When to Ignore Grammar Rules
In school, we’re taught rules of grammar that Must Be Obeyed, Or Else, then we’re released into the adult world full of people who speak and write with what seems like little regard to the sacred laws. When we read a published book with sentences ending in prepositions, split infinitives, and other grammatical sins, we’re left to wonder whether these holy edicts are quite as mandatory as our teachers insisted. So what gives?
Last week, I touched on the fact that the formal grammar we learn in school is based upon Latin rules, whereas English is a Germanic language. Although sixty percent of our vocabulary comes from Latin, that’s a combination of scientific and medical terms, and words that infiltrated the vocabulary after the Norman invasion in 1066. Our underlying grammar, however, still has its basis in the language’s proto-Germanic roots.
Two of the rules that show up most often as Grammar Nazi pet peeves are split infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions. Not coincidentally, neither of things constructions is possible in Latin. In English, we form the infinitive by using the preposition to plus the verb stem; in Latin, the infinitive is a single word. For a Latin speaker to split an infinitive would be a deliberate act, along the lines of an English speaker saying “Abso-fucking-lutely.”
On the other hand, prepositions do exist in Latin, but phrasal verbs do not. As I explained last week, phrasal verbs are verbs composed of more than one word, such as put up with or hang out. Taking away one of the words changes the meaning of the verb. Instead, Latin adds a prefix to the verb to change its meaning, often with an accompanying preposition, which then goes in front of the object of the verb. English also has a more rigid sentence structure than Latin, because our nouns are not declined. This makes it more difficult to shift the prepositions or pseudo-prepositions away from the ending of the sentence.
Those of you who haven’t studied inflected languages like Latin, Greek, or Russian might at this point be wondering how a noun becomes declined. Does someone have to tell it no?
Declension means changing the ending of a noun to denote its purpose in the sentence. Is it the subject? Direct object? Indirect object? Object of a preposition? The case it’s in will answer that question.
Proto-Indo-European had eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, and locative. Nominative is used for the subject of a sentence. Vocative is used when addressing someone directly. Accusative is used for the direct object. Instrumental is used for the instrument with which something is achieved. Dative is used for the indirect object. Ablative is used for various things, among them objects of certain prepositions and indicating movement away from something. Genitive is used to indicate possession. Locative case is used to indicate location.
Latin only has five and a half cases, as opposed to the eight cases of its predecessor. Neither instrumental nor locative cases exist in the language, and vocative only remains in a vestigial form visible in second declension singular masculine nouns; in all other declensions, it’s identical to the nominative.
English, for the most part, has no declensions, although the remnants can be seen in our pronouns: I/me/my, you/your, he/him/his, she/her, it/its, we/us, they/them/their. Our pronouns distinguish between nominative, genitive, and accusative, where the accusative form has taken on all the functions that dative, accusative, and ablative serve in Latin.
Because of this, English sentence order has to be more rigid than other languages. English is a Subject-Verb-Object language, or S-V-O, so we know that the subject is going to come first in the sentence, and the object of the verb is going to come after the verb. Indirect objects either come before the direct object, or after the prepositions to or for.
Latin, on the other hand, is more versatile. It’s nominally a Subject-Object-Verb (S-O-V) language, but that’s just the default. In reality, the subject, direct object, indirect object, and verb can go in any order, because you can tell which noun is doing what based on its ending.
Since we don’t usually have to worry about case endings in English, we tend not to internalize the rules of declension, and thus wind up making mistakes like “Me and Sally went to the store,” and then after being reprimanded for that offense, overcorrect with utterances such as “They came to visit Sally and I.” These errors do violate the underlying Germanic grammar of English, and thus should be avoided. An easy rule of thumb is to replace the phrase containing the pronoun with a single, plural pronoun. If we or they sounds natural, then the pronoun should be I, he, or she. If us or them sounds natural, the pronoun should be me, him, or her. This is because I, he, she, we, and they are all nominative case, and me, him, her, us, and them are all accusative case.
On the other hand, splitting infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions is acceptable, as long as wording things that way sounds more natural than it would to avoid those so-called mistakes.
Last week, I touched on the fact that the formal grammar we learn in school is based upon Latin rules, whereas English is a Germanic language. Although sixty percent of our vocabulary comes from Latin, that’s a combination of scientific and medical terms, and words that infiltrated the vocabulary after the Norman invasion in 1066. Our underlying grammar, however, still has its basis in the language’s proto-Germanic roots.
Two of the rules that show up most often as Grammar Nazi pet peeves are split infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions. Not coincidentally, neither of things constructions is possible in Latin. In English, we form the infinitive by using the preposition to plus the verb stem; in Latin, the infinitive is a single word. For a Latin speaker to split an infinitive would be a deliberate act, along the lines of an English speaker saying “Abso-fucking-lutely.”
On the other hand, prepositions do exist in Latin, but phrasal verbs do not. As I explained last week, phrasal verbs are verbs composed of more than one word, such as put up with or hang out. Taking away one of the words changes the meaning of the verb. Instead, Latin adds a prefix to the verb to change its meaning, often with an accompanying preposition, which then goes in front of the object of the verb. English also has a more rigid sentence structure than Latin, because our nouns are not declined. This makes it more difficult to shift the prepositions or pseudo-prepositions away from the ending of the sentence.
Those of you who haven’t studied inflected languages like Latin, Greek, or Russian might at this point be wondering how a noun becomes declined. Does someone have to tell it no?
Declension means changing the ending of a noun to denote its purpose in the sentence. Is it the subject? Direct object? Indirect object? Object of a preposition? The case it’s in will answer that question.
Proto-Indo-European had eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, and locative. Nominative is used for the subject of a sentence. Vocative is used when addressing someone directly. Accusative is used for the direct object. Instrumental is used for the instrument with which something is achieved. Dative is used for the indirect object. Ablative is used for various things, among them objects of certain prepositions and indicating movement away from something. Genitive is used to indicate possession. Locative case is used to indicate location.
Latin only has five and a half cases, as opposed to the eight cases of its predecessor. Neither instrumental nor locative cases exist in the language, and vocative only remains in a vestigial form visible in second declension singular masculine nouns; in all other declensions, it’s identical to the nominative.
English, for the most part, has no declensions, although the remnants can be seen in our pronouns: I/me/my, you/your, he/him/his, she/her, it/its, we/us, they/them/their. Our pronouns distinguish between nominative, genitive, and accusative, where the accusative form has taken on all the functions that dative, accusative, and ablative serve in Latin.
Because of this, English sentence order has to be more rigid than other languages. English is a Subject-Verb-Object language, or S-V-O, so we know that the subject is going to come first in the sentence, and the object of the verb is going to come after the verb. Indirect objects either come before the direct object, or after the prepositions to or for.
Latin, on the other hand, is more versatile. It’s nominally a Subject-Object-Verb (S-O-V) language, but that’s just the default. In reality, the subject, direct object, indirect object, and verb can go in any order, because you can tell which noun is doing what based on its ending.
Since we don’t usually have to worry about case endings in English, we tend not to internalize the rules of declension, and thus wind up making mistakes like “Me and Sally went to the store,” and then after being reprimanded for that offense, overcorrect with utterances such as “They came to visit Sally and I.” These errors do violate the underlying Germanic grammar of English, and thus should be avoided. An easy rule of thumb is to replace the phrase containing the pronoun with a single, plural pronoun. If we or they sounds natural, then the pronoun should be I, he, or she. If us or them sounds natural, the pronoun should be me, him, or her. This is because I, he, she, we, and they are all nominative case, and me, him, her, us, and them are all accusative case.
On the other hand, splitting infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions is acceptable, as long as wording things that way sounds more natural than it would to avoid those so-called mistakes.
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