The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (64 page)
Read The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language Online
Authors: Steven Pinker
Bernstein’s “real reason” for
flied
is that it has a specialized meaning in baseball, but that is the wrong reason;
see a bet, cut a deal
, and
take the count
all have specialized meanings, but they get to keep their irregular pasts
saw, cut
, and
took
, rather than switching to
seed, cutted, taked
. No, the real reason is that
to fly out
means
to hit a fly
, and
a fly
is a noun. And the reason that people say
broadcasted
is the same: not that they want to convert all irregular verbs into regular ones overnight, but that they mentally analyze the verb
to broadcasts
“to make a broadcast,” that is, as coming from the much more common noun
a broadcast
. (The original meaning of the verb, “to disperse seeds,” is now obscure except among gardeners.) As a verb based on a noun,
to broadcast
is not eligible to have its own idiosyncratic past-tense form, so nonmavens sensibly apply the “add -
ed
” rule.
I am obliged to discuss one more example: the much-vilified
hopefully
. A sentence like
Hopefully, the treaty will pass
is said to be a grave error. The adverb
hopefully
comes from the adjective
hopeful
, meaning “in a manner of hope.” Therefore, the mavens say, it should be used only when the sentence refers to a person who is doing something in a hopeful manner. If it is the writer or reader who is hopeful, one should say
It is hoped that the treaty will pass
, or
If hopes are realized, the treaty will pass, or I hope that the treaty will pass
.
Now consider the following:
1. It is simply not true that an English adverb must indicate the manner in which the actor performs the action. Adverbs come in two kinds: “verb phrase” adverbs like
carefully
, which do refer to the actor, and “sentence” adverbs like
frankly
, which indicate the attitude of the speaker toward the content of the sentence. Other examples of sentence adverbs include:
accordingly
admittedly
alarmingly
amazingly
basically
bluntly
candidly
confidentially
curiously
generally
happily
honestly
ideally
incidentally
intriguingly
mercifully
oddly
parenthetically
predictably
roughly
seriously
strikingly
supposedly
understandably
Note that many of these fine sentence adverbs, like
happily, honestly
, and
mercifully
, come from verb phrase adverbs, and they are virtually never ambiguous in context. The use of
hopefully
as a sentence adverb, which has been around in writing at least since the 1930s (according to the
Oxford English Dictionary
) and in speech well before then, is a perfectly sensible application of this derivational process.
2. The suggested alternatives
It is hoped that
and
If hopes are realized display
four famous sins of bad writing: passive voice, needless words, vagueness, pomposity.
3. The suggested alternatives do not mean the same thing as
hopefully
, so the ban would leave certain thoughts unexpressible.
Hopefully
makes a hopeful prediction, whereas
I hope that
and
It is hoped that
merely describe certain people’s mental states. Thus you can say
I hope that the treaty will pass, but it isn’t likely
, but it would be odd to say
Hopefully, the treaty will pass, but it isn’t likely
.
4. We are supposed to use
hopefully
only as a verb phrase adverb, as in the following:
Hopefully, Larry hurled the ball toward the basket with one second left in the game.
Hopefully, Melvin turned the record over and sat back down on the couch eleven centimeters closer to Ellen.
Call me uncouth, call me ignorant, but these sentences do not belong to any language that I speak.
Imagine that one day someone announced that everyone has been making a grievous error. The correct name for the city in Ohio that people call Cleveland is really Cincinnati, and the correct name for the city that people call Cincinnati is really Cleveland. The expert gives no reasons, but insists that that is what is correct, and that anyone who cares about the language must immediately change the way that he (yes,
he
, not
they
) refers to the cities, regardless of the confusion and expense. You would surely think that this person is insane. But when a columnist or editor makes a similar pronouncement about
hopefully
, he is called an upholder of literacy and high standards.
I have debunked nine myths of the generic language maven, and now I would like to examine the mavens themselves. People who set themselves up as language experts differ in their goals, expertise, and common sense, and it is only fair to discuss them as individuals.
The most common kind of maven is the wordwatcher (a term invented by the biologist and wordwatcher Lewis Thomas). Unlike linguists, wordwatchers train their binoculars on the especially capricious, eccentric, and poorly documented words and idioms that get sighted from time to time. Sometimes a wordwatcher is a scholar in some other field, like Thomas or Quine, who indulges a lifelong hobby by writing a charming book on word origins. Sometimes it is a journalist assigned to the Question & Answer column of a newspaper. Here is a recent example from
Ask the Globe
:
Q. When we want to irritate someone, why do we say we want “to get his goat”?
J.E., Boston
A. Slang experts aren’t entirely sure, but some claim the expression comes from an old race track tradition of putting a goat in the same stall as a high-strung racing thoroughbred to keep the horse calm. Nineteenth century gamblers sometimes stole the goat to unnerve the horse and throw the race. Hence, the expression “get your goat.”
This kind of explanation is satirized in Woody Allen’s “Slang Origins”:
How many of you have wondered where certain slang expressions come from? Like “She’s the cat’s pajamas,” or to “take it on the lam.” Neither have I. And yet for those who are interested in this sort of thing I have provided a brief guide to a few of the more interesting origins.
…“Take it on the lam” is English in origin. Years ago, in England, “lamming” was a game played with dice and a large tube of ointment. Each player in turn threw dice and then skipped around the room until he hemorrhaged. If a person threw seven or under he would say the word “quintz” and proceed to turn in a frenzy. If he threw over seven, he was forced to give every player a portion of his feathers and was given a good “lamming.” Three “lammings” and a player was “kwirled” or declared a moral bankrupt. Gradually any game with feathers was called “lamming” and feathers became “lams.” To “take it on the lam” meant to put on feathers and later, to escape, although the transition is unclear.
This passage captures my reaction to the wordwatchers. I don’t think they do any harm, but (a) I never completely believe their explanations, and (b) in most cases I don’t really care. Years ago a columnist recounted the origin of the word
pumpernickel
. During one of his campaigns in central Europe Napoleon stopped at an inn and was served a loaf of coarse, dark, sour bread. Accustomed to the delicate white baguettes of Paris, he sneered, “C’est pain pour Nicole,” Nicole being his horse. When the columnist was challenged (the dictionaries say the word comes from colloquial German, meaning “farting goblin”), he confessed that he and some buddies had made up the story in a bar the night before. For me, wordwatching for its own sake has all the intellectual excitement of stamp collecting, with the added twist that an undetermined number of your stamps are counterfeit.
At the opposite end of the temperamental spectrum one finds the Jeremiahs, expressing their bitter laments and righteous prophecies of doom. An eminent dictionary editor, language columnist, and usage expert once wrote, quoting a poet:
As a poet, there is only one political duty and that is to defend one’s language from corruption. And that is particularly serious now. It is being corrupted. When it is corrupted, people lose faith in what they hear, and that leads to violence.
The linguist Dwight Bolinger, gently urging this man to get a grip, had to point out that “the same number of muggers would leap out of the dark if everyone conformed overnight to every prescriptive rule ever written.”
In recent years the loudest Jeremiah has been the critic John Simon, whose venomous film and theater reviews are distinguished by their lengthy denunciations of actresses’ faces. Here is a representative opening to one of his language columns:
The English language is being treated nowadays exactly as slave traders once handled the merchandise in their slave ships, or as the inmates of concentration camps were dealt with by their Nazi jailers.
The grammatical error that inspired his tasteless comparison, incidentally, was Tip O’Neill’s redundantly referring to his “fellow colleagues,” which Simon refers to as “the rock bottom of linguistic ineptitude.” Speaking of Black English Vernacular, Simon writes:
Why should we consider some, usually poorly educated, subculture’s notion of the relationship between sound and meaning? And how could a grammar—any grammar—possibly describe that relationship?
As for “I be,” “you be,” “he be,” etc., which should give us all the heebie-jeebies, these may indeed be comprehensible, but they go against all accepted classical and modern grammars and are the product not of a language with roots in history but of ignorance of how language works.
There is no point in refuting this malicious know-nothing, for he is not participating in any sincere discussion. Simon has simply discovered the trick used with great effectiveness by certain comedians, talk-show hosts, and punk-rock musicians: people of modest talent can attract the attention of the media, at least for a while, by being unrelentingly offensive.
The third kind of language maven is the entertainer, who shows off his collection of palindromes, puns, anagrams, rebuses, malapropisms, Goldwynisms, eponyms, sesquipedalia, howlers, and bloopers. Entertainers like Willard Espy, Dimitri Borgman, Gyles Brandreth, and Richard Lederer write books with titles like
Words at Play, Language on Vacation, The Joy of Lex
, and
Anguished English
. These rollicking exhibitions of linguistic zaniness are all in good fun, but when reading them I occasionally feel like Jacques Cousteau at a dolphin show, longing that these magnificent creatures be allowed to shake off their hula skirts and display their far more interesting natural talents in a dignified setting. Here is a typical example from Lederer:
When we take the time to explore the paradoxes and vagaries of English, we find that hot dogs can be cold, darkrooms can be lit, homework can be done in school, nightmares can take place in broad daylight while morning sickness and daydreaming can take place at night….
Sometimes you have to believe that all English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what other language do people drive in a parkway and park in a driveway? In what other language do people recite a play and play at a recital?…How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?…
Doughnut holes:
Aren’t these little treats doughnut balls? The holes are what’s left in the original doughnut….
They’re head over heels in love.
That’s nice, but all of us do almost everything
head over heels
. If we are trying to create an image of people doing cartwheels and somersaults, why don’t we say,
They’re heels over head in love?
Objection! (1) Everyone senses the difference between a compound, which can have a conventional meaning of its own, like any other word, and a phrase, whose meaning is determined by the meanings of its parts and the rules that put them together. A compound is pronounced with one stress pattern
(dárkroom)
and a phrase is pronounced with another
(dark róom)
. The supposedly “crazy” expressions, like
hot dog
and
morning sickness
, are obviously compounds, not phrases, so cold hot dogs and nighttime morning sickness do not violate grammatical logic in the least. (2) Isn’t it obvious that
fat chance
and
wise guy
are sarcastic? (3)
Donut holes
, the trade name of a product of Dunkin’ Donuts, is intentially whimsical—did someone not get the joke? (4) The preposition
over
has several meanings, including a static arrangement, as in
Bridge over troubled water
, and the path of a moving object, as in
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Head over heels
involves the second meaning, describing the motion, not the position, of the inamorato’s head.
