Wednesday 10 August 2011

This error has gotten soooo common!


Another post from the kodiakdailymirror.com Herman's Hawks and Handsaws collection

In the language of Western tonal music, a V chord at the end of a phrase makes your brain expect a I chord. This V-I sequence, called an “authentic cadence,” creates the most satisfyingly final-sounding ending possible. Consider the end of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, a sequence of G and C chords (the V and I in the key of C) alternating eight times, just to make sure everybody really gets the point.
Other types of cadences play with the strong sense of expectation. The “deceptive cadence” creates a sense of surprise by following the V chord with a VI instead of the expected I.
The “half cadence” just cuts off at the V, ending the phrase with the unshakable feeling that something more must follow.
But where Beethoven could use that feeling to carry us into the next musical idea, people speaking and writing English have taken to misusing a little word, leaving listeners and readers hanging.
The culprit is “so,” when used as a substitute for “very,” as in this example:
“The teen vampire was so dreamy.”
This adverbial “so” needs another clause to make a complete sentence:
“The teen vampire was so dreamy that the girls swooned.”
or
“I swooned because the teen vampire was so dreamy.”
One might argue that the incomplete version belongs in the category of exclamations, like “Wow!” and “What a fluffy kitty!” These sentences share with imperatives an exemption from usual subject/predicate requirements. That whole area would make for some interesting syntax papers.
Meanwhile, I associate the incorrect usage with a style more immature than illiterate, but it has spread beyond the junior high schools.
The same internal grammar sense that gives me the “unfinished” feeling about those “so” sentences leaves me unhappy with an AP-sanctioned usage. It goes like this: The omnipotent stylebook tells us to use upper-case “Gov.” or “Sen.” before a name, as in “Gov. Sean Parnell.” But that leads to the less perspicuous usage “former Gov. Sarah Palin” or “ex-state Sen. Ben Stevens,” supported by a dedicated entry on the word “former.”
That bugs me because it applies the AP style by grouping the wrong elements. The rule should apply only to titles like “governor” or “senator” — not, I argue, to quasi-titles like “former governor.”
In formal syntax terms, “former Gov. Sarah Palin” treats “Gov. Sarah Palin” as if it is a constituent, excluding the “former.” However, any reasonable structural analysis would treat “former governor” as a constituent separate from the following name.
How say the readers? Should I defy AP and start using “former governor Sarah Palin”?
And why should my sense of what sounds wrong — as opposed to anybody else’s — have any relevance in deciding the issue? Frankly, the best reason is that I grew up in a middle-class family in Toledo, Ohio, and therefore use the most generic possible American English. It looks like this blog will keep coming back to the question of prescriptive authority for language.
Ceterum censeo “utilize” esse delendam.

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