Yielding to the temptation of resurrecting an old essay

Each year, when Holy Week comes, I’m always tempted to resurrect an essay that I wrote way back on April 15, 2003 for my English-usage column in The Manila Times. Indeed, those who have been regularly following the essays featured in this section will recall that I yielded to that temptation last year by posting that essay in the Forum on Black Saturday (which at that time fell on April 3), prefacing it with an introductory note entitled “Looking back to Easter Sunday’s earthly and celestial foundations.” Today, Easter Sunday of 2011, I yield to that temptation again.

So, once more, here’s that essay, “Matters of faith,” which I wrote eight years ago after doing some research to answer a question of my then eight-year-old son—in the process curing my own abysmal ignorance of the foundations of Holy Week as celebrated by Roman Catholics all over the world. Happy Easter! (April 24, 2011)

Matters of faith

I was making notes for a possible non-English-language topic for my column, thinking that grammar wouldn’t be right for Holy Wednesday, when my nine-year-old tapped my shoulder and asked: “Dad, why is Holy Week from April 13 to 20 this year? Last year, it was from March 24 to 31.* Why not hold it on the same date like that of Christmas Day so it doesn’t get confusing?”

Talk about deja vu! I had wanted to ask my own father that same question when I was about the same age as my son now, but never got to ask. Now I am a father myself—three times over, in fact—and yet could only give a stock answer to veil my continuing ignorance: “It’s because the days of the Holy Week are movable feasts, son. They base it on a religious calendar—you know, that kind where there are names of one or two saints for every day of the year.”

“But why, Dad? They could do the same to every other religious holiday, but they don’t. And another question: Why is Easter Sunday called ‘Easter’? This celebration came from the West, so wouldn’t it make more sense to call it ‘Wester’? And one last thing: Why is the bunny a symbol for Easter? It looks funny and doesn’t seem right.”

Those questions stumped me even more, so I told him: “I really don’t know the answers, son, but tonight I’ll get them for you. Go to sleep now and tomorrow we’ll talk again.”

My little research to answer my son’s questions, I must say, yielded more fascinating answers than I expected. To begin with, it turns out that the movable Holy Week schedules are not totally arbitrary at all. They are always exactly timed in relation to the natural, once-a-year occurrence called the vernal equinox. The equinoxes—there are only two of them—are those times in the year when day is precisely as long as night. The vernal equinox [in the Northern Hemisphere] comes in March, marking the end of winter and the beginning of spring, while the autumnal equinox comes in September, marking the end of summer and the beginning of autumn.

The advent of spring was, of course, always a cause for great celebration in the ancient world. The Anglo-Saxons welcomed it with a rousing spring festival in honor of Eoastre, their goddess of springtime and fertility. The Scandinavians called her Ostra and the Teutons, Ostern, but they honored her in much the same way. The importance of this festival to the early Europeans was not lost on the second-century Christians, who wanted to convert them to Christianity. They therefore made their own observance of Christ’s Resurrection coincide exactly with the festival. Then they gradually made it a Christian celebration, even appropriating the name “Eoastre” for it. Thus, contrary to what my son thought, the later use of the term “Easter” for the high point of the Holy Week had absolutely nothing to do with global geography.

People in those early times, however, celebrated the spring festival on different days, mostly on Sundays but often also on Fridays and Saturdays. This became a thorny issue. To resolve it, the Roman Emperor Constantine—who had by then become a supporter of the Christian faith—convened the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. This council came up with the Easter Rule, decreeing that Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday that occurs after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox. The “full moon” of this rule, however, does not always occur on the same date as the full moon that we actually see; it is the full moon after the ecclesiastical “vernal equinox,” which always falls on March 21. By this reckoning, Easter will always fall on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25. This rule has withstood the test of time, remaining unchanged exactly 1,678 years later to this day.

As to the Easter Bunny, it may be natural for us to think that it is simply a modern-day contrivance to liven up Easter Sunday. It isn’t. Its provenance is even older than that of Easter itself. The prolific rabbit, whose reappearance in spring unerringly marked the end of the brutal winters of those days, actually was the earthly symbol of the goddess Eoastre. Along with the Easter Egg, itself a symbol of rebirth in many cultures, the Easter Bunny was, in fact, a powerful ancient symbol for activity after inaction, for life after death.

In the suffering and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Roman Catholics and the rest of the Christian faithful have similarly found such an enduring symbol. They have thus consecrated the Lenten Season in His Name as their holiest of days, ending it on Easter Sunday in a feast where church tradition and ancient belief find joyful convergence.

These are the things I’ll tell my nine-year-old when he wakes up today and reminds me of what I promised him. (April 15, 2003)
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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, April 15, 2003 © 2003 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.


*This year of 2011, of course, we are celebrating Easter on Sunday, April 24—the first Sunday after the full moon that follows the ecclesiastical “vernal equinox,” which in turn always falls on March 21. This really sounds complicated and rather arbitrary, but there it is.

Know the indefinite pronouns well to avoid subject-disagreement errors

As we all know, there’s a good number of pronouns in the English language that don’t specify the identity of its subject. They are known as the indefinite pronouns, such as “anybody,” “everyone,” ‘some,” and “none.” Since it has no specific referent, we can’t be too sure if a particular indefinite pronoun is singular or plural. And when an indefinite pronoun is the antecedent of a possessive pronoun in a sentence, it’s often a puzzler whether to use the masculine, feminine, or neuter form for that possessive pronoun.

To avoid confusion, English observes certain conventions for the grammar of indefinite pronouns. Under these conventions, indefinite pronouns are classified into three categories: the definitely singular indefinite pronouns, the definitely plural indefinite pronouns, and the indefinite pronouns that can be either singular or plural depending on context. We have no choice but to memorize the indefinite pronouns that belong to each of these categories, for when constructing sentences that involve indefinite pronouns, gut feel is simply not enough for avoiding subject-verb disagreement errors.

To make you more conversant with the indefinite pronouns, I am posting the essay below that that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times way back in 2003. I’m sure that reading it would go a long way towards reducing subject-verb disagreement problems in your English to the barest minimum or, with luck, to none at all. (April 17, 2011)      

The grammar of indefinite pronouns

It is a long-established and utterly predictable aspect of English grammar that (1) the verb must always agree with the number—either singular or plural—of the noun or pronoun that does or states the action, and that (2) the pronoun or its possessive form must always agree with the gender—male, female, or neuter—of its antecedent noun. Thus, we routinely make verbs perfectly agree with the number of the noun or pronoun doing or stating them: “Eve loves apples straight from the tree.” “Eve and Adam love apples straight from the tree.” And we also take it for granted that the pronoun and possessive pronoun must perfectly agree with the gender of their respective antecedent nouns: “Eve loves apples; her friend Adam also loves them.” The possessive pronoun “her,” of course, has the female noun “Eve” as antecedent, while the pronoun “them” has the neuter noun “apples” as antecedent.

Problems arise, however, when we start using indefinite pronouns—those words that, without specific antecedent nouns, we use as doers or receivers of the action. It is often obvious whether an indefinite pronoun is singular or plural, but there is often no way of knowing what gender to use for its possessive form. Take, for instance, the indefinite pronouns “all” and “somebody” in this sentence: “All of us [is, are] agreed that the task must be done, but somebody who has [his, her] personal interests foremost in [his, her] mind must inhibit [himself, herself] from doing it.”

That we should use the verb “are” for the pronoun “all” is clear, of course, but whether to use “his” or “her” as the possessive of the pronoun “somebody,” and whether to use “himself” or “herself” as its reflexive pronoun, are very thorny choices indeed! This ambiguity has given rise to certain conventions—some self-evident and some rather arbitrary—to make sure that our grammar of the indefinite pronouns remains beyond reproach.

Before discussing these conventions, though, let us make a quick review of the indefinite pronouns. We have to be doubly sure which of them are notionally singular, plural, or can be either way depending on how they are used.

The definitely singular indefinite pronouns: “another,” “anybody,” “anyone,” “anything,” “each,” “either,” “everybody,” “everyone,” “everything,” “little,” “much,” “neither,” “nobody,” “no one,” “nothing,” “one,” “other,” “somebody,” “someone,” and “something.” As proof that each of them is singular, we can use practically all of them to fill in the blank in the following sentence with no trouble at all: “________ is to blame for what happened.” (The exceptions are “little,” “much,” and “other,” which can be used in more limited ways: “Little is done by people who only talk.” “Much is accomplished through hard work.” “Other than him, who is to blame?”) All also take singular possessive pronouns and singular reflexive pronouns. The only problem is that their gender is indeterminate.

The definitely plural indefinite pronouns: “both,” “few,” “many,” “others,” and “several.” All five, of course, are no-brainers as to their number: they are plural through and through any which way we put them. Each can take the plural possessive pronoun “their” and the reflexive “themselves,” and we don’t even have to think about gender at all when using them.

Indefinite pronouns that are either singular or plural: “all,” “any,” “more,” “most,” “none,” and “some.” They are singular or plural depending on what they refer to. Singular: “All of that book is pure, unmitigated thrash.” Plural: “The singers are at the studio; all are rehearsing their songs.”

Now, let us go back to the dilemma of what gender to use for the singular indefinite possessives. As we all know, the standard practice in English is to use the possessive pronoun “his” when no information is available about the antecedent noun’s gender: “Everybody must give his share to this noble cause.” Only in one instance can we ignore this generic way of putting the indefinite singular possessive pronoun and still be grammatically correct—when the statement refers to a known all-female group, as in: “Everybody in this women’s league must give her share to this noble cause.”

This male bias in the English language obviously has rankled among women for hundreds of years, so users of the indefinite possessive have come up with two effective schemes to avoid the problem altogether. One way is to consistently use the phrase “his or her” when the indefinite possessive is required: “Everybody must give his or her share to this cause.” This becomes very awkward with repeated use, however, so that many writers and speakers would rather rewrite entire sentences so they could use a plural antecedent indefinite pronoun and do away with the need to establish gender: “All must give their share to this noble cause.” “All of us must give our share to this cause.”

By making this the norm, English is actually taking one major step toward establishing equality of the sexes in the language.

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, December 17, 2003 © 2003 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Why it’s tough choosing between “that” and “which” to link relative clauses

Last week, to help English users increase their comfort level when dealing with relative pronouns, I posted Part II of “Getting to know the relative clauses better,” a three-part essay that I wrote for  my weekly English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2008. Part II discussed the American English way of using the relative pronouns “that” and “which”: “that” to link a defining or restrictive clause to a nonhuman antecedent subject, and “which” to link a nondefining or nonrestrictive clause to a nonhuman antecedent subject.

This time, in Part III, I explain why exposure to both American English and British English can make it difficult for some English users to choose between “that” and “which” when linking a relative clause to the main clause. It’s because American English and British have different—sometimes exactly opposite—conventions for the use of “that” and “which” when linking a restrictive or nonrestrictive relative clause to the main clause. To avoid choosing the wrong relative pronoun, therefore, we need to make it clear to ourselves which of the two English standards we are using. (April 9, 2011)

Getting to know the relative clauses better – III

A rather sticky point about the relative pronouns “that” and “which” is that their American English usage differs in one important respect from British English usage. Indeed, one who gets heavily exposed to books and periodicals in both English standards—as I had been in my younger days—would experience some difficulty in choosing between “that” and “which” to link relative clauses.

This is because as we saw in Part II of this essay, American English specifically prescribes using “that” to link a defining or restrictive clause to a nonhuman antecedent subject, and restricts the use of “which” to linking a non­defining or nonrestrictive clause to a nonhuman antecedent subject. In contrast, British English uses “which” to link both defining and nondefining clauses in such situations: a defining “which” when no comma or pair of commas separates it from the relative clause, and a nondefining “which” when a comma or pair of commas (as the case may be) separates it from the relative clause.

In British publications, therefore, we will normally come across “which” used to introduce defining relative clauses, as in this sentence (italicizations mine): “Nevertheless, [Charles Darwin’s] is the version of natural selection which has since been supported by a century and a half of observation and which is now accepted by virtually every scientist on earth.” (“How Darwin won the evolution race” by Robin McKie, The Observer, June 22, 2008). In contrast, American publications normally would use “that” for the two relative clauses in that sentence (italicizations mine): “Nevertheless, [Charles Darwin’s] is the version of natural selection that has since been supported by a century and a half of observation and that is now accepted by virtually every scientist on earth.”

From my recent readings, though, I get the feeling that some British writers—probably due to the influence of American media—are no longer entirely averse to using “that” to introduce defining relative clauses. Consider this passage (italicizations mine): “Heather McGregor, a City headhunter, echoes this analysis with the arch observation that ‘the UK bank that has come out of the current crisis strongest is the one that has most aggressively promoted women into positions of senior management: Lloyds TSB.’” (“What caused the crunch? Men and testosterone” by Matthew Syed, The Times-UK, Sept. 30, 2008). I would think that someone writing in British English would have used “which” to introduce the two defining clauses within the quoted material in that sentence: “Heather McGregor, a City headhunter, echoes this analysis with the arch observation that ‘the UK bank which has come out of the current crisis strongest is the one which has most aggressively promoted women into positions of senior management: Lloyds TSB.’”

Now, as I mentioned in my previous column, there’s a way to avoid having to make a choice between “which” and “that” when linking restrictive relative clauses to their antecedent subject: to drop the relative pronoun altogether whenever possible. See how this works in the following sentence: “The charming little beach that we used to visit in summer is now a crowded, high-end resort.” With “that” dropped: “The charming little beach we used to visit in summer is now a crowded, high-end resort.” Another example: “The emergency financial maneuver that was proposed by the chairman was rejected by the company’s stockholders.” With “that” dropped: “The emergency financial maneuver proposed by the chairman was rejected by the company’s stockholders.”

The two “that”-less sentences above are, of course, a form of elliptical construction, which we will recall is a streamlining procedure that makes a sentence more concise and easier to enunciate by omitting words that are obviously understood. This particular construction, though, is advisable only for informal writing and spoken English, and doesn’t work in all cases. In particular, we can’t omit “that” when the relative clause begins with an adverbial phrase, as in this sentence: “The speaker insisted that ultimately the people would suffer from the rejection of the emergency economic measure.”

See what happens when we drop “that”: “The speaker insisted ultimately the people would suffer from the rejection of the emergency economic measure.” The result is a squinting modifier, where the adverb “ultimately” could be understood as modifying either the verb before it or the entire phrase that follows it. 

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, October 4, 2008 © 2008 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Guideposts for using “who,” “that,” and “which” to link relative clauses

Last week, to better equip English learners in handling relative pronouns and complex sentences, I posted Part I of “Getting to know the relative clauses better,” a three-part essay that I wrote for  my weekly English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2008. Part I discussed the grammatical basis for the choice of relative pronoun to link a subordinate clause to the main clause, then explained the difference between a defining or restrictive relative clause, on one hand, and a nondefining or nonrestrictive relative clause, on the other. The discussion went as far as the use of the relative pronoun “who” when persons are the antecedent subjects. 

This time, in Part II, we will review the choice of relative pronoun for linking subordinate clauses when the subject is an animal, a place, an inanimate object, or a concept. The choice, of course, will be between the relative pronouns “that” or “which.” As the following discussions will make clear, that choice will depend on the kind of relative clause being used in the sentence. (April 2, 2011)

Getting to know the relative clauses better – II

In Part I of this essay, we discussed the difference between the two kinds of relative clauses: a defining or restrictive relative clause provides essential information to the main clause of a sentence, while a nondefining or nonrestrictive relative clause provides information not essential to the idea or context of the main clause. We then saw that when the antecedent noun is a person, a defining relative clause is inseparably linked to the main clause by the relative pronoun “who,” as in “Young people who spend too much time playing computer games tend to have very short attention spans.” A nondefining relative clause is similarly introduced by the relative pronoun “who,” but it must always be set apart from the main clause by a pair of commas, as in “The great Jose Rizal, who has been called ‘The Pride of the Malay Race,’ was actually of Chinese ancestry.” Those commas indicate that the main clause can stand even without the relative clause.

(Again, to get a surer feel of the difference between a defining clause and a nondefining clause, see what happens when we drop the relative clauses from each of the examples above: “Young people […] tend to have very short attention spans.” “The great Jose Rizal […] was actually of Chinese ancestry.” With the relative clause gone in the first sentence, the statement has become too overgeneralized to be true; in contrast, even without the relative clause, the second statement remains perfectly valid.)

So far, though, we have only discussed the use of relative pronouns when persons are the antecedent subjects. When the subject is an animal, a place, an inanimate object, or a concept, we can no longer use the relative pronoun “who” to link the relative clause to its antecedent subject. Instead, we use either the relative pronouns “that” or “which” depending on the kind of relative clause we are using in the sentence.

In American English specifically, we use “that” to link a defining or restrictive clause to a nonhuman antecedent subject, as in the following examples: “The Siamese cat that our father found on a street gutter a year ago became the family’s favorite pet.” “The treehouse that the Sanchez brothers built during their teens was gone.” “The great idea that was propounded by the neophyte legislator got mangled due to too much politicking.” In these sentences, the relative clause is crucial to understanding the idea or context of the main clause; dropping the relative clause can seriously alter the import of—or significantly detract from—the intended meaning: “The Siamese cat became the family’s favorite pet.” “The treehouse […] was gone.” “The great idea […] got mangled due to too much politicking.”

On the other hand, we use the relative pronoun “which” to link a nondefining or nonrestrictive clause to a nonhuman antecedent subject, as in the following examples: “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which was written by the British historian Edward Gibbon in the 18th century, has been hailed as one the greatest historical works produced by Western man.” “A subspecies of the chevrotain, which is also known as the mouse deer, is indigenous to Palawan and nearby islands.” The pair of enclosing commas is mandatory in such constructions; it sets the relative clause apart from the main clause and indicates that the relative clause is not essential to the idea of the main clause.

Indeed, when the relative clauses are dropped from such sentences, we will find that the main clauses can very well stand by themselves: “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire […] has been hailed as one the greatest historical works produced by Western man.” “A subspecies of the chevrotain […] is indigenous to Palawan and nearby islands.” (September 27, 2011)

Next week, in Part III of this essay, we will discuss how the American English usage of the relative clauses differs from that of British English and how we can streamline sentence constructions that use relative clauses.

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