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Fri 9 Dec, 2005 06:55 pm
On another forum, two native English speakers insisted that the questions shown below were incorrect English. Please tell me why, if the affirmative forms (answers) shown are allowed, the question form is not allowed.
What does psychology study?
What does solid state physics study?
What does quantum mechanics study?
................
-Psychology studies the relationship between environments and human behaviour.
-Psychology studies the human psyche, behavior, and mental processes. This diverse field has roots in biology, medicine, philosophy, religion, and history. ...
-Solid state physics studies the processes taking place on surfaces and semi-conductors. -
-Theoretical physics above all examines the theory of quantum fields, gravitation and quantum information.
-Quantum mechanics studies the behavior of atoms and the particles that make them up.
Thanks. M56.
Both the questions and the answers are incorrect English, because sciences do not study anything; people study sciences.
Thus the answers should be in this form: "psychology is the study of the relationship....etc"
It's a little trickier to alter the questions, because there is an old rule (which not everybody accepts) that you should not have a preposition at the end of a sentence. Thus, "What is psychology the study of?" would not be acceptable to everyone. You could simply say "What is psychology?"
syntinen wrote:Both the questions and the answers are incorrect English, because sciences do not study anything; people study sciences.
Thus the answers should be in this form: "psychology is the study of the relationship....etc"
It's a little trickier to alter the questions, because there is an old rule (which not everybody accepts) that you should not have a preposition at the end of a sentence. Thus, "What is psychology the study of?" would not be acceptable to everyone. You could simply say "What is psychology?"
I have to disagree with you regarding the affirmative form.
The affirmative form is widespread and used even on academic websites as prestigious as the Harvard University site. I believe it is an abbreviated form and in full would be something like "those who are expert in the body of knowledge related to the field of psychology and who express opinions or make observations based on that knowledge ".
Then there are all these examples from the British National Corpus (BNC):
PSYCHOLOGY RECOGNIZES
PSYCHOLOGY TRIES
PSYCHOLOGY USES
PSYCHOLOGY TAKES
PSYCHOLOGY CAN
PSYCHOLOGY COULD
PSYCHOLOGY DEFINES
PSYCHOLOGY INVESTIGATES
PSYCHOLOGY IGNORES
PSYCHOLOGY PRESENTS
PSYCHOLOGY PROVIDES
So, I have no doubt that the affirmative form is well-sanctioned by native speakers, but it is the question form I am unsure of in that respect.
I have no idea what their problem is with the questions--I'm a native speaker and they sound perfectly fine to me. Do they object to treating physics and mechanics as singular nouns? They ARE treated that way. In present-day usage there is no such word as "physic" used, nor is there a "mechanic" that is the singular form of "mechanics"--in the sense of "science": a quantum mechanic would be a scientist who works with quantum mechanics, not a kind of science. That's the only possible reason I can think of that someone would object to the questions.
username wrote:I have no idea what their problem is with the questions--I'm a native speaker and they sound perfectly fine to me. Do they object to treating physics and mechanics as singular nouns? They ARE treated that way. In present-day usage there is no such word as "physic" used, nor is there a "mechanic" that is the singular form of "mechanics"--in the sense of "science": a quantum mechanic would be a scientist who works with quantum mechanics, not a kind of science. That's the only possible reason I can think of that someone would object to the questions.
The most common objection has been one that cited the etymology of the
-ology words. As "psyche" originally meant
soul (or
mind) and -ology meant
study, the objectors say that it is impossible to say "the study of the soul/mind studies the". Others, who find no problem with the use "xxxxology studies the...", say that it is simply an abbreviated form of something like "the practice or application of the science of psychology studies (meaning observes and analyzes) the mind and... . I tend to agree with the latter explanation.
Anybody that tries to trump common usage with etymology is probably doomed to a lifetime of frustration and irrelevance.
Are these correct?
My brother's in Psychology. He works at the local clinic.
Stan's in Engineering.
I would say yes, except that I probably wouldn't capitalize them, unless maybe Engineering was the name of a specific department at, say, a particular company; but as a general descriptive term for a field of expertise, I don't think it requires capitalization. And "I'm in therapy" does not mean the same thing as "I'm a therapist".
username wrote:Anybody that tries to trump common usage with etymology is probably doomed to a lifetime of frustration and irrelevance.
I agree with this.
I think the questions sound weird though.
"What does pys study?"
Psy doesn't study anything.
You get the idea. It simply does not sound right to some ears.
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