(the) English tense

Yeah, periods are definitely the common American usage. I can recall first not seeing it in Brit books and thinking it must be a typo.

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@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

Yeah, periods are definitely the common American usage. I can recall first not seeing it in Brit books and thinking it must be a typo.

These things are style issues. Oxford Dictionaries says that in neither British nor US English is punctuating abbreviations made of initial letters mandatory, so you can have UK, BBC, NBC, NATO etc however in the USA it is a common alternative style to use periods for certain ones notably U.S. and U.S.A.

For abbreviations made of the first and last letters of a word, such Mr, Dr, Jr, Sr, Fr, St, the US, but not the British, practice is to use a period.

From looking at some American style guides, I see that Americans put periods after Messrs, Rev, Hon, (some do after PhD, BA, MA etc, some don't), and after middle initials such as in John C Smith.

In general, British style has been to omit them all, this has come about in the last 50 or 60 years I would say.

I have noticed that Americans often put a dash between letters and numbers, e.g. the B-1 bomber, the K-9 Corps, DC-9 aircraft, I-95 highway, 4-F army classification, in British English we don't. The TV series 'MI6' (a drama about the UK secret intelligence service) became 'MI-6' for US viewers.

I notice that I habitually write or type e.g. and i.e. rather than eg and ie.

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@MontereyJack,

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So tell me, how often recently have you found occasion to use a form analagous to "the Mr. Jones in shipping",

I just used/I've just used it in another thread, in a perfectly natural fashion, which you of course ignored, prone as you are to highly selective thinking and reasoning.

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@MontereyJack,

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You represent a minority contrarian position, which as we have seen repeatedly,

Minority, as in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language or The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English or similar contrarian books?

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goes against the obvious facts of linguistic usage, as professional practicioners of linguistics agree.

You've never quoted anything from any source, linguistic or prescriptive. It's only Jack's opinions. On occasion you get something right.

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.

Quote:

You've never quoted anything from any source, linguistic or prescriptive. It's only Jack's opinions. On occasion you get something right.

Flatly untrue. I've regularly quoted sources. Which disagree with you, which may be why you seem to have suppressed the memory.

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@MontereyJack,

Surely you can provide some then, Jack.

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@MontereyJack,

Gee, Jack, how did you miss this?

Minority, as in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language or The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English or similar contrarian books?

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Sure. Several that spring immedately to mind (since I have them in my library) are various editions of the Merrian Webster Coillegiate Dictionary, Oxford Universal Dictionary on Historic Principles, and the plain Oxford Universal Dictionary, Random House Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (two editions), and not in my library but online, a number of university lingustics departments' websites, cited as occasion arose.

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@MontereyJack,

What I am saying is that I can't recall you quoting and sources and providing the source link or description.

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Look, JTT, I am really not responsible for your faulty memory. The sources were there on the posts, I assure you.

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@MontereyJack,

Nor am I responsible for yours, Jack.

How did you miss this?

Minority, as in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language or The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English or similar contrarian books?

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@MontereyJack,

You say you have a Merrian Webster dictionary. How is it that you can be so out of touch with reality on can and may for permission? Or is it that your issue doesn't deal with that?

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@contrex,

Quote:

I notice that I habitually write or type e.g. and i.e. rather than eg and ie.

Yes, you most assuredly are an anal BLit.

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JTT says:

Quote:

How is it that you can be so out of touch with reality on can and may for permission

You're the one that's out of touch, not me, and it's because you have an overly simplistic view of language acquisition and use, and also, apparently, its social context.

While it's certainly true, as you maintain, that we acquire unconsciously the bulk of generative rules for language as children (I think I'd put the age a bit higher than your six, tho, because the six year olds I've known aren't necessarily using very complex forms of the language--the basics certainly, the finished product not necessarily). But that is really just the starting point for the use of language as a social instrument. And a lot of that learning has a conscious component. In particular, education shapes the way words are chosen and used, and shapes what we want our language to tell the others we interact with. In particular, if people have been told, by parents, by teachers, by style books, or whatever other source there may be, that "may" is used for permission and "can" for ability, and if that conditions what word they choose to use (or, not completely separate, if they have been told that "may" is more polite to use, or less assertive than "can", and if that conditions their word choice), and, as I remember the corpus study you introduced, people whose speech was observed did in fact use "may" over "can" something on the order of 12 or 14% of the time, 9which is of course not universal but is a significant chun of people)THEN THAT UNDERSTANDING FUNCTIONS AS A RULE OF LANGUAGE FOR THEM, because it conditions what perfectly correct sentence they will produce, as opposed to what other perfectly correct sentence they will not produce. IT MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE WHETHER YOU REGARD THE 'MAY"/'CAN' DISTINCTION AS VALID OR NOT. THEY DO, AND IT DETERMINES WHAT PERFECTLY VALID LANGUAGE THEY WILL PRODUCE, BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE IT. That's where you go off the rails.

1 Reply

(JTT says:

Quote:

How is it that you can be so out of touch with reality on can and may for permission

You're the one that's out of touch, not me, and it's because you have an overly simplistic view of language acquisition and use, and also, apparently, its social context.

While it's certainly true, as you maintain, that we acquire unconsciously the bulk of generative rules for language as children (I think I'd put the age a bit higher than your six, tho, because the six year olds I've known aren't necessarily using very complex forms of the language--the basics certainly, the finished product not necessarily). But that is really just the starting point for the use of language as a social instrument. And a lot of that learning has a conscious component. In particular, education shapes the way words are chosen and used, and shapes what we want our language to tell the others we interact with. In particular, if people have been told, by parents, by teachers, by style books, or whatever other source there may be, that "may" is used for permission and "can" for ability, and if that conditions what word they choose to use (or, not completely separate, if they have been told that "may" is more polite to use, or less assertive than "can", and if that conditions their word choice), and, as I remember the corpus study you introduced, people whose speech was observed did in fact use "may" over "can" something on the order of 12 or 14% of the time, (which is of course not universal but is a significant chunk of people)THEN THAT UNDERSTANDING FUNCTIONS AS A RULE OF LANGUAGE FOR THEM, because it conditions what perfectly correct sentence they will produce, as opposed to what other perfectly correct sentence they will not produce. IT MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE WHETHER YOU REGARD THE 'MAY"/'CAN' DISTINCTION AS VALID OR NOT. THEY DO, AND IT DETERMINES WHAT PERFECTLY VALID LANGUAGE THEY WILL PRODUCE, BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE IT. That's where you go off the rails.

1 Reply

@contrex,

Quote:

The TV series 'MI6' (a drama about the UK secret intelligence service) became 'MI-6' for US viewers.

It's understandable, the confusion that can arise.

The Brits know MI5 refers to a branch of Military Intelligence, and Americans are familiar with M16 as a standard issue army rifle.

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@MontereyJack,

Quote:

remember the corpus study you introduced, people whose speech was observed did in fact use "may" over "can" something on the order of 12 or 14% of the time,

I can't imagine where you have misremembered that from, Jack, but it is complete nonsense. This is what was said regarding MAY for permission.

"Despite a well- known prescription favoring MAY rather than CAN for expressing permission, MAY is extremely rare in the sense of permission. "
(LGSWE page 493)

How rare? CAN - 800 per million MAY 50 per million

What of COULD? Why hasn't its use been accurately described by the prescriptivists? Because no real thought has been given to these things, it's just idiots repeating a prescription, aka a lie about language. It has no connection to reality. COULD 200 per million.

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In particular, if people have been told, by parents, by teachers, by style books, or whatever other source there may be, that "may" is used for permission and "can" for ability, and if that conditions what word they choose to use (or, not completely separate, if they have been told that "may" is more polite to use, or less assertive than "can", and if that conditions their word choice),

You are being a dyed in the wool prescriptivist. Once again a prescriptivist is a person who tells people what language to use in complete defiance of reality.

Telling anyone that may is used for permission and can for ability is a complete denial of reality.

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@MontereyJack,

Quote:

IT MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE WHETHER YOU REGARD THE 'MAY"/'CAN' DISTINCTION AS VALID OR NOT. THEY DO, AND IT DETERMINES WHAT PERFECTLY VALID LANGUAGE THEY WILL PRODUCE, BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE IT. That's where you go off the rails.

Here you are wrong too. I do note the distinction between MAY and CAN and I describe how the two modals actually function in real life. You have here been describing a fiction, one that people don't actually follow in their natural use of English. That is proven conclusively by corpus studies.

People operating naturally in language can't and don't follow prescriptions because "prescriptions are alien to the natural workings of language".

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JTT says:

Quote:

People operating naturally in language can't and don't follow prescriptions because "prescriptions are alien to the natural workings of language".

What rot. Of course people follow prescriptions all the time. "We don't say 'ain't'". "We don't use double negatives". "We don't say 'bloody', or'fuckin'", or 'bitchin' '" "We don't speak Ebonics", "If you don't code-switch and speak standard English when you apply, you'll never get a good job". Look at the kids who inadvertently come on a2k and use text-speak or gangsta-speack, which is cool wherever they were before. They come on here and get mercilessly slagged and never come back. All prescriptive, all commonly used and recognized (and when there are exceptions, the exceptions are heavily constrained). That's because a lot of adult language has a large conscious component of choice, which is influenced by what you have heard or read or been taught rather than following unconscious rules.

And as I recall the corpus study you cited did in fact show "may" was used when "can" would have worked equally well not a majority of the time, but a significant percentage of the time, which rather validates my point.

1 Reply

@MontereyJack,

Quote:

And as I recall the corpus study you cited did in fact show "may" was used when "can" would have worked equally well not a majority of the time, but a significant percentage of the time, which rather validates my point.

You are flat out wrong. Corpus studies couldn't show that because that isn't how may & can are used in English.

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What rot. Of course people follow prescriptions all the time. "We don't say 'ain't'". "We don't use double negatives". "We don't say 'bloody', or'fuckin'", or 'bitchin' '" ,

Wrong again, Jack. Those are used all the time, subject, of course to social and dialectal conditions. What planet do you inhabit?

But let's do stay on topic. You were/are dead wrong on may/can. The facts show that clearly.

Notice how McTag is absent.

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