarian. This was not one of his rules - and every piece had one or two sentences beginning with BUT or AND. More generally, how prescriptivist does one have to be to qualify as a zombie? Is, for instance, pointing out to the teenager that saying "like" three times in every sentence adds little to the conversation a symptom of early-onset undeadness?

Consciousness of style comes early: three year old in bath assured me me today that "I won't squirt ya" [with water pistol]. I reply "You won't squirt ya, but you will squirt me". She says "Alright, I won't squirt YOU" (and squirts me).

[(my) Linguistic zombiehood consists in the relentless expression of idiosyncratic "rules", presented not as personal stylistic preferences but as facts about what is linguistically "correct", indifferent to all appeals to logic, authority, and precedent.] ... See all content Hide content

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Graeme 3 months ago on Wordpress

I'm a legal academic. Our prose is decidedly formal, technical and academic.

And analytical, often in a mealy-mouthed way.

Strike out all sentences beginning 'But' (or 'However') and you'd decimate most law review pieces. We are also led to believe it is better not to let sentences grow too long, hence ICs are inevitably common.

My sense is people object to 'And', 'Or' and sometimes 'But' as ICs simply as they are short. Rarely do I hear objection to 'However' or 'Although' as ICs.

Conversely, French legal writers, with less pretence to 'if, then, but' analytical styles write much longer and more flowing sentences, full of commas, semi-colons and digressions. ... See all content Hide content

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LostFlameHoncho 3 months ago on Twitter

Language Log » Initial coordinators in technical, academic, and ... http://tinyurl.com/ykpwc8z

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D.O. 3 months ago on Wordpress

In order to combat NIC zombies, I propose to look at the ultimate piece of formal writing in the U.S., the Constitution (other countries may choose for themselves). My source of the text is (somewhat insufficiently) wikisource. The original 1787 text is heavy on ands and buts after semicolons, some others follow colons with the first capital letter, but let's be strict. Only those ands and buts which follow a full stop count. Here we have:

Article I, Section 7: But in all such Cases… Article II, Section 1: And they shall make a List of all the Persons… But in chusing the President… But if there should remain… Article IV, Section 1: And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe…

There are no examples in the Bill of Rights. And Art. II, sec. 1 is in relevant parts overriden by 12th amendment (ratified 1804), which helpfully has: But in choosing the President… (only the spelling of choose has changed), And if the House of Representatives… But no person constitutionally ineligible…

Moving forward:Amendment XIV (ratified 1868), Section 2: But when the right to vote at any election… Section 3: But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds… Section 4: But neither the United States nor any State… Amendment XXII (ratified 1951), Section 1: But this Article shall not apply to any person…

Thus, if the encountered zombie is American, you have a good chance to escape by brandishing the Constitution and demanding that only an explicit interpretation to the contrary by the Supreme Court (which, I am sure, is also no shy in using sentence initial conjunctions) will change your point of view. ... See all content Hide content

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Jerry Friedman 3 months ago on Wordpress

@CWV: Why shouldn't a modern usage book outweigh a thousand examples from Shakespeare and Milton? Shakespeare wrote "the most unkindest cut of all" and Milton wrote "Him who disobeys, Me disobeys." Examples such as those have no relation to modern grammatical English. Dickens, though, is more like it.

[(myl) The value of 16th- and 17th-century examples is to show that this syntactic pattern has been consistently used for more than four centuries — in fact, more than 12 — and thus is not a culpable innovation to be shunned by those who wish to preserve the glories of etc. There are other patterns that began to be used a mere century or two ago, and some may choose to draw a line in the cultural sand to keep them back. But holding the line against sentence-initial coordinators is like holding the line against beer.] ... See all content Hide content

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Andrew (not the same one) 3 months ago on Wordpress

Interestingly, the NIC rule seems to conflict with another zombie rule. If one wishes to avoid initial 'but', an obvious move is to write 'however' instead, snce 'however is not normally classed as a conjunction (and this is frequently done); but there is a 'rule' upheld in some quarters that 'however' never comes at the beginning of a clause. (One can observe both rules, by refusing to use any adversative word as the first word of a sentence; but the way the two rules push in opposite directions is still striking.) ... See all content Hide content

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Cheryl Thornett 3 months ago on Wordpress

But don't begin every other sentence with 'and', as the writer of one children's book did, quite literally. I loathed that book after the third reading, finally crossed out about half the 'ands', but still hated reading it. My son, alas, loved it. I had to excuse him as he was about 3 at the time.

The correct thread this time, I hope.

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Non Naive Speaker 3 months ago on Wordpress

Divinely inspired translators use initial coordinators plenty. I just did a go-to-bed experiment and counted " And" in the Book of Mormon: more than 4400. And " But": more than 430.

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Mr Fnortner 3 months ago on Wordpress

One, begging the question is the line of reasoning that says we should acknowledge that good writers are being correct when they write because they wouldn't have gotten to be good writers had they not been correct. And, two, I have always felt that definition by enumeration was the weakest form of definition, so that saying a conjunction is a word permitted to link A, B, C, and D is so open-ended that one could adjust the definition to include E and F, thereby adapting to any counter argument on the fly. That said, I agree with initial conjunctions. I simply believe linguists need a tighter definition than one that depends on a list, and a argument for correctness that doesn't depend on a survey of who's been using it.

[(myl) The "list of permitted categories" approach was contributed by Tom L Waters on nanowrimo, the "zombie grammarian" who (I presume) is not a linguist. I mentioned the structure of the argument in this post simply to ridicule it. But thanks for agreeing that stipulated enumeration is a weak argument for excluding the things that are left out of the list.

As for the role of surveys: If we want to determine the grammatical norms of some designated group of speakers or writers, how better to determine what these norms are than to examine the facts of what typical group members write or say?

There are certainly other forms of argument that can be (and have been) tried. We can construct a model based on simple cases, and apply it to complex ones — but if its predictions are different from the actual facts of usage, this should make us doubt our model at least as much as it makes us question the correctness of common patterns of usage. We can do psychological or neurological experiments on subjects' reactions to different classes of examples — but again, if we interpret the experiments to mean that certain aspects of well-written and well-edited writing are almost always "ungrammatical", then we've got quite a bit of 'splainin' to do.

Such arguments are certainly possible. I've tried to make one in certain cases of mis-negation. But I've never seen any attempt to determine the "correctness" of sentence-initial coordinators by such means, and I'm skeptical that any such argument could be constructed, other than as a joke.] ... See all content Hide content

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theophylact 3 months ago on Wordpress

Part of the problem here is addiction to definitions. Who decided that "conjunction " was the right and only term for this structural element? "Coordinator" gives you a lot more leverage, of course, but who decided that the etymology of the word "conjunction" limited its application in the first place? A dictionary definition is not the QED, the snapper to end all argument, as so many posters to forums seem to think. As Lincoln is said to have remarked, "Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one." ... See all content Hide content

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Janice Huth Byer 3 months ago on Wordpress

The nanowrimo writer's argument exemplifies a theory that the purpose of grammar rules is to protect not clarity but class status. By excusing fiction from rules for "technical, academic, and formal writing" the writer seems to classify all literature as informal writing. Ain't fair, that there.

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languagelog 3 months ago on Twitter

Initial coordinators in technical, academic, and formal writing: Yesterday, I quoted someone writing on the nanowrim... http://bit.ly/2KZXFq

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