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20th May 2009

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Some grammatical curiosities in the NZ Herald

First, on Melissa Lee, Mt Albert MP who thinks a pile of houses should get destroyed to create a bypass:

(1) She asked if the tunnel was so important to Labour, why didn’t they fund it and build it while in Government for nine years.

In English, we tend to invert subject-verb order when we ask questions.

(2) She is in a dirigibile.
(3) Is she in a dirigibile?

Typically we use explicit auxiliary verbs to do this:

(4) They _____ walked down to the mill.
(5) Did they walk down to the mill?

A few wiggly bits here involving HAVE, but that’s the general idea.

In indirect questions, though, we don’t invert subject-verb ordering.

(6) The orphan went to the Bolshoi Ballet.
(7) Where did the orphan go?
(8) I asked Boris where the orphan went.

The charmers at The New Zealand Herald seem to think differently. Is the sentence in (1) meant to be using an actual quote? If so, we’d expect this:

(9) She asked, “If the tunnel is so important to Labour, why didn’t they fund it and build it while in Government for nine years?”

 The writer’s use of sequence of tenses, though, to show that she was asking this in the present relative to when she said it, but that she said it in the past, indicates that it is indeed an indirect question. You can’t read the original text and replace “asked” with “said”; it’s an indirect question not reported speech. Why, then, is the word order in the indirect question the same as it would be in the actual question as spoken? It’s a mystery. Here’s my improvement on it:

(10) She asked why, if the tunnel was so important to Labour, they didn’t fund it and build it while in Government for nine years.

The best bit of the article, though, is grammatically sounder:

(11) Asked by students if she regretted her comments made last Wednesday that a motorway would divert criminals from South Auckland, Ms Lee said “you guys are obviously students and do not watch television”.

It takes students not to watch television! At least the bunny ears let us know that she’s quoted this time.

Second, a monstrous list as the charges laid against Tony Veitch surface:

(12) According to the original police summary of facts, these other alleged assaults included Veitch:

• Forcing her against wall and kicking her leg several times at her Orakei home.
• Throwing Dunne-Powell onto a bed at the Stables Cottages in Northland. Veitch punched a wall, leaving a hole which needed repairs.
• Throwing her onto a bed and pinned her down in a Novotel hotel room in Rotorua after Veitch MCed an event.
• Chasing her upstairs at his St Heliers home, cornered her, then kicked her so hard she was unable to walk.
• Pinning her to the bed and punching her in the torso at his home.
• Grabbing her arms leaving bruises, then kicking her legs at his home.

Why is half of (almost) each of these subordinate clauses tensed and half untensed? Oh, Herald, you bemuse me. Also, I’m curious as to how someone “forc[es] someone against wall”. Why, too, did the hole need “repairs”? How many instances of reparation were enacted against the alleged hole? And is ‘arm-grabbing’ really an official charge? I’m reminded of this:

(13) Judge: So you say you were shot in the fracas?
Witness: No; I was shot in the chest.

Third, then. Dunne-Powell talks about being abused and spouts out this:

(14) Dunne-Powell and Veitch remained in touch after the January assault. “We spoke, text and occasionally met,” Dunne-Powell told police. “We had a history, so it wasn’t a clean cut after the incident. Even though it happened, initially I still thought I loved him.”

Now, we all know that TEXT is a verb (as well as a noun and whatnot). Now we see that it’s irregular!

(15) I text [-PAST] Brian once or twice a day.
(16) She text [+PAST] him last Wednesday.

Is this standard now? Huzzah. On a more human level, though, it’s good to get an insight into Dunne-Powell’s plight. At least she didn’t do a Rihanna and stay with the bastard then get this tattoo -

 - telling everybody that - YES - domestic violence is a-okay! As is all other violence. Her message?

(17) Husbands, do try this at home.

Tagged: medialinguistics

7th May 2009

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Una pregunta

How does “to feel subpar” (or “to feel below par”) signify “to feel poorly”?

If one’s below par, one’s done well for oneself. In golf, that is, where the idiom comes from (consider: “That’s just par for the course.”).

Somehow this idiom got bizarrified when it stopped being jargon.

Does anybody ever feel “above par”?

And how?

Tagged: linguistics