Periods Meeting Quotes

The was form is possible in informal, familiar conversation.

You lack a sense of humor, Frank. That's quite normal for ramrod prescriptivists that have had the yardstick stuck in an uncomfortable location.

Here is an interesting discussion of those who have been cut from the same cloth as you.


Quote:
Death of the Queen's English Society

June 6, 2012 @ 3:47 am · Filed by Geoffrey K. Pullum under Prescriptivist poppycock, Silliness, Usage advice, Writing, coordination, passives


The Queen's English Society (QES), mentioned only a couple of times here on Language Log over the past few years, is no more. It has ceased to be. On the last day of this month they will ring down the curtain and it will join the choir invisible. It will be an ex-society. Said Rhea Williams, chairman of QES, in a letter to the membership of which I have seen a facsimile copy:
At yesterday's SGM there were 22 people present, including the 10 members of your committee. Three members had sent their apologies. Not a very good showing out of a membership of 560 plus!

Time was spent discussing what to do about QES given the forthcoming resignations of so many committee members. Despite the sending out of a request for nominations for chairman, vice-chairman, administrator, web master, and membership secretary no one came forward to fill any role. So I have to inform you that QES will no longer exist. There will be one more Quest then all activity will cease and the society will be wound up. The effective date will be 30th June 2012

(Quest is the society's magazine.) Is this a sad day for defenders of English? Not in my view. I don't think it was a serious enterprise at all. I don't think the members cared about what they said they cared about. And I will present linguistic evidence for this thesis.

First, let's look at the seven sentences of the letter above in the light of the usual kind of judgmental prescriptivism that the members of QES always purported to care about (and keep in mind here that in some cases I am applying what prescriptive authorities generally say, not endorsing it):

At yesterday's SGM there were 22 people present, including the 10 members of your committee. [The existential construction ("there is/are/was/were") is condemned by Strunk and White (page 18) as weak writing, to be avoided.]
Three members had sent their apologies. [Not clear why "had" is included to make a past perfect where a preterite would have been perfectly correct and appropriate. Omit needless words!]
Not a very good showing out of a membership of 560 plus! [This is a fragment: it has no main verb.]
Time was spent discussing what to do about QES given the forthcoming resignations of so many committee members. [This is an agentless passive, condemned by Strunk and by Orwell and by writing tutors and prescriptivists everywhere.]
Despite the sending out of a request for nominations for chairman, vice-chairman, administrator, web master, and membership secretary no one came forward to fill any role. [This is also evasive about agency: who sent out the request?]
So I have to inform you that QES will no longer exist. [This begins with a "conjunction".]
There will be one more Quest then all activity will cease and the society will be wound up. [Ungrammatical because of punctuation: a comma or semicolon is needed after "Quest". And as a magazine title, Quest should properly have been italicized. The last clause is another agency-avoiding passive.]
The effective date will be 30th June 2012 [Ungrammatical because of punctuation again: the final period has been carelessly omitted.]

You're obviously pretty stupid if you was looking for any experts on here.

When did I claim to be an expert?

I'm just a song and dance man.

Actually, after re-reading the sentence I think it would have sounded better to use the present tense 'is'

and then we'd have avoided the question altogether,

The were form is correct at all times.
The was form is possible in informal, familiar conversation.

Your second sentence is a fragment.

Suppose this last page had been this, (2):

And it was still hot.

(with a period at the end of the immediately preceding text). Then we'd have a sentence with an initial coordinator. Such sentences are fiercely reviled in some circles, on the grounds that they are not complete sentences but only sentence fragments. But no reputable writer on usage shares this prejudice. Here's Mark Liberman on No Initial Coordinators:

There is nothing in the grammar of the English language to support a prescription against starting a sentence with and or but — nothing in the norms of speaking and nothing in the usage of the best writers over the entire history of the literary language.

Like all languages, English is full of mechanisms to promote coherence by linking a sentence with its discourse context, and on any sensible evaluation, this is a Good Thing.

Whoever invented the rule against sentence-intitial and and but, with its a preposterous justification in terms of an alleged defect in sentential "completeness", must have had a tin ear and a dull mind. Nevertheless, this stupid made-up rule has infected the culture so thoroughly that 60% of the AHD's (sensible and well-educated) usage panel accepts it to some degree.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1808

Why do you need to insult people so often?

Thanks, Spendius. But I was looking for an opinion from an expert.

It does look like the subjunctive mood to me, David. Obviously, that is why I framed my question that way.

I think "were" is prescribed for that sentence, but I am still waiting for JTT...uhhh, I mean an expert to give us the definitive answer. (Although since I agree with you take, I am accepting of it.)

You're obviously a complete, ******* idiot Frank.

But that's not your fault of course.

Thinking we are all idiots is a fault.

You tell me Frank how to improve communication better than "There's a few steamers in the beer tent Joe" bearing in mind what the speaker was trying to convey to his mate.

There's no fresh **** or clams in the beer tent. It's a posh agricultural show in the early evening on a warm summers day. Joe would never dream of asking if his mate meant fresh **** or clams.

It does look like the subjunctive mood to me, David. Obviously, that is why I framed my question that way.

I think "were" is prescribed for that sentence,

But we were talking about grammar...and particularly whether the word "few" used an "are" or an "is."

and particularly whether the word "few" used an "are" or an "is."

I honestly don't know what most North Americans say in such instances, but I don't think it would sound so weird to my ear if I had in fact grown up hearing people say 'Where's you keys,' so I'm just wondering how you checked.

Whatever the reason, [for the move to "there's + plural subject"] in a study of spoken discourse, Celce-Murcia and Hudson [1981] confirmed that there's predominates in informal speech, even when a plural noun phrase follows the verb.

Do you think it could be a regional thing?

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You're obviously a complete, ******* idiot Frank.

Sorry you think that, Spendius. Don't know why you think it. In any case, I think you are a fine person.

Quote:

But that's not your fault of course.

I don't even think that I am a complete, ******* idiot...so of course I do not think it is my fault.

Quote:

Thinking we are all idiots is a fault.

Are you under the impression that I think anyone here is an idiot? And if you are, why are you?

I imagine that the gene pool will be better off
if the idiots stop *******.

I suppose it's possible that it occurs more in certain places, Aidan, but I'd say that it's widespread across NaE.

See,

WHEN "THERE'S" ISN'T "THERE IS"

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002447.html