Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought

(First two of four parts)

We normally use the pair of curved marks known as the parenthesis to indicate textual material that’s optional to our sentence or that’s simply an afterthought. This, for instance, is the role that the parenthesis performs in the following sentence: “Jennifer (who is my cousin by the way) has just won the Most Outstanding Youth Award for 2009.” But the parenthesis is actually much more than just a punctuation for such added material. Indeed, the parenthesis in general is not the punctuation mark being used per se but the word, phrase, or even a full sentence that it encloses within the sentence. And the punctuation mark for parenthetical material isn’t necessarily the pair of curved marks that we are very familiar with; it could be a pair of enclosing commas or dashes—even brackets—depending on the degree of punctuation required by the parenthetical statement.

This is what I clarified for English learners when I wrote the four-part essay below for my column in The Manila Times in January-February of 2008. This discussion on the parenthesis and its uses explains that while a parenthetical is basically added information, it isn’t necessarily optional or semantically expendable but could actually be organic to the sentence. I am now posting the entire four-part essay here to help Forum members use parentheticals more confidently as a tool for more precise and expressive writing.

The parenthesis and its uses

Part I

We are all familiar with the two curved marks that we know as the parenthesis ( ), but what some of us may not know is that in English grammar, the parenthesis is actually any amplifying or explanatory word, phrase, or sentence that’s set off from a sentence or passage by some form of punctuation. That punctuation can be those two curved marks, of course, but depending on the importance of the inserted information and the writer’s intention, it can also be a pair of enclosing commas or a pair of enclosing dashes.

Let’s take a look at the following examples:

(1) Parenthesis by comma: (a) “Ferdinand Magellan, who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521, was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.”

(b) “Cleopatra, the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.”

(2) Parenthesis by dashes: “Their kindly uncle was terminally ill—they said they didn’t know it then—but his nephews and nieces just went on their merry ways.”

(3) Parenthesis by parentheses: “While I was driving it out of the used-car dealer’s yard, the nicely refurbished 1994 sedan (the dealer assured me its engine had just been overhauled) busted one of its pistons.”

In each of the three examples above, the information set off by the punctuation marks—whether by commas, dashes, or parentheses—is called a parenthetical, and its distinguishing characteristic is that the sentence remains grammatically and semantically correct even without it. A parenthetical is basically added information; however, it isn’t necessarily optional or semantically expendable. It may be needed to put the statement in a desired context, to establish the logic of the sentence, or to convey a particular tone or mood for the statement. In fact, the punctuation chosen for a parenthetical largely determines its optionality or importance to the statement.

So the big question about parentheticals is really this: Under what circumstances do we use commas, dashes, or parentheses to punctuate or set off a parenthetical from a sentence?

In Example 1(a) above, the parenthetical “who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521” is what’s known as a nonrestrictive relative clause. A nonrestrictive relative clause is a parenthetical that provides information that’s not absolutely needed to understand the sentence; in other words, it is nondefining information. The sentence will remain grammatically and semantically intact without it: “Ferdinand Magellan was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” Without the nonrestrictive relative clause, however, the sentence loses a lot of valuable information about its subject, “Ferdinand Magellan”; in fact, the intended context for the statement disappears completely.

For such type of parenthetical, the most appropriate choice of punctuation is a pair of enclosing commas, as was used in the original sentence. It won’t do to punctuate a nonrestrictive relative clause with dashes or parentheses, for either of them would render the information optional, as we can see in these two versions of that sentence: “Ferdinand Magellan—who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521—was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” “Ferdinand Magellan (who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521) was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” Both of these sentence constructions run counter to the writer’s original intention.

We must keep in mind, though, that the same parenthetical—“who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521”—would have become a restrictive relative clause had the subject been a generic noun like, say, “the explorer,” in which case the pair of enclosing commas would have been rendered unnecessary: “The explorer who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.”

We will continue this discussion in the next essay.

The parenthesis and its uses

Part II

In the preceding essay, I pointed out that if we substitute a generic noun for a proper noun that’s being modified by a nonrestrictive relative clause, the pair of commas enclosing that clause would be rendered unnecessary. Thus, the sentence “Ferdinand Magellan, who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521, was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães” takes the following form when its subject is replaced with the generic noun “the explorer”: “The explorer who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” The absence of the enclosing commas indicates that the nonrestrictive relative clause has become a restrictive one.

Obviously, the following questions will come to mind when that happens: Why not leave those enclosing commas alone? What difference does it make if we let those commas stay even after changing “Ferdinand Magellan” to “the explorer”?

The reason lies in the basic grammatical difference between a proper noun and a generic noun. We will recall that a proper noun is one that designates a particular being or thing, and that as a rule in English, it is capitalized to indicate this fact. A proper noun, moreover, has this important characteristic: as a rule, it won’t accept a limiting or restrictive relative modifier to define it. By its very name, a proper noun is supposed to have already defined itself, making it one of a kind.

Now, we need to recall at this point that a relative clause or a “who”-parenthetical that comes after a proper noun—“Ferdinand Magellan” in this case—becomes a restrictive clause or limiting modifier when it’s not enclosed by a pair of commas. It is therefore grammatically incorrect for the subject “Ferdinand Magellan” to be followed by a relative clause that’s not enclosed by commas: “Ferdinand Magellan who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” The parenthetical “who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521” will always need the pair of enclosing commas in such cases: “Ferdinand Magellan, who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521, was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.”

It’s an altogether different thing when we replace a proper noun with a generic noun in such sentence constructions. We will then have two grammatical choices. If our intention is to, say, make “the explorer” specifically refer to “Ferdinand Magellan” and to no other person, then we need to modify it with a restrictive relative clause—one without the enclosing commas, as was done previously: “The explorer who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.”

On the other hand, if by “the explorer” we mean any explorer at all who had claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown, we would need to modify that generic noun with a nonrestrictive clause or nonlimiting modifier instead: “The explorer, who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521, was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” The enclosing commas indicate that the person referred to isn’t unique; he might not have been Ferdinand Magellan.

Now let’s evaluate the second sentence that I gave in last Saturday’s column as an example of parenthesis by comma: “Cleopatra, the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” Here, the parenthe­tical “the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” is what is known as the appositive phrase. It is a statement that serves to explain or identify the noun or pronoun that comes before or after it.

The appositive phrase is an extremely useful grammatical device for giving context and texture to what otherwise might be very bland or uninformative sentences. We will discuss it in detail in the next essay.

(To be continued in next week's posting)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, © 2008 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

The long fight against the misuse of the subjunctive

In my experience as an editor, the misuse of the subjunctive—perhaps on a par with subject-verb disagreements—is one of the most common English grammar mistakes. Indeed, the sheer frequency of subjunctive misuse gives me the impression that the subjunctive isn’t taught at all in school, and if it is, those teaching it may not be teaching it well enough or perhaps few of those they teach get to understand it properly. I say this because many of the English-language manuscripts I have copyedited over the years, whether written by college students, company personnel, or professional newspaper or magazine writers, would flub their subjunctive sentences with disturbing regularity.

Looking back, I’d say that a full 70 percent of the writers I edited would write a subjunctive sentence incorrectly like this: “If by chance Ms. Tessie gets to read this “sumbong,”* may I also suggest that she develops a team who can reach out to people who encounter problems or difficulties with their various business units.” The correct subjunctive construction of that sentence is, of course, “If by chance Ms. Tessie gets to read this “sumbong,” may I also suggest that she develop a team who can reach out to people who encounter problems or difficulties with their various business units”—with the “s” in “develops” dropped in the correct version. At one time, in fact, I wrote in my column about a former editor in chief of a major broadsheet who consistently misused the subjunctive in his regular column, and, as far as I know, he still uses it wrongly to this day.

The subjunctive usage in print journalism left so much to be desired that in 2005, I even ran a four-part series on the subject in my weekly column in The Manila Times (those five columns now form part of my third book, Give Your English the Winning Edge). But it looks like that series was to no avail as far as one or two of the major Metro Manila broadsheets are concerned, as can be seen in My Media English Watch this week where I dissect still another subjunctive misuse, this time by another newspaper columnist.

Anyway, to make sure that all Forum members don’t make the same recurrent mistake in their subjunctive usage, I am posting in the Forum my lead essay for that four-part series on the English subjunctive. To those who won’t find this essay enough instruction on subjunctive usage, though, I suggest that they get a copy of Give Your English the Winning Edge for a much more detailed discussion.

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*Sumbong – Tagalog term for “complaint.”

The proper use of the English subjunctive

The wrong use of the English subjunctive—the mood of the language that allows us to speak of acts or states not as they really are but as possibilities or as outcomes of our wishes, desires, or doubts—recurs very often in Philippine journalism but hardly anybody makes a case against it. I have actually come across several instances of such misuse during the three years that I have been writing this column, but I let all of them pass without comment on the presumption that they were simply typographical or misreading errors. A few days ago, however, I came across a sentence in a newspaper column that left no doubt that it was unknowingly misusing the subjunctive. The construction used two verbs in a row in the incorrect subjunctive form, so I was sure that typographical error was not the culprit this time. The sentence, quoted verbatim here except for the subject (I used a fictitious name to avoid giving any political color to this grammar discussion), runs as follows: “It is not enough that Mr. Romano minimizes his public appearances or goes on self-exile.”

At first blush, of course, there seems to be nothing wrong with that sentence. After all, “Mr. Romano” is in the third-person singular, so it stands to reason that the verbs expressing his actions, “minimizes” and “goes,” should also be in the third person singular. This happens not to be the case, however. By some quirk in English usage, verbs in the singular third-person subjunctive ignore the subject-verb agreement rule. They drop the “-s” or “-es” at their tail ends and take the base form of the verb (the verb’s infinitive form without the “to”), so the verbs “minimizes” and “goes” become “minimize” and “go” instead. Thus, strange as it may seem, the correct construction of our subjunctive sentence specimen above is this: “It is not enough that Mr. Romano minimize his public appearances or go on self-exile.” (Unfortunately, when there’s only one operative verb in a subjunctive “that”-clause, copyeditors and proofreaders who don’t fully understand the subjunctive simply restore the missing “-s” or “-es,” so the wrong usage often gets into print looking simply like a typographical error.

The corrected sentence construction above is the so-called “necessity or parliamentary motion” or “jussive” form of the subjunctive. (In linguistics, “jussive” means an expression of command.) These two highly formal terms sound intimidating, but they neatly capture the insistent attitude of the speaker in this form of the subjunctive, which occur in subordinate “that”-clauses that state an implied command or indirectly express a wish, desire, intention, or necessity. We will discuss the particulars of subjunctive usage in much greater detail later on, but first, we need to clearly understand the behavior of the third-person form of operative verbs in subjunctive “that”-clauses.

Contrary to how verbs generally behave, verbs in present-tense subjunctive “that”-clauses don’t change form at all. In our subjunctive sentence specimen, for instance, the base verb forms “minimize” and “go” remain unchanged regardless of what number or person the subject takes. Look at the form those verbs take in the first person (“I,” “we”): “It is not enough that I minimize my public appearances or go on self-exile.” “It is not enough that we minimize our public appearances or go on self-exile.” In the second person (both the singular and plural “you”): “It is not enough that you minimize your public appearances or go on self-exile.” However, in the third-person singular (“he,” “she,” or actual name), we would expect these verbs to obey the subject-verb agreement rule: add “-s” or “-es” to their tail ends to become “minimizes” and “goes.” But the third-person subjunctive ignores that rule, too, using instead the verb’s base form like what the first person and second person forms do. This results in the following constructions as the correct subjunctive usage for the third person singular in the present tense: “It is not enough that he [she] minimize his [her] public appearances or go on self-exile.” “It is not enough that Mr. Romano minimize his public appearances or go on self-exile.”

Admittedly, this prescription for the subjunctive strongly goes against the grain of what most of us have learned about English usage. This is why many people remain doubtful and suspicious of the subjunctive and will actually go at great lengths to avoid using it. No matter how we feel about it, however, the subjunctive is a very important form of the English language, so we need to clearly understand its unique function and usage if we want to make ourselves truly proficient in our English. (July 11, 2005)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, July 11, 2005, © 2005 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Reductions to give more punch and zing to prose

One who achieves enough mastery of English grammar soon discovers that in certain cases, the language allows its sentences to be streamlined for conciseness and easier articulation. A particular clause can sometimes be reduced to a phrase, which, of course, is structurally simpler than the former; for example, in the sentence “Countries that are near the equator have hot, humid climates,” the clause “that are near the equator” can be reduced to the phrase “near the equator”—the words “that” and “are” have been dropped—so the sentence reads more succinctly as follows: “Countries near the equator have hot, humid climates.” If need be, in fact, that same clause can be more severely reduced to the single-word “equatorial”—an adjective—so the sentence reads even more concisely as follows: “Equatorial countries have hot, humid climates.” Such reductions, of course, will largely depend on the tone, pacing, and style desired for the exposition or narrative, but it’s a great help to the writer to know all the reduction possibilities at his or her command.

In the two-part essay below that I wrote for my column in The Manila Times almost a year ago, I look into the various ways of reducing adjective clauses to adjective phrases as well as the limits to be encountered when making such reductions. I’m sure the discussions will prove helpful to those looking for ways to give more punch and zing to their prose.

Reducing adjective clauses to adjective phrases

Part I

Both adjective phrases and adjective clauses serve to modify nouns and pronouns—meaning that they identify or give additional information about the subject or about the object receiving the action in a sentence. However, while an adjective phrase can simply be any kind of modifying phrase—perhaps a series of adjectives, an adjective modified by an adverb, a complement, a prepositional phrase, or a participle phrase—the adjective clause works as a dependent or subordinate clause in a sentence, and as such must have a subject and an operative verb.

To be able to do its work, the adjective clause (also called the relative clause) needs to link itself to the main clause of a sentence by making use of one of the following: the relative pronouns “that,” which,” “who,” “whom,” and “whose” and the pronouns “when” and “where.” The adjective clause can then function in any of three ways: as modifier of the subject in the main clause, as modifier of the object of the operative verb in the main clause, and as object of the preposition.

Now, consider the following two sentences: “Employees who are working on contractual basis are not entitled to regular company benefits.” “The three applicants didn’t possess the skills that we needed for the position.” The first uses an adjective clause, “who are working on contractual basis are not entitled to regular company benefits,” to modify the subject “employees,” and the second, “that we needed for the position,” to modify the object of the operative verb in the main clause, which is “skills.”

We will see that in the case of the first sentence, even if both the relative pronoun “who” and the operative verb “are” are dropped from the adjective clause “who are working on contractual basis,” the sentence will still work perfectly: “Employees working on contractual basis are not entitled to regular company benefits.” The second sentence, too, will actually read and sound better when the relative pronoun “that” is dropped from the adjective clause “that we needed for the position:” “The three applicants didn’t possess the skills we needed for the position.”

What actually happened here was that we were able to reduce the adjective clauses into adjective phrases. Indeed, whenever possible and desirable, an adjective clause that uses the relative pronouns “who,” “which,” and “that” can be reduced into an adjective phrase.

Here, to begin with, are three of the most common ways of effecting such a reduction:

(1) When the operative verb in the adjective clause is in the active form, drop the relative pronoun and convert the operative verb to its progressive form. For example, the adjective clause “who work as full-time professionals” in the sentence “Women who work as full-time professionals are more likely to remain unmarried” can be reduced to the adjective phrase “working as full-time professionals” to make the sentence more concise, as follows: “Women working as full-time professionals are more likely to remain unmarried.”

(2) When the operative verb in the adjective clause is already in the progressive form, simply drop the relative pronoun and the form of the verb “be.” For example, the adjective clause “that are living in the wild” in “Animals that are living in the wild sometimes no longer reproduce when kept in zoos” can be reduced to the adjective phrase “living in the wild” to make the sentence more concise, as follows: “Animals living in the wild sometimes no longer reproduce when kept in zoos.”

(3) When the operative verb in the adjective clause is in the passive form, drop the relative pronoun and the form of the verb “be.” For example, the adjective clause “who are provided proper nutrition” in “Indigent children who are provided with proper nutrition can grow into productive members of society” can be reduced to the adjective phrase “provided with proper nutrition” to make the sentence more concise, as follows: “Indigent children provided with proper nutrition can grow into productive members of society.” (December 27, 2008)

Part II

We saw in the previous essay that generally, adjective clauses that use the relative pronouns “who,” “which,” and “that” can be reduced by dropping the relative pronoun and the form of the verb “be” used in the adjective clause. For example, in the sentence “Many politicians who are elected to public office often treat their positions as family heirlooms,” the adjective clause “who are elected to office” can be reduced to the adjective phrase “elected to public office” to produce this more concise, forthright sentence: “Many politicians elected to public office often treat their positions as family heirlooms.”

Recall that adjective clauses, which are also called relative clauses, can either be restrictive or nonrestrictive. It is restrictive when it provides essential information about the subject of the sentence, as the clause “that has just ended” in “The year that has just ended was notable for its severe economic turbulence.” On the other hand, it is nonrestrictive when it provides information that isn’t essential to the meaning of the sentence (as indicated by the commas setting the clause off from the main clause), as the clause “which was uninhabited a decade ago” in “The island, which was uninhabited a decade ago, is now a world-class resort.”

Now, whether restrictive or nonrestrictive, an adjective clause can often be reduced to an adjective phrase to make the sentence more concise. In the first example given in the preceding paragraph, for instance, the restrictive adjective clause “that has just ended” can be reduced to the adjective phrase “just ended” to yield this sentence: “The year just ended was notable for its severe economic turbulence.” Similarly, in the second example, the nonrestrictive adjective clause “which was uninhabited a decade ago” can be reduced to the adjective phrase “uninhabited a decade ago” to yield this sentence: “The island, uninhabited a decade ago, is now a world-class resort.”

Note that when a nonrestrictive adjective clause modifying the subject of a sentence is reduced to an adjective phrase, as in the example above, the adjective phrase can alternatively be placed in front of the subject of the sentence: “Uninhabited a decade ago, the island is now a world-class resort.” This can’t be done in the case of reduced restrictive adjective clauses. In fact, in the case of the first sentence with the restrictive adjective clause reduced to an adjective phrase, putting “just ended” up front yields this fractured sentence: “Just ended, the year was notable for its severe economic turbulence.”

We must also beware that it isn’t always possible to reduce an adjective clause to an adjective phrase. For example, in the sentence “The rain that fell in torrents yesterday was the heaviest this year,” it’s not possible at all to reduce the adjective clause “that fell in torrents this morning.” To simply drop the relative pronoun “that” from the adjective clause produces this fractured sentence “The rain fell in torrents yesterday was the heaviest this year;” on the other hand, following the first reduction procedure described in Part I of this essay, to drop “that” and convert “fell” to the progressive-form “falling” to reduce the adjective clause to the adjective phrase “falling in torrents this morning” yields this semantically dubious, time-skewed sentence, “The rain falling in torrents yesterday was the heaviest this year.”

For an even better feel of the limits of adjective clause reduction, try doing it for this sentence: “Customers who have missed the show are disappointed.” (Were you able to do it?)

Indeed, we need to play it by ear when faced with the choice of reducing an adjective clause to an adjective phrase. If the reduction makes the sentence sound better without altering its sense, go right ahead. But if the reduction doesn’t sound right or changes the meaning of the sentence, simply leave the adjective clause the way it is, relative pronoun and all. (January 3, 2009)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, December 27, 2008 and January 3, 2009, © 2008 and © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Verbs for actions that we don’t do ourselves

Either by choice or circumstance, there are some things that people won’t do themselves but would rather ask, allow, or force other people to do for them. One reason is that perhaps the task is beneath their dignity to do; another is that directly doing it to or with the other person may be too unpleasant, so it’s better done through a third party; and still another is that the act could be patently immoral, illegal, or criminal, so it needs to be done by another person—perhaps a hired hand—with less or no scruples at all.

Verbs that are used to denote such actions are called causative verbs. There aren’t many of them, like “have,” “let,” “allow,” “cause,” and “ask,” but they are unlike most verbs in that they need to be followed by an object and an infinitive, as in “I asked them to mop the floor” (“them” is the direct object of the causative verb “asked,” and “to mop” is the infinitive, followed by “floor” which is its direct object). An ordinary verb for an action that you do yourself, of course, is immediately followed by the direct object, as in “I mopped the floor.”

In the essay below that I wrote for my column in The Manila Times almost four years ago, I explain the mechanics and construction of causative verbs and throw in a brief explanation of factitive verbs as well. I trust that Forum members will find this essay an instructive refresher on the usage of these two types of verbs.

Using causative and factitive verbs

When an awful act or serious mistake is made, particularly one that leads to a disastrous or tragic outcome, rare indeed is the soul that comes out in the open to take the blame for it. The usual response of the culpable is to ascribe the deed to somebody else or something else: “They had me scoop the money from the vault at gunpoint.” (The perpetrator of an inside job is trying to extricate himself from the crime.) “An earthquake made the mountain unleash the deadly mudslide.” (Actually, loggers had ruthlessly stripped the mountain of every inch of its forest cover.) “The steel gate’s collapse caused the people to stampede.” (The crowd-control measures simply were too puny for so large a mass of humanity aiming to get rich quick.)

The English language has, in fact, evolved a special verb form to make people avoid acknowledging responsibility—if only for the moment—when caught in such situations. That verb form is the causative verb, which carries out an action that causes another action to happen. In the three sentences given as examples above, in particular, “have” is the causative verb in the first, causing the action “scoop” to happen; “make” is the causative verb in the second, causing the action “unleash” to happen; and “cause” is the causative verb in the third, causing the action “stampede” to happen. In each case, the crime or calamitous outcome is acknowledged but no one is accepting responsibility for it.

Causative verbs are, of course, not only meant to make people avoid taking responsibility for things that have gone sour or disastrous. In general, they are used to indicate the sort of actions that people don’t do themselves but allow, ask, or force other people to do: “Emily’s supervisor permitted her to leave early today.” “Our landlady reminded us to pay our overdue rent.” “The thieves forced the tourists to hand over their jewelry.”

Note that in a causative construction, the subject doesn’t actually do the action of the operative verb but only causes the object to do that action. In the last example above, for instance, the subject is “the thieves” and the object is “the tourists,” and the causative verb “force” makes this object do the action of handing over the jewelry.

The other most commonly used causative verbs are “allow,” “assist,” “convince,” “employ,” “help,” “hire,” “let,” “motivate,” “remind,” “require,” and “urge.” When used in a sentence, practically all of these causative verbs are followed by an object (a noun or pronoun) followed by an infinitive: “We allowed foreigners to invest in the local mining industry.” “The recruiter convinced me to leave for Jeddah at once.” “The desperate applicant employed deceit to get the plum job.”

The only notable exceptions to this pattern are the causative verbs “have,” “make,” and “let.” They are followed by a noun or pronoun serving as an object, but this time what follows the object is not an infinitive but the base form of the verb (meaning its infinitive form without the “to”): “I had my fellow investors sign the incorporation papers yesterday.” “They made him finish writing the book in only five weeks.” “We let the students pick the class schedules they want.”

Like the causative verb, another type of verb that exhibits peculiar behavior is the so-called factitive verb. While the usual transitive verb can take only one direct object, a factitive verb actually needs two of them. There are only a few of its kind, however, among them “choose,” “elect,” “judge,” “adjudge,” “make,” “name,” and “select.”

Here’s how a factitive verb works: “The prestigious finance magazine last night chose our company “Best at Consumer Goods” in its annual poll.” Here, “choose” is the factitive verb, “our company” is the direct object, and “‘Best at Consumer Goods’” is the objective complement—all three in tight, uninterrupted interlock. (February 20, 2006)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 20, 2006 © 2006 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Watch out for the language register of your English!

Except perhaps for readers of my column in The Manila Times way back when it started in 2002, not many people know that I had made it my self-imposed task to make Filipinos aware that if their English was bad, it was largely because of our society’s fervid addiction to legalese or jargon as its default English. My early columns therefore trained their guns on legalese and its kindred English varieties—corporatese, bureaucratese, academese, researchese—and advocated plain and simple English instead. I would then take a dig at how many of us write like two-bit lawyers or use big, fat words in the false belief that they will impress our readers or listeners and make them better disposed to what we are telling them.

One of my earliest pieces on this theme was a playful, satiric essay entitled “The Great Gobbledygook-Generating Machine,” which later drew a resonant response from a fellow communicator in the United Kingdom. This was followed by some shoptalk between us about corporate jargon and other forms of obfuscation. I am posting in the Forum my account of that exchange of views simply as a reminder that aside from good grammar and usage, we need a keen awareness of the language register or tenor of our English to communicate effectively with it.

Shoptalk on jargon and gobbledygook

An essay that I wrote for my column in The Manila Times away back in 2002, “The Great Gobbledygook-Generating Machine,” was featured in January 2006 by Vocabula.com, a well-regarded English-usage web magazine based in Massachusetts. That essay, which later became Chapter 12 of my book, English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today’s Global Language, takes a playful dig at a little electronic device on the Internet that can churn out around 40,000 insights on how to run companies in grammar-perfect but nonsensical English. Click this link to read that essay in the Bookshop section of Jose Carillo’s English Forum.

I was quietly happy just to see that little piece of mine still alive and relevant even after the passing of the years, but I was truly delighted when I received a very touching congratulatory e-mail for it from a fellow editor and writer in Wales in the United Kingdom. Jude Roland, who runs a professional writing service in Monmouthshire, wrote me a note so evocative about the travails of putting other people’s English writing into good shape that I have decided to share it with Times readers.

Here’s that e-mail:

Dear Jose,

I enjoyed your piece enormously. Much of what I laughingly call my “career” has been spent in trying to de-mystify the corporate jargon and obfuscation of other writers, who seem to feel more important and knowledgeable when they issue incomprehensible communications.

For more than three decades, I have advocated and encouraged clarity and directness. But those of us who care deeply about the potency of English now have to contend with something worse than commercial nincompoops [mishandling the language]. In the UK in particular, for at least five years in the 1980s, educational “experts” had been saying that it was “more important for children to express themselves in writing than to worry about spelling and grammar.” And oh, have the chickens come home to roost!

Add to this the universal overreliance on computer spell-checkers with their inherent idiocies, and you have a formidable problem. Neither you nor I, alas, will be able solve it!

But please do go on fighting the good fight and continue writing lively, cogent essays. Perhaps, when climate change finally destroys Earth, some remnants of humanity will remain, and in the long, slow climb back from the brink, their leaders may again learn to cherish and venerate “the word.”

Jude Roland

And here’s my rejoinder to that note:

Dear Jude,

I apologize for this much-delayed reply. I have been so frenetically busy during the past two weeks doing a very challenging substantive editing job for a major client that I could hardly find time to deal with my correspondence.

I’m glad to know that you are a kindred spirit pursuing a career demystifying corporate jargon and other forms of gobbledygook, but I beg to differ with you by saying that I rarely find my job a laughing matter. It’s always a deadly serious business to be welcomed with wide, open arms. I’m sure that many professionals—medical surgeons, dentists, and physical therapists in particular—feel the same way about their work even if few of them would dare to admit it. In fact, I’ll probably be ruing the day when people all over the world have finally learned how to write English on their own clearly, precisely, and without obfuscation. By then, I’ll really have no choice but to pull down my shingle for keeps.

In the meantime, Jude, you and I will just have to continue the good fight for plain and simple English—both as an honest livelihood and as a thankless personal advocacy. We should do it in much the same way that the magnificent peacemakers of this planet have been suing for lasting peace on earth for thousands of years now—assiduously, sometimes so stridently, but largely to no avail.

(February 13, 2006)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 13, 2006 © 2006 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Good English is more than just perfect grammar and syntax

Mastery of the grammar and syntax of a language, even if complemented by a wide vocabulary, doesn’t automatically mean mastery of the language itself. For instance, two very intelligent Asian nationals of my acquaintance—they aren’t Filipinos, by the way—boast of getting perfect scores in the TOEFL and TOEIC grammar and sentence structure tests, but as they themselves admit and as is painfully evident from their spoken English, they have such an inadequate grasp of conversational English that they would rather die than get into an open conversation with a native English speaker in the presence of other people. And although they are very well-educated and highly cosmopolitan in outlook, their written English compositions get so muddled in many parts that even a typical high school undergraduate’s C-minus essay would look brilliant in comparison.

The reason for this state of affairs is, of course, that achieving excellent English takes more than just a wide vocabulary and perfect grammar and syntax. As important if not more important, it needs a strong sense of logic, context, and nuance as well as a respectable familiarity with the English idioms. Without these, the English-language learner will forever stick out like a sore thumb when talking among native English speakers.

I had gathered these thoughts of mine for the two-part essay below, “Logic and language,” that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times over three years ago. I wanted my readers to realize that, first, logic and language are not necessarily always congruent, such that our English may be grammatically, semantically, and structurally perfect but our ideas may be contextually or logically wrong; and that, second, English—like most other languages—is highly idiomatic in actual usage, often unpredictably ignoring its own grammar and syntax to quickly or forcefully bring home a point.

I trust that no matter what level your English is now, you will also find the essay instructive and useful in your own quest for stronger mastery of the language.

Logic and language

Part I

Sometime ago, while watching an otherwise engaging talk show on a local TV network about the decline in the English proficiency of Filipinos, I was taken aback when the following transcripts of supposedly bad spoken English were flashed onscreen for discussion:

“Half of this game is ninety percent mental.” (Baseball manager Danny Ozark of the Philadelphia Phillies)

“We are ready for an unforeseen event that may not occur.” (Former US vice president Al Gore)

“If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.” (Former US president Bill Clinton)

“Smoking kills. If you die, you’ve lost an important part of your life.” (Former Hollywood actress Brooke Shields)

Having been uttered not by Filipinos but by Americans, I thought that these examples were irrelevant to the discussions at hand—a terribly wrong-headed backgrounder on the subject of English usage by Filipinos. With better research, the talk-show producers surely could have found much more illustrative examples of bad English uttered by Filipino speakers themselves. Also, I think we should be more forgiving towards the inexactitude of such remarks. They are usually made on the spur of the moment under the crushing glare of TV cameras and the press of so many proffered microphones, so their peculiar English are rarely representative of the normal English of the speakers who blurt them out.

But what I found even more jarring about the quoted statements is that they were not illustrative of bad English at all. The first quotation, in particular, is perfectly good English—“Half of this game is ninety percent mental.” Its grammar and semantics are unimpeachable, and as to its logic and arithmetic, what’s wrong with saying that baseball games are 0.5 x .0.9 = 0.45 mental? We surely can’t fault the logic of such a precise conclusion made by a highly experienced baseball coach.

The other three examples are contextually faulty, of course, yet they are definitely aboveboard in their English grammar and structure. The problem is not in their English but in their logic. Each of them is a “malapropism,” which the Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary defines as “the usually unintentionally humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase.” Often cited as a malapropism is the following supposed remark of Henry Ford about the Model T, the American car that he had mass-produced: “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” Another is this one by the 1940s movie mogul Sam Goldwyn: “A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.” On the home front, some of us may still remember the following malaprop remark of a Filipina many years back after winning a major beauty title: “I would like to thank my father and my mother, and most especially my parents.” As these examples clearly show, malapropisms may be contextually or logically flawed but are not necessarily grammatically and structurally wrong.

This brings me to the point that I would like to make about English, one that I am afraid the TV talk show missed altogether and that many learners of English as a second language often overlook. It is that logic and language are not necessarily always congruent. Our English may be grammatically, semantically, and structurally perfect but our ideas may be contextually or logically wrong. Such was the case with all but the first of the malapropisms presented by the TV talk show, which therefore doesn’t qualify them as instructive examples of supposedly bad English. On the other hand, our English may sound bizarre or strangely illogical on close scrutiny—like, say, the expression “Please keep an eye on your valuables” that we often see in restaurants—yet make complete sense to our readers or readers.

We will explore this matter more deeply in the next part of this essay when we take up the highly idiomatic character of English as spoken by its native speakers. (May 8, 2006)

Part II

Many people lament the fact that English is so difficult to learn as a second or third language. They complain that although English forces learners to learn so many rules for its grammar, semantics, and structure, these rules are in practice more often violated than followed. How come, they ask, that the verb “turn” (to move around an axis or center) can mean so many things when paired off with different prepositions, such as “turn on” (excite), “turn in” (submit), “turn over” (return or flip over), “turn out” (happen), and “turn off” (lose interest or switch off)? And why do native English speakers say peculiar things that seem to have no logic or sense at all, like “We are all ears about what happened to you and Veronica last night” or “The top city official made no bones about being a former number-games operator”?

English is, of course, hardly unique in being idiomatic. Like most of the world’s major languages, it unpredictably ignores its own grammar and semantics in actual usage. But the sheer richness and complexity of English idioms—or the way native English speakers actually communicate with one another—makes it much more difficult for nonnative speakers to learn English than most languages. With scant knowledge of the English idioms, nonnative speakers may be able to master the relatively simpler grammar, semantics, and structure of English yet sound like robots when speaking or writing in English.

There are five general categories of English idioms: the prepositional phrases, the prepositional idioms, common idiomatic expressions, figurative or metaphoric language, and euphemisms.

A prepositional phrase consists of a verb or adverb form that ends in a preposition. The preposition used often doesn’t have a particular semantic significance or logic but had simply become entrenched through prolonged use, and the literal meaning of the verb or adverb isn’t changed by it. Some examples: “approve of” (not, say, “approve for” or “approve with”), “concerned with” (not “concerned of” or “concerned by”); “except for” (not “except of” or “except with”), and “charge with a crime” (not “charge of a crime” or “charge for a crime”).

A prepositional idiom, on the other hand, is an expression consisting of a verb whose meaning changes depending on the preposition that comes after it. As shown earlier, the verb “turn” can form so many prepositional idioms. Another verb that yields various idioms when paired off with different prepositions is “hand”: “hand in” (submit), “hand out” (to give for free), “hand over” (yield control of), and “hand down” (transmit in succession).

The common idiomatic expressions are concise, nonliteral language that native English speakers have grown accustomed to using for convenience. Some examples that also play on the verb “hand”: “to wash one’s hands” (to absolve oneself), “hand to mouth” (having nothing to spare beyond basic necessities), and “out of hand” (beyond control).

Figurative or metaphoric language is a form of idiom that compares two things in an evocative, nonliteral sense to suggest the likeness or similarity between them. It uses the so-called figures of speech, such as the simile and metaphor. A much-used example is the expression “the face that launched a thousand ships”—a literary allusion to Helen of Troy—to mean a provocatively beautiful woman.

Finally, a euphemism is a polite expression that people customarily use for things that they find unpleasant, upsetting, or embarrassing, such as sex, death, bodily functions, and war. Some examples: “to pass away” (die), “to rightsize” (to lay off excess personnel), and “collateral damage” (civilian deaths).

Obviously, the thousands upon thousands of English idioms can only be learned through long and intensive exposure to English as spoken and written by its native speakers. Formal grammar, semantics, and structure can only lay the bare foundations for English proficiency. Only when we have become adequately conversant with its idioms can we really say that we know our English. (May 15, 2006)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, May 8 and 15, 2006 © 2006 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Figuring out the number of ways to skin a cat

Should the verb be in the singular or in the plural form?

Answering this question is usually a very simple matter when we know for sure if the subject of the sentence is singular (“The cat is in the bag”) or plural (“The politicians are now coming out of the woodwork”), or even when there seems to be a quarrel between notion and grammar (“Everybody is scandalized by the his unrepentant behavior”). This is because we can always readily apply one of the most basic rules of English grammar: the subject-verb agreement rule, which, of course, provides that the number of the subject—whether singular or plural—should always agree with the form of the verb—the singular form when the subject is singular, and the plural form when the subject is plural. It’s all that simple.

Not so, however, when the sentence is in a form in which it isn’t clear if the subject is singular or plural. There are several of such sentence constructions in English, and a grammar-savvy friend of mine pounced on me with one a few years ago, challenging me to figure it out. As I recall in the column below that I wrote in 2005, the grammar puzzler took me quite a while to dissect and unravel.

An English-language conundrum

While fine-tuning my book, English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today’s Global Language, for its second printing [this was four and a half years ago], I received e-mail from faraway Stockholm with this note about a particular usage in the book: “Here’s a conundrum, Jose: Should it be ‘There is more than one way to skin a cat’ or ‘There are more than one way to skin a cat’? Consider this as a question submitted to your column.”

The interlocutor was my cyberspace friend Niels Hovmöller, a knowledgeable Swedish gymnasium (secondary school) English teacher and educational software developer who had admirably taken it upon himself to help me put the book’s English on even firmer and surer footing. Purely for love of the language, he was going over the text by line and word for word, promptly e-mailing me incisive—and sometimes tart—comments like the one above every time he found some doubtful grammar or semantic usage in my prose.

Before I answer Niel’s question, though, let’s find out first what “conundrum” means. This is a recurrent word in philosophy and linguistics, but probably not very many of us have bothered to find out what it means. The first of its three Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary meanings is “a riddle whose only answer is or involves a pun,” but Niels is obviously using it here simply to mean “a question or problem having only a conjectural answer.”

That said, I will now fearlessly answer his question: without any doubt, the correct usage is the singular construction, “There is more than one way to skin a cat.” As in the case of many grammar conundrums, however, I will be able to justify my answer only as we go along.

We all know that in English, “there is” or “there are” expressions—the linguistic term for them is expletives—are commonly used to declare or affirm that something exists. They came about because native English speakers generally feel uncomfortable saying such simple declaratives as “A cat is on my bed” or “Errors are in your manuscript.” To assuage their discomfort, they tack on “there is” or “there are” to such statements even if many grammarians think that expletives only serve to weaken prose: “There is a cat on my bed.” “There are errors in your manuscript.”

The simple subject-verb agreement rule in English, of course, applies even to expletive constructions: use “there is” if the subject is singular, like “apple” or “book,” and if the subject is a non-count noun, like “water” and “air”; but use “there are” if the subject is plural, like “apples” and “books.” In the conundrum above, however, it is not crystal clear if the subject of the sentence, “more than one way,” is plural or singular. Many people would argue that it is plural because more than one way—presumably at least two—is being invoked. For the subject-verb agreement to reflect that plurality, they reason out that the correct expression should be “There are more than one way to skin a cat.” Many of us obviously would bristle seeing such an awkward sentence construction, but we now have to conquer our bias against it so we can objectively determine once and for all if the usage has no possibility whatsoever of being correct.

One English grammar rule can actually help us resolve this conundrum. That rule says that when a clause begins with “there is/there are,” the verb should agree in number with the first noun or pronoun being linked by that verb. Under this proximity rule, we say “There is a woman and three men in the car,” not “There are a woman and three men in the car.” When we decide to put the plural subject ahead in that sentence, however, we obviously can use only the plural construction: “There are three men and a woman in the car.”

Now we are ready to frontally tackle Niel’s conundrum: Should it be “There is more than one way to skin a cat” or “There are more than one way to skin a cat”? Invoking the expletive construction rule above, there should be no doubt now that in those two sentences, the subject most proximate to the expletives “there is/there are” is “one way,” which obviously is singular. Therefore, the noun phrase “more than one way to skin a cat” that was built around that singular subject should also be treated as singular. The plural usage would apply, of course, if the subject were “two ways” or a number more than that—“There are more than two ways to skin a cat.” “There are more than nine ways to skin a cat.”—but this is obviously not the case here.

With this, I am confident that we have now resolved Niel’s conundrum for good. (March 21, 2005)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, March 21, 2005 © 2005 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

The pleasures of engaging in English wordplay - Part II

Ever wondered how some people have moved us or inspired us to do great things their way, or mesmerized us, put blinders on our eyes, then made us do irrational things that we would never have dreamed of doing had we not been under their spell?

If so, then the speakers—unless they had recited great poetry—must have been using chiasmus. This figure of speech towers above all the other rhetorical devices in its ability to lower our built-in defenses and arouse our emotions. We could very well call chiasmus the linguistic incarnation of charisma—that rare and elusive power of certain people to inspire fierce loyalty and devotion among their followers.

The use of chiasmus dates back to antiquity. In the 6th century B.C., the extremely wealthy Lydian king Croesus went on record using it: “In peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons.” Such wisdom in only 13 words! Is it possible that he became fabulously wealthy because he was so adept at chiasmus and—by implication—at compelling people’s obedience? Or did he become so good at coining chiasmus because his wealth had allowed him the leisure to craft it?

Now take a look at this familiar line from U.S. president John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address, on which so many English-language elocution students had labored investing their own vocal energies over the years: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Just 17 words, but they give us the feeling of an immensely satisfying four-hour lecture on good citizenship. Then see chiasmus at work in this charming line by the English physician and author Havelock Ellis: “Charm is a woman’s strength; strength is a man’s charm.” And, one more time, hark to this timeless sage advice from Genesis 9:6: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.”

By now you must have already discovered for yourself the fundamental structure and mechanism of chiasmus: it reverses the order of words in two parallel phrases. Take this chiasmus by the legendary Hollywood actress Mae West: “I’d rather be looked over than overlooked.” “Looked over” is “overlooked” in reverse, making the speaker wickedly but deliciously imply that she enjoys being ogled at. Or take this arresting advertising slogan of a Philippine insurance company: “If someone depends on you, you can depend on Insular Life.” By some linguistic alchemy, the parallel word reversals arouse our senses, disarming us so we readily accept their claim as true. Chiasmus has this power because it heightens the sense of drama in language by surprise. It is no wonder that it holds the distinction of being mankind’s all-time vehicle for expressing great truths and, conversely, also great untruths.

Most types of chiasmus reverse the words of familiar sayings in a felicitously parallel way, as in the French proverb, “Love makes time pass, time makes love pass.” For chiasmus to succeed, however, the two insights offered by the word reversals should both be true and survive subsequent scrutiny. (They could also be untrue, and therein lies the danger in chiasmus in the hands of demagogues and charlatans.)

But chiasmus need not be an exact reversal of a familiar saying. Take what the English writer Richard Brinksley said on beholding for the first time the woman whom he was to later marry: “Why don’t you come into my garden? I would like my roses to see you.” This implied chiasmus cleverly reverses this usual invitation of proud homemakers: “I’d like you to see my roses.” And chiasmus also nicely takes the form of questions, as in this line from Antigone by the 5th century Greek dramatist Sophocles: “What greater ornament to a son than a father’s glory, or to a father than a son’s honorable conduct?"

If chiasmus is this pleasurable, does it mean that we should spend a lot of time composing it ourselves to impress people? Not at all! Chiasmus is meant to be used very sparingly, to be reserved only for those very special moments when saying them can truly spell a make-or-break difference in our lives, like preparing for battle, wooing the hearts and minds of people, ruing abject failure, or celebrating great success. In our everyday lives, it is enough for us to spot a good chiasmus so we can savor its wisdom, and to have the wisdom to know when we are simply being conned with fallacy or propaganda masquerading as great truth. (October 16, 2003)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, October 13 and 16, 2003 © 2003 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.