Frances Austin

Epistolary conventions in the Clift family correspondence

(1973). Epistolary conventions in the Clift family correspondence. English Studies: Vol. 54, No. 2, pp. 129-140.

Points of Modern English Usage LXXXIII

Huddleston and Pullum in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language probably would not agree with this definition of the term ‘‘pro-verb’’. Their examples of do as a pro-form all include an antecedent verb, as: I like it more than I used to do. They would define do in the examples given in ‘‘PMEU’’ simply as an ‘‘ordinary lexical verb’’ (Huddleston and Pullum, 2002, pp. 1534 – 5). Quirk et al. state that do as a main or lexical verb can appear as a pro-form (both grammars use the term ‘‘pro-form’’ rather than ‘‘pro-verb’’) in combination with a pronoun in sentences such as ‘‘What did you do on holiday?’’ ‘‘We didn’t do anything’’, but distinguish this use from its function as a ‘‘general-purpose agentive transitive verb’’ in sentences like English Studies Vol. 88, No. 1, February 2007, 95 – 107

Letter Writing in Late Modern EuropeLetter Writing in Late Modern EuropeMARINA DOSSENA AND GABRIELLA DEL LUNGO CAMICIOTTI (Eds.) Amsterdam , John Benjamins Publishing Company , 2012 vii + 254 pp., ISBN: 978-9-0272-5623-2 , €95.00

and traditional industries have led to increased linguistic erosion. Many local words in the Survey of English Dialects data (Orton & Dieth, 1962–71) are no longer in use, although the iconic northern words lad and lass are still frequently used by young and old speakers alike. The book discusses the language contact scenarios with, for example, Scandinavian and British Romani speaker groups which have left their mark on the vocabulary of the North-East, but the authors add that far too little attention has been paid to lexical variation in this region, and that there is still a lot of work to be done. The linguistic data are drawn from a range of sources. For Newcastle, there is the Newcastle Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English which contains data from 1969 and 1994 as well as data from the Emergence of Structured Variation in the Speech of Tyneside English corpus; for Teesside andWearside there are the sociolinguistic investigations by Carmen Llamas (Middlesbrough) and Lourdes Burbano-Elizondo (Sunderland), although the chapter on morphosyntax, which is almost exclusively based on Newcastle data, shows that more research is needed for these areas. Overall, Urban North-Eastern English: Tyneside to Teesside offers a brief, readerfriendly and up-to-date overview of the varieties spoken in the North-East of England which should become a standard work and starting point for all scholars working on varieties in the North of England. However, unlike other volumes in this series, this book is not accompanied by a website with sound files which would have made this edition even more valuable.

Points of Modern English Usage LXXXVI

258. Sentences which have a construction with a form of the verb do, of the type: Above all does he fantasise about a long-lost world, seem not to be recognised by the contemporary grammars. Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey Pullum (2002) do not mention the construction and R. Quirk et al. (1985) only refer to it briefly in a comment that excludes two out of the three examples in the question. However, our regular contributors as usual found things to say about it. Most people’s immediate reaction, including that of Jack Baxter (Benfleet, Essex) and Sheila Robinson (Norwich), was that the inclusion of does in the three sentences quoted was superfluous, adding little or nothing to the meaning. Jean-Marc Gachelin (Berck) says that auxiliary do is ‘‘optional’’ and Knud Sørensen (Aarhus) also notes that it is ‘‘not obligatory’’, adding that it strikes him as being ‘‘slightly dated’’, a point to which we shall return. Gachelin was the only person to point out that there were in fact four instances of the usage, the third sentence including two clauses with does. The first of these differs from the other examples, which all contain initial adverbials, in that it is a comparative clause: The better capitalism works, the less beautiful does it become. Gachelin thinks the balance (‘‘internal parallelism’’) would be better preserved if the does had been omitted. Of such constructions, Quirk et al. say:

Germanic Language Histories “From Below” (1700–2000) (Studia Linguistica Germanica 86)

natural selection. While the influence of older writers is still to be found in modern writers of racial comedy, the style of present-day literary humour is better adapted to the environment in which writers live and write. The new direction which British literature has taken in the twenty-first century is exemplified by Zadie Smith (White Teeth, 2000), Hari Kunzru (The Impressionist, 2002) and Andrea Levy (Small Island, 2004). Ross concludes that these three writers derive humour from dissolving the hitherto impermeable boundaries of gender, nation and ethnicity. Race Riots. Comedy and Ethnicity in Modern British Fiction is a work of the highest scholarly achievement. Each chapter is meticulously annotated, and there is an excellent bibliography. Race Riots is one of the few scholarly works to explore the complexity of racial humour and how laughter can reinforce or subvert racial stereotyping. Its discussion of how humour and power are closely related exemplifies the moral status of humour itself. Humour is indeed to be taken very seriously.

Points of Modern English Usage LXXXV

A point of English grammar unusually hit the news headlines on the BBC Radio 4’s The World this Weekend recently (31 August 2008). Apparently, Tesco, one of the big English supermarket stores had a notice at one of its checkouts ‘‘Ten items or less’’. Some customers objected that this was ‘‘ungrammatical’’ and it should be ‘‘fewer’’. To satisfy them Tesco got round the difficulty by changing the notice to ‘‘Up to ten items’’. One of their rival companies, Waitrose, has for a long time—at least in my local branch—had the notice ‘‘Ten items or fewer’’ at its fast checkout. Is this the supermarket for the discerning?

Points of Modern English Usage LXXXIV

Sylvia Chalker, who was a stalwart and regular contributor to ‘‘PMEU’’ for many years, sadly died at the beginning of 2007. Sylvia was herself the author of several works on English Language, among them, in collaboration with Edmund Weiner, The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar (OUP, 1984). She had been ill for some time and had felt unable to respond to last year’s ‘‘Questions’’. Her comments were always succinct and perceptive and her contributions will be much missed.

Points of Modern English Usage LXXXII

246. The use of the verb decide in constructions such as a collision with a gatepost decided her against driving, which I called ‘‘impersonal,’’ elicited similar comments from all the contributors who wrote about it. Although more, perhaps, a matter of syntax than vocabulary, it seems to be the province of dictionaries. Neither Quirk et al.’s A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985) nor Huddleston and Pullum’s The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002) mention this use of decide. Not surprisingly, therefore, little reference was made to any of the standard grammars. It was to the major dictionaries that people turned for information other than their own perceptions. Everyone agreed that the construction is causative in meaning: the various non-personal subjects ‘‘cause’’ or ‘‘persuade’’ the personal objects following the verb to a certain course of action. In spite of the general consensus of opinion that the meaning of the construction was causative, correspondents came up with a variety of additional comments. Both Sylvia Chalker (London) and Jack Baxter (Benfleet, Essex) found the construction unusual. Chalker says that verbs of ‘‘mental process’’ do not usually behave in this way:

Points Of Modern English Usage LXXXI

243. The question on whether like has finally taken over from as and as if/as though evoked a fair amount of discussion of the various types of usage of like as a conjunction. Most contributors felt that the first quotation: ‘‘little boys being sent up chimneys, like they were in Victorian times,’’ was more acceptable than the other two. Knud Sørensen (Aarhus) suggests that ‘‘it may be useful to distinguish between the two senses of like: (1) in clauses of comparison instead of as (‘in the same way as’) and (2) instead of the complex conjunctions, as if/as though, which introduce what The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language calls ‘content clauses’.’’ (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002, p.1158) He finds that the use of like in the first meaning ‘‘jars less’’ than the second. The second and third quotations both had like instead of as if/as though. Jack Baxter (Benfleet, Essex) pointed out that these two quotations both included a form of the verb look: the world was created looking like it had a long prehistory and the baby doesn’t look like it wants to save the world. This was by accident rather than design, but it may, as Baxter suggests, have a bearing on the acceptability or otherwise of the usage. Quirk et al. list look under verbs of perception that are ‘‘used informally, especially in AmE, with like in place of as if.’’ (Quirk et al., 1985, p.1083) Tom Burton (Adelaide) wonders if the alliteration may be a reason for the preference of like. Certainly, examples of like with look are very common. Both Jack Baxter and Sylvia Chalker (London) noted that the third quotation contained the two forms: like and as if: the baby that doesn’t look like it wants to save the world, it looks as if it would settle for . . . a good night’s sleep. They suggested that this might have been deliberate for English Studies Vol. 86, No. 3, June 2005, 269 – 281

Points Of Modern English Usage LXXVIII – Feedback

By the Way 1. Enjoy (February 2001). An e-mail greetings card arrived on my desk shortly after the paragraph concerning intransitive enjoy appeared. It bore the one word ENJOY! Ingrid Tieken Boon van Ostade (Leiden), who found the card on the internet and sent it to me, reports that the Coca Cola advertisement is also to be seen in the Netherlands – in English! She also confirmed that the expression has been current for over ten years in the United States: ‘in the film Track 29, GB/VS 1988, by Nicolas Roeg (script by Dennis Potter) a waiter (American) puts down a plate in front of one of the main characters and says “Enjoy”’.