An established series by Michael Carroll
Introduction Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
In previous lessons, we learned how to choose the correct words and tenses. Or rather, you learned them – I already knew them. Otherwise I'd never have been able to teach them. Okay, yes, I suppose I had to learn them before I could teach them, but I didn't learn them at the same time you did, which is what I mean. Look, just shut up, okay?
Lesson 3 – Grammar
Dictionaries define "Grammar" as the branch of linguistics that deals with syntax and morphology, sometimes also phonology and semantics. However, in the everyday world, grammar is a lot harder to define: most importantly, opinion is divided on the subject.
Some people think that grammar is unnecessary; that as long as the speaker and the listener (or the writer and the reader) understand each other, there's no problem.
The counter argument goes something like this: grammar – as long as both the speaker and the listener understand the rules – enables both parties to gain full and complete understanding of the subject matter and thus – hence, even – it leads to clarity and brevity. The counter argument would probably be a lot stronger if its pundits weren't annoyingly smug cravat-wearers who also understand things like different types of wine and politics.
Your humble teacher in this matter – me – knows little of wine and politics, and even less of cravats, yet he has a basic understanding of the grammatical rules and is willing to pass them on to you, the reader, for nothing more than eternal admiration and the occasional free pizza.
Double negatives:
We all know that the primary rule of English grammar is "Do not use a double negative." Example: "I don't got no gooseberry lollipops." The speaker in this case means that he (assuming for the moment that the speaker is male – we'll get into gender-specific pronouns a little later on) does not have any gooseberry lollipops. However, syntactically, what he is saying that he does have gooseberry lollipops.
Let's break this down to a simple equation:
If we take "gooseberry lollipops" to be positive (or "true"). The first "no" – which is the second one, because we treat stuff in brackets (or "parentheses") first – means that he is negating the "gooseberry lollipops". Therefore, the value of gooseberry lollipops is false. However, the second "no" (being the first one in the equation), negates the parenthetical part of the statement, showing that he does, in fact, have some gooseberry lollipops and is therefore a liar.
Now, still on the subject of double negatives, we have to be careful: at first glance, the following sentence appears to contain a double negative: "No, I didn't." However, the rule refers not to two or more negatives within a sentence, but within a clause. In this case, the "didn't" is a confirmation of the "no." Equally, if someone says, "No, no," it's not a double-negative. Neither is "not negative."
The way to be sure you're not breaking this rule is to remember your mathematical training: "minus times minus equals plus." That is, -4 x -2 = 8. (Note: if you don't believe me, ask a mathematician – don't try and work it out on a calculator: they're not clever enough).
Split infinitives:
An infinitive is a phrase (usually a pair of words) that really ought not to be split. The classic example of a split infinitive is "to boldly go" from Star Trek. The infinitive here is "to go": going is the thing that they want to do, and they want to do it boldly, so the correct sentence should be "to go boldly". Or maybe it's "boldly to go". Either way, their version is wrong – "boldly" seems so, well, naff. Perhaps they meant "to go bodily" and their typist was either (a) dyslexic or (b) a crap typist. However, it may be that in the Star Trek universe their rules of grammar are as arbitrary as their laws of physics.
Prepositions:
A preposition is a word that goes between other words, like "with". A sentence should never be terminated with a preposition. That is, you're not allowed to say, "Roger is the person I went with." You should instead say, "Roger is the person with whom I went." (Note: "whom" is the objective form of "who".) (Also note: I realise that in the first sentence of this paragraph I ended the sentence with a preposition, but that's because I was quoting the word, not using it as part of the sentence's structure). There are many prepositions, out for which you should carefully look: "with" "to" and "be" are just three of them. If you're not sure whether the word you're using is a preposition, try and rearrange the sentence: if you can get it to sound smug and clever, you've probably got it right.
Plurals:
If we have one of a thing – say, one lollipop – and then we have another, we then have two lollipops. Note that the word "lollipop" has been modified: it now has a trailing "s". It seems simple, but in fact it gets a lot more complicated. Well, maybe not a lot more, a bit more would be more accurate. What if we have one of a thing whose name already ends in "s" and then we get another? What do we do then? Eh?
Well, this is what we do: if we have one kiss, and then we get another kiss, we say that we have had two kisses. In that example, we've added "es" to the word. Unlike when we pluralise most non-"s"-ending words, we've actually added another syllable. Now, we don't always added "es" when pluralising an "s"-ending word, but since I can't think of any examples, let's just say that we mostly do.
I realise that sounds like a weak excuse, but as things are about to get a lot complicateder I don't want to make this too hard...
Possession:
When something possesses another thing – say we're talking about the lollipop that belongs Roger – we write it thus: "Roger's lollipop". That little mark before the "s" is an apostrophe, and it has been proven to be the single most important punctuation symbol currently in use in the English language (source: National Statistic's Office).
We use the apostrophe to indicate abbreviation: in the above example, the apostrophe means " hi" – that is, the sentence would be "Roger his lollipop". In ancient times, this would have been how people spoke, but a spoken language naturally acquires its own abbreviations and shortcuts, hence the running-together of "Roger" and "his".
Another example of abbreviation: if we write "Roger's tired", the apostrophe stands for "is". If we write "Roger's tried", that's the past tense (see last issue's article for more on tenses), and the apostrophe stands for "has".
Occasionally, people use apostrophes for plurals, but they're mad. Shun these people and treat them like the leprous Nazi scum they are.
So, by now you're most likely thinking "apostrophes are simple enough. What's for dinner?" But before you go rooting through the icebox and wondering whether it's safe to eat those fish fingers, we have one more point to cover about apostrophes: the dreaded "its" / "it's" dilemma
Most people have trouble deciding which "its" to use, but don't let that worry you: these are generally the same people who, when telling you about a phone call, hold up their right hand with their thumb and little finger extended, so you'll know exactly what they mean just in case the phrase "phone call" isn't quite clear enough.
Unlike every other word in the English language, the word "it" does not take on an apostrophe for possession: we say "its lollipop", not "it's lollipop" (that is, we'd say the former if we were referring to a lollipop belonging to something). "It" only gains an apostrophe in two cases: when we mean "it is" or "it has". So, if you're not sure, ask yourself whether the sentence makes sense if you change the "it's" to "it is" or "it has". If it doesn't make sense, you're either not trying hard enough, or you don't need the apostrophe.
Exercises:
- Write a sentence that breaks all the rules mentioned above.
- Given that you're now such an expert on apostrophes, see if you can put them in the correct places in this sentence: "Rogers donated Miss Jones lollipops sticks towards Dazs collection."
Competition Time:
Using a red pen, circle all the pronouns in the above article. If you then connect the circles in the correct pattern, a word will be spelled out: when you're sure you have the right word, tear out the pages and send them – along with a postal order for £150 – to the usual address. The sender of the first correct answer received will win an all-expenses deferred holiday for two to Ibiza!