(The Unofficial, Unauthorized) English as it is Broken column

2009-11-06T12:26:00.003-05:00

Scrap/Scrape

In Singapore, the words scrap and scrape are often confused, with many pronouncing the former like the latter in the context of sending cars to the scrapyard. Still, the mistake in the headline (Straits Times website, 6 November 2009) is suprising, since one would expect a sub-editor to know better.

2009-11-05T11:09:00.003-05:00

Comes and Goes

The use of goes in the headline is extremely odd.

The choice between come and go is often tricky because it depends on who the point of reference is: the writer/speaker or the reader/hearer.

Here, the headline writer ought to have taken the reader as point of reference because the latter interprets the situation as one in which the vaccine comes to a clinic near her/him from the country of manufacture — hence comes is preferable to goes.

2009-11-04T07:24:00.007-05:00

Pronunciation of –s suffix

This notice, seen in Ikea cafés in Singapore, encourages customers to clear their trays after eating. As can be seen, in Singapore English pronunciation, trace and trays are homophones (different words pronounced identically): both are /treɪs/.

By contrast, in other varieties of English, e.g. British, trace would be /treɪs/ and trays, /treɪz/. The suffix –s, as a possessive (e.g. Chuck’s), plural (e.g. Chucks) or third-person singular present tense (e.g. chucks) marker, is realized as /s/ after voiceless sounds and as /z/ after voiced ones (vowels and voiced consonants). This rule applies to trays, whose singular form, tray /treɪ/, ends in a vowel (voiced) sound, but not to trace /treɪs/, where the /s/ is not a suffix but part of the root.

2009-10-31T09:05:00.003-05:00

Ashes

Some problems with this advertisement for a pocket ashtray.

The top line reads: A green way to toss away your cigarette ashes. Make it cigarette ash, since the word ash is uncountable (hence singular) in the context of tobacco, wood, coal or volcanoes. The plural ashes is more appropriate for cremated bodies and for buildings, etc. destroyed by fire.

The next line reads: Your environment friendly Pocket Ashtray. The compound adjective is more commonly environmentally friendly (adverb+adjective) or environment-friendly (with hyphen).

The last line is the exhortation, Don’t be a Tosser, keep the city clean! The word tosser is a bit unfortunate here since it is, among other things, a swear word with the literal meaning ‘one who pleasures himself’.

2009-10-30T03:58:00.002-05:00

Premises

The word premises, meaning ‘the building and land near to it that a business owns or uses’ (Oxford), is always plural. Hence, a plural noun and verb are needed: These are smoke-free premises.

2009-10-30T03:51:00.002-05:00

Subject-Verb Agreement

This headline, from the Daily Telegraph website (12 August 2009), is wrong. Make it:

Thinking of something good that happened the day before boosts happiness.

In Standard English, verbs agree with subjects. Here, we have a subject in the form of a nonfinite clause, as underlined above. When clauses function as subjects, they are grammatically singular — hence the singular verb boosts.

The subheading is a little trickier: Smiling and recalling something pleasant from the previous day help to make you happier, according to a new experiment.

The plural verb help, if intentional, suggests that the writer was thinking of smiling and recalling something pleasant from the previous day as two separate activities, hence making the subject plural. My preference, however, would be to treat it as a single activity, hence Smiling ... previous day helps ....

2009-10-30T03:39:00.005-05:00

–ise vs –ize

Are criticize, analyze and televize American spellings?

Some quick answers: criticize is also possible in British English (BrE); analyze is found only in American English (AmE); and televize is possible in neither.

There is a widespread misconception that –ize is AmE and –ise, BrE. It is worth remembering, however, that –ize has been in the English language since the 16th century — long before the founding of the United States of America as we know it.

While –ize is standard in AmE, it is also used by many BrE writers. Reputable British publishers such as the Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Longman and Macmillan, and newspapers such The Times, prefer –ize on the grounds that it is closer to the Greek root –izo (whereas –ise is French).

There are many words, however, which cannot, for etymological reasons, be spelt with –ize: advertise, advise, arise, circumcise, compromise, excise, exercise, improvise, incise, merchandise, premise, promise, revise, supervise, surmise, surprise and televise, to name a few.

Another point to note is that words ending in –yse cannot be spelt –yze in BrE, even by writers who prefer –ize: for example, analyse, catalyse, and paralyse. (These spellings retain the s from the noun forms analysis, catalysis, and paralysis.) In AmE, however, only –yze is used: analyze, catalyze, paralyze.

Hence, –yze is the only true AmE-only spelling, whereas –ize, though used chiefly in AmE, is hardly an American spelling since it has been in continuous use in BrE for the past five centuries.

2009-10-21T00:16:00.005-05:00

Pore Over

Unless the New Paper (20 October 2009) really meant that intelligence officers were going to empty liquid on a book, the phrasal verb they were looking for was pore over (‘to look at or read something very carefully’, Oxford).

2009-10-15T00:09:00.014-05:00

Wendy Saw Joe *Scratched Her Car

Something I shared during this week’s lecture.

Which is correct, (1) or (2)?

(1) Wendy saw Joe scratch her car.
(2) Wendy saw Joe scratched her car.

Most people know that (1) is correct and (2) is wrong. Some teachers, however, are asked so often about (2) that they begin, quite understandably, to believe it might actually be correct. After all, it would seem logical enough that, as saw indicates past tense with the subject Wendy, so also should scratched, with Joe.

The thing to remember here is that, in English, the verb agrees with the subject of the clause (subject–verb agreement). In the main clause, Wendy is the subject, hence saw agrees with it. Scratch cannot, however, agree with Joe since it is the object of the clause. (The clause has the structure S+V+O+Co; Wendy + saw + Joe + scratch her car.) But if Joe became the subject of its own main clause, then the verb would agree with it: Joe scratched the car. Therefore, only a nonfinite (tenseless, agreementless) form of scratch can appear after Joe: either the base form scratch or the –ing participle, scratching.

What, then, is the difference between scratch and scratching?

(3) Wendy saw Joe scratch her car.
(4) Wendy saw Joe scratching her car.

In (3), scratch implies that Joe made a single scratch, and that Wendy witnessed the act from start to finish. By contrast, in (4), scratching implies that the act was ongoing; when Wendy looked, Joe was already engaged in his mischief.

Why, then, is it possible to say (5) but not (6)?

(5) Wendy made her pupils cry.
(6) Wendy made her pupils *crying.

In (5), cry implies that Wendy witnessed the start of the act — indeed, because she was the cause of it. It should be obvious that (6) is impossible since, if Wendy caused her pupils to cry, then they could not already have been crying. The verb made above is called a causative (a person/thing causes another person/thing do something).

2009-10-14T06:14:00.009-05:00

Collective vs Uncountable Nouns

This sign, No Footwears Beyond This Point (Straits Times, 12 October 2009) is obviously wrong — but so also is the analysis of footwear as ‘generic, collective and plural’.

First, in grammar, generic is a term associated primarily with pronouns, not nouns. Generic pronouns are those referring to no specific addressee, like you and one, e.g. You/One should never work too hard. It is not clear what a ‘generic noun’ is supposed to mean.

Second, footwears is not a collective noun; it is uncountable. Uncountable nouns include flour, sugar, salt, bread, patience, food, tea, coffee, metal, furniture, equipment, information and software. They take determiners such as much and less (rather than many and fewer). Uncountable nouns do not (or do not usually) have –s plural forms; hence, *informations and *flours are wrong.

However, some nouns that are normally uncountable also have countable uses, with the meaning ‘varieties of’. So we may say I want some coffee, but also I have tried some of the world’s finest coffees.

The third point about footwear being plural is also wrong. Uncountable nouns are in fact grammatically singular, hence The information/equipment/software/furniture is not very useful; Coffee/Sugar/Salt is bad for health when taken in excess. And, of course, Footwear is prohibited in the prayer hall.

In Singapore, collective nouns are surprisingly often confused with uncountable nouns. This is perhaps due to the misinterpretation of the term ‘collective’ as referring to collections of, for example, shoes (footwear) and tables and chairs (furniture). Note that collective nouns refer to groups of animate beings (see previous post) — those with powers of volition, i.e. the will to act. This will to act enables members of the group (e.g. flock, family, committee, staff, crew) to act as individuals or as a single unit, in unison with the rest. Footwear and furniture are not collective nouns because shoes, chairs and tables do not have powers of volition.

2009-10-14T05:14:00.007-05:00

Collective Nouns

Microsoft show ‘faster’ Windows 7, proclaims the headline (BBC News, 2 September 2009).

While this may look like a subject–verb agreement error to many readers, in British English it is in fact correct.

That’s because British English very often uses plural verbs with what appear to be singular collective nouns, where singular verbs would be the norm in Singapore English and American English.

A collective noun is essentially a group of animate individuals, who may function as individuals (+ plural verb) or as a single unit (+ singular verb). Common collective nouns include staff, crew, group, team, committee, family, flock, police, public, audience, police, army, media, class, institution, university, and businesses (e.g. Microsoft above).

British English often allows a choice between a singular or a plural verb. A singular verb is preferred if the emphasis is on the unit as a single entity, e.g. The committee is undecided, while a plural verb suggests that its members are acting as individuals, e.g. My committee are always quarrelling among themselves.

Collective nouns like police always take plural verbs in British English, as do sports teams, e.g. Argentina have qualified for the World Cup. Singapore English generally favours singular verbs, except in sports reporting, in which it is clearly influenced by British English.

Some collective nouns are always singular in form, e.g. police (not *polices). Others are countable (singular or plural), e.g. family/families, group/groups. Yet others are only rarely found in the plural, e.g. staff/staffs, crew/crews, meaning two or more sets of staff/crew (not staff/crew members ), as in The staffs of the White House and Downing Street.

2009-10-05T23:22:00.003-05:00

Plural –s

Quite a creative way to make a correction look like an intended part of the design!

2009-10-05T01:40:00.008-05:00

Writings

This is the cover of a book titled More than Half the Sky: Creative Writings by 30 Singaporean Women.

According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, the word writing in the sense of ‘the activity of writing books, articles, etc.’ is uncountable, hence marked [U], as in the expression creative writing.

By contrast, the plural, i.e. countable ([C]), use denotes ‘a group of pieces of writing, especially by a particular person or on a particular subject’, as in the examples His experiences in India influenced his later writings and the writings of Hegel (Oxford).

Hence, the use of writings in the subtitle of the book is non-standard, because it refers neither to the work of a particular person nor to work on a particular subject.

2009-10-01T04:44:00.004-05:00

Bald/Bore

Here is a typo that has a phonological explanation. Lamenting that many drivers do not know how to maintain their cars, the reader comments: And I have [observed that] that [some/many] drivers don’t change their tyres even though the tyres were bore (Straits Times website, 1 October 2009).

Quite obviously, the writer meant the tyres were bald. What’s interesting is that he may simply have been typing what he heard in his head — and evidently he pronounces bald and bore alike.

But how does bald /bɔ:ld/ become bore /bɔ:/? First, /d/ is lost through the process of final-consonant simplification. Next, syllable-final dark /l/ is deleted. Both are well-known features of Singapore English phonology.

2009-09-30T05:35:00.003-05:00

Less Is More

To prescriptive grammarians, 10 units or less would be wrong, since units is countable and would accordingly require fewer. The notice should therefore read 10 units or fewer.

However, this conundrum could be avoided altogether if we simply phrase it Up to 10 units/items.

2009-09-26T10:54:00.006-05:00

Negative Dual

In Standard English, both is not normally used in the negative, so the above extract (Straits Times web, 16 September 2009) would read: neither man was dressed and both were foaming.

The so-called ‘negative dual’, as exemplified by the ST extract, is, however, common in Singapore English.

2009-09-20T11:06:00.004-05:00

Molest/Molestation

The use of molest as a noun is usual in Singapore; as it is found regularly in the Straits Times (this example from the web edition, 16 September 2009), one might consider it Standard Singapore English usage.

In other standard Englishes (e.g. British), however, molest can only be a verb. The noun is molestation.

2009-09-14T01:06:00.006-05:00

How It Looks/What It Looks Like

The above is from an article about a Singapore mail-order bride agency and its success in attracting overseas customers, owing to its use of English and the web (New Paper on Sunday, 13 September 2009).

Singapore English is often said to be economical and to the point, but this is not always so — how the girls look like has a superfluous like. The standard English expressions would be how the girls look or what the girls look like.

This distinction is obvious in the following excerpts, taken from the same article in the online version of the UK-based CAR Magazine:

2009-09-10T00:51:00.006-05:00

Youth

Here is another error that is exceedingly common in the pages of the Straits Times (7 September 2009). Reporting on the launch of this year’s Speak Good English Movement, the newspaper asks young people for their views on whether ‘youths’ are the right target for the campaign.

This use of youths to mean ‘young people’ in general is non-standard. As we can see from the following entry from the Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, the word youths as a [C] or countable noun (i.e. singular or plural) can refer only to males, especially teenaged ones involved in violent or criminal activities. However, the Straits Times clearly refers to young people both male and female, engaged in nothing more objectionable than Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

2009-08-30T09:34:00.006-05:00

Subject–Verb Agreement, Again and Again

This has to be the most persistent error in the Straits/Sunday Times — which, somewhat ironically, fancies itself as the standard-bearer of good English in Singapore and runs a website ridiculing other people’s bad English.

The plural verb characterise is wrong (Sunday Times Lifestyle, 30 August 2009). Make it characterises (singular), since it is inside a relative clause postmodifying the singular head noun friendliness.

2009-08-25T10:10:00.004-05:00

One Of Those Problems...

The Russian pianist Nikolai Demidenko is one of those artists who does not attempt something unless it can be done differently (Straits Times, Life! supplement, 19 June 2009).

It is natural to think that a singular verb should follow one of ..., but in reality the verb is always plural. Here’s how it works:

The underlined constituent in the quoted sentence is a noun phrase, with the structure one of X.

If I were to ask, ‘One of what?’, your answer would be: those artists who do not attempt something unless it can be done differently.

Now, it should be obvious that there’s a relative clause postmodifying artists, and since the relative pronoun who refers to artists, the verb that follows should be plural.

2009-08-25T10:06:00.003-05:00

Uncountable Nouns and Agreement

The second bullet point of this notice, by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore, reads:

Do not buy mouldy food as they may contain mycotoxins.

As uncountable (or noncount) nouns are grammatically singular, the sentence should have read, ... as it may contain mycotoxins.

2009-08-20T10:01:00.004-05:00

Casanova

The spelling cassanova in the headline (Straits Times, Internet edition, 20 August 2009) is wrong: make it casanova. The term is used in English to mean ‘womanizer’, a reference to the eponymous Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt, reputedly the ‘world’s greatest lover’.

In Italian, casa nova would literally mean ‘new house’, whereas cassa nova would mean ‘new cash’ or ‘new (cash) till’.

2009-08-19T12:28:00.006-05:00

Well Qualified

‘Could this be Singapore’s most well qualified taxi driver?’ asks the Straits Times (18 August 2009) of Dr Cai Ming Jie, who holds a PhD in molecular biology from Stanford.

This is a misuse of the term well qualified — a taxi driver who is well qualified for his job may have many years’ driving experience, hold certificates in defensive driving, be an approved tour guide, and command some foreign languages in addition to the local languages. But holding a PhD in molecular biology would probably not make him a better taxi driver.

Perhaps the Straits Times meant most highly educated.

2009-08-08T11:03:00.003-05:00

Happy National Day

There’re two ways of analysing Happy National Day as a noun phrase.

The more obvious analysis, perhaps, is to treat the adjectives happy and national as premodifiers of the head noun day, hence [ happy national [day] ].

The other is to treat national day as a single head noun, and happy as the sole premodifier, hence [ happy [national day] ]. This is perhaps the better analysis since national day is thought of as a single idea.