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Native ’ungrammatical’ phrases

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epingchris
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 Message 41 of 69
12 September 2005 at 10:06am | IP Logged 
One of my English teachers told me another common mispronouncing of English: to say "asked" as "axed". Well, it changes the meaning. And another is to say "municipality" as "munincipality".
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Sir Nigel
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 Message 42 of 69
12 September 2005 at 3:12pm | IP Logged 
Yes, I know some people who "ax qwerstions". I also recently heard tourism pronounced just like terrorism. BIG difference.
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luke
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 Message 43 of 69
12 September 2005 at 7:35pm | IP Logged 
Quote:
say "asked" as "axed"

If it's done on purpose, is it mispronunciation?
There's a particularly interesting section on "aspect
marking" in African American Vernacular English at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebonics
Another wiki with interesting notes on "word use" is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_American_English
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epingchris
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 Message 44 of 69
13 September 2005 at 10:33am | IP Logged 
Well, from how the teacher described it to me, it doesn't sounds like that it's done on purpose.
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Giordano
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 Message 45 of 69
13 September 2005 at 6:45pm | IP Logged 
victor wrote:
What grammarians are you talking about?


I don't know specifically, I just remember having read about it. I suppose they were those of the "descriptive" persuasion, although many "prescriptive" gramarians also consider this beyond conservative, like the rule "never split an infinitive".

Andy E wrote:
My issue with this originally is that being a grammarian (albeit an amateur one) of a descriptive nature I don't see the use of object complements as ungrammatical since they reflect how the language is rather than how some would like it to be.


Yes, I should have been clearer. It's not that "It is I" is wrong in all cases (I didn't mean it the way it might have been interpreted). I meant from a descriptive point of view. Telling people how to talk just seems like a waste of time..

epingchris wrote:
Well, from how the teacher described it to me, it doesn't sounds like that it's done on purpose.


It's not really that it's done on purpose, but rather it's an established slang.
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Andy E
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 Message 46 of 69
14 September 2005 at 4:11am | IP Logged 
JWC wrote:
It reminds me of the humorous remark attributed to a famous politician (Churchill, Andy?), which goes somethign like this:

"Bad grammar is something up with which we shall not put." That awkward gramatical construction avoids ending a sentence with a preposition. The joke is that "Bad grammar is something we shall not put up with" sounds much more natural. (Note: most Americans today would use "will" instead of "shall" for the future construction).


The quote is indeed attributed to Churchill and attested to via several sources:

This is the sort of pedantry up with which I shall not put

This was scribbled in the margin (supposedly) on a memo from a civil servant complaining about ending sentences with a preposition.

Andy.

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Andy E
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 Message 47 of 69
14 September 2005 at 4:43am | IP Logged 
JWC wrote:
Andy referred to "copulative" and "linking" verbs. A way I have heard American grammarians (teaching Latin and Greek) describe a phrase such as "It is I" is to call it "predicate" construction. The predicate renames or adds information about the subject, without being the object of a transitive verb (although copulative is certainly correct).


We need to be careful with terminology here. The terms predicate and complement can overlap.

A predicate is the "completer" of a sentence and for a simple predicate may only consist of a verb or verb phrase following the subject and may not include a complement at all:

I got up - "got up" is the predicate.

In other words, it completes what is said about the subject.

The complete predicate consists of the simple predicate plus any complements and modifiers.

I got up from the table - the complete predicate is "got up from the table".

Now a complement is something that completes the sense of a subject, object or verb.

The so-called copulative or linking verbs, as I stated previously, are followed by complements which can be for example...

predicate adjectives - the book is red

predicate pronouns - It is me

predicate nominatives Geroge Bush is President

So for the first example, "is" = the simple predicate, "red" = the predicate adjective and "is red" = the complete predicate

I sincerely hope that all is now clear!

Andy.






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Iversen
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 Message 48 of 69
20 July 2006 at 2:57pm | IP Logged 
I can give one curious example of a presumed error in Danish.

Danish schoolteachers and grammarians have for centuries tried to suppress the phrase "fordi at" (literally something like "because that") in favor of "fordi" alone. But in Icelandic (and presumably Old Norse too) the corresponding phrase would be "af thvi ad" {sorry - I have yet to find out how to write the special Icelandic characters in this forum}, where you can see that "thvi" is a demonstrative pronoun. With this in mind the construction "fordi at" makes sense (it would be a parallel to "ved det at"), and I would even venture to say that it is correct Danish. Yet hundreds of angry school teachers and grammarians have tried to purge it from the Danish language since the middle ages. Sometimes you just can't push language around like that, it follows its own rules.




Edited by Iversen on 20 July 2006 at 3:02pm



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