Chapter 4

READING EHRLICH AND MURPHY

Introduction

Now the fun starts. This chapter is a guide. It will not work for you if you do not follow your homework assignments and do the required exercises in Ehrlich and Murphy. This may come as a surprise after what I've just said in the last three chapters about prescriptive teaching grammars. But I believe it is important to take our grammar text very seriously for several reasons.

1) The material contained in Ehrlich and Murphy is pure traditional normative grammar at its very best — or worst, depending on your point of view. The usage sections are also prime examples of what most educated people think of when they hear the expression ’traditional grammar’ with subjects such as tense agreement, the agreement of pronouns, the use of the objective case, etc.

2) The authors present their material in a very traditional fash- ion, i.e. they simply give you rules and definitions as if they were statements of simple fact without a lot of explanations, ex-amples or rationalizations. There is also no attempt to try to con- fuse the reader with pseudo-linguistic jargon or high-tech arrows.

3) They provide the student with hundreds of exercises. And it is primarily for this reason Ehrlich and Murphy is so invaluable. I

have pointed out that anyone can prove almost anything with one

or two examples. But if a theory is weak, problems become more and more likely as the number of examples increase.

So what we are going to do is take Erlich and Murphy's text at face value, read their explanations, do their exercises and then wait for problems to arise. Next, we will collect and analyze these problems and try to determine how and why they occurred. Finally, in the following chapters, we will present a modified model of our own based on the questions and issues raised by the authors. It will be this simplified version of traditional grammar that you will eventually have to learn how use and be tested on in your final.

So what I'd like to do here in Chapter 4 is show you how to go about finding problems with the text. I will give you a set of guidelines to follow, go through a few examples and then allow you the great pleasure of discovering the rest for yourselves.

Remember that there is a glossary in the front which I'd like you to read through first since it is a review or summary of the entire book. There is also an answer key at the back. However, you should complete each section before you check your answers with the answer key.

ATTENTION K-MART SHOPPERS: In case you missed that last directive, please do not check and correct your answers as you are completing them. Doing so will skew the entire process. You have to answer each question as best you can given the examples and instructions provided by the text. Then and only then should you turn to the answer key and check them. However, you should not change any of your answers before they are discussed in class. This assignment is not a contest to see how many answers you can match with the key.

RULES FOR READING EM:

READ CAREFULLY. THINK YOUR WAY THROUGH THEse EXPLANATIONS AND EXAMPLES.

they SHOULD FEEL LIKE FAMILIAR FIFTH GRADE MATERIAL BECAUSE they are. BUT DON’T BE DECEIVED BY WHAT YOU THINK YOU ALREADY KNOW AND UNDERSTAND.

CHALLENGE. QUESTION.

DO THE QUESTIONS ON YOUR OWN. ANSWER EVERYTHING BASED ON WHAT YOU FEEL IN YOUR HEART IS RIGHT. TRUST YOUR INTUITIONS.

THEN CHECK YOUR RESPONSES WITH THEIR ANSWER KEY.

DON’T SIMPLY ASSUME THAT THEIR ANSWERS ARE ‘CORRECT.’

IF THEY DON’T MAKE SENSE TO YOU, SAY SO.

DON’T BE CHICKEN.

STOP AND TAKE NOTES. USE YOUR HEAD.

JUST ASK THAT THEY BE CONSISTENT. YOU HAVE THAT RIGHT.

•WHAT THEY SAY IN ONE PLACE should be CONSISTENT WITH WHAT THEY SAY IN ANOTHER.

•ASK THAT THEY GIVE NAMES AND LABELS THAT DO some WORK — THEY should TELL YOU SOMETHING useful. something that makes sense.

•ASK THAT THEIR ANALYSES COVER SIMPLE CASES THAT WE ENCOUNTER EVERY DAY. THAT"S FAIR.

•THE THINGS THEY LEAVE OUT ARE PROBABLY THE VERY THINGS THAT WILL CAUSE YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE TROUBLE.

•DON’T BE LIMITED BY THEIR EXAMPLES. think of your own.

•REPEAT: TRY TO FIND GOOD COUNTER-EXAMPLES. (EXAMPLES NOT COVERED BY THEIR ‘RULES.’)

•BUT REMEMBER, THEY ARE NOT PRESENTING A CONSISTENT, RATIONAL MODEL. teaching GRAMMARIANS seldom WORRY ABOUT STUFF LIKE THAT. THEY DON’T HAVE TO. AFTER ALL, THEY HAVE TRADITION ON THEIR SIDE. still, be kind. be fair.

try to understand why they say what they do. let your frustrations slide.

LOGIC

LET LOGIC BECOME A TOOL FOR FREEING YOUR MIND.

LOGIC IS A COMMON LANGUAGE THAT SINCERE PEOPLE WHO ARE DIFFERENT SHARE SO THEY CAN COMMUNICATE ON MORE OR LESS EQUAL TERMS.

IT IS IMPERSONAL BECAUSE IT HAS TO BE TO DO ITS JOB.

LOGIC IS A TOOL. CONTROL IT AND IT WILL BE YOUR FRIEND.

BUT LOGIC HAS ITS LIMITS JUST AS ANY TOOL HAS ITS LIMITS.

YOU CAN DEMAND EXPLANATIONS THAT MAKE SENSE,

a logic is simply a system of reasoning. it is a set of rules for making inferences just as we have rules for playing games.

a logic is a kind of language. each language has its own logic.

ABSTRACT. GENERALIZE.

BACK TO E/M

Procedure TO FOLLOW:

if you disagree with the book, THINK THIS SEQUENCE:

•CHECK AND DOUBLE CHECK THE QUESTION AGAIN.

•DID YOU FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS?

•If so, start sequence.

1) The discrepancy could be a typo — typesetter/proofreader had a hot night. It happens.

2) EM is using traditional model consistently but traditional

model is not consistent —> the problem lies with MODEL

3) EM using traditional model inconsistently

(they had a hot night) —> the problem lies with EM

4) Maybe YOU got a little lazy and confused yourself —>

problem lies with you

NOTE: (4) is listed LAST for a good reason. DON’t just assume THAT YOU WERE WRONG AND THE BOOK WAS RIGHT.

AND DON’T IGNORE YOUR OWN INTUITIONS (if you have any left after all these years of being brainwashed).

LISTEN. THINK. DO YOUR HOMEWORK.

GET TUFF.

By the way, do you know where your ideas come from?

about God?

life?

cool shoes?

direct objects?

Most people don’t have the faintest.

Pause

The difficulty that most students have following these instructions is that they usually don't have to read critically. They are rewarded for simply believing everything they read and then giving it back to the instructor at the sound of a bell. There are times when this procedure is appropriate and times when it is not. This is a time when it is not appropriate.

Dialogue

Let's use a Bert and Ernie dialogue to try to illustrate how you're supposed to be approaching the exercises. It's a kind of model.

B: You’re really coming on strong here and you’re also going too fast, Ernie. Can you slow down and give me a few more examples of what you mean by the lack of consistency in Ehrlich and Murphy?

E: Sure, why not, Bert?

B: I’ve looked over the first few chapters again — just like you said. And I personally don’t see all of these inconsistencies you’re talking about. So maybe you can go over some of the same examples again.

E: OK, but I don’t think it will help to review everything one problem at a time. What I’ll do is simply review the different categories of problems I see in the text and give you a few examples for each. Is that all right?

B: Fair enough. But let’s start with Chapter 1 again. I didn’t have any trouble with it — why?

E: Well, there are a couple of reasons for that. First of all, Ehrlich and Murphy define everything so generally, it’s difficult to disagree with most of the things they say. But then again, they’re not telling us a whole lot either.

B: Until Chapter 3?

E: Right. Once they get into that chapter on verbs and verbals, they can’t hide behind vague generalizations like they do early on. But to see these problems, you still have to think and question. You can’t just accept what they say solely based upon their examples and definitions.

B: I have to try to find counter-examples.

E: Exactly. For example, if they say a complement has to be either a noun or

an adjective as they do in the Glossary, you have to try to think of something you feel sure is a complement that they wouldn’t call a noun or an adjective.

B: Like ‘the play is at three’ or ‘the cat is on the mat?’

E: Yes, good. ‘Is’ is a linking-verb so it should be followed by a complement. But ‘at three’ and ‘on the mat’ are not nouns or adjectives. They’re adverbial prepositional phrases. Adverbials of time and place.

B: But didn’t you say that good models should not be too complicated and confusing? Maybe Ehrlich and Murphy would say that these examples are just exceptions.

E: Yes, and maybe that's what they were thinking. But good model explanations still have to cover the primary data — the most common cases. And I don't think anyone would claim that these aren't sentence types we use every day.

B: So you’re saying that Ehrlich and Murphy often look more consistent than they are because they simply avoid mentioning or discussing grammatical constructions that might cause them problems.

E: That’s right. But I want to emphasize two things. First, they're writing a general purpose student workbook, not a linguistics text. So consistency is not a top priority with them. Second, to be fair, your counter-examples should always be common and ordinary kinds of expressions like the ones you just mentioned.

B: Are you implying that Ehrlich and Murphy are trying to trick us?

E: No, of course not. I just told you. They’re just doing what all writers of text books do — they simplify and over-generalize to avoid confusion. That’s why it’s up to you, the reader, to think through their explanations. Don’t just take any text — including mine — at face value.

B: Do you have any more examples?

E: Yeah, but just a few. I gotta go get something to eat.

B: OK. Go ahead.

E: All right. As we’ve said, they get through Chapter 1 fairly well. But they start running into trouble in Chapter 2 Nouns and Articles. On the first page, they define a noun as ‘the name of a person, place, thing, quality, activity, concept or condition.’

B: Actually, I didn’t read it that carefully.

E: Under activity, they list ‘fishing,’ ‘jumping’ and ‘studying’ — which are all gerunds. And yet, in the following exercises, the gerunds ‘becoming’ and ‘smoking’ are not classified as nouns in the answer key.

B: Yeah, I did wonder about that. But I just thought they wanted me to give them the same answers they asked for in Chapter 1.

E: I don’t blame you for thinking that, but Chapter 2 is specifically about nouns. And there’s another thing that adds to the confusion. They give several examples of infinitives functioning as verbal nouns, but they don’t call them ‘nouns’ even though they labeled gerunds as nouns. Why?

B: This is totally confusing. Nothing makes any sense any more.

E: Sure it’s confusing. Your internal logic machine is trying to process all of these inputs consistently — and finally it just gives up and turns off. The problem in the case of the complement is that their definition wasn't inclusive enough to cover ordinary cases. In this example, they aren't applying the concept of noun consistently so we wonder what the rule is.

B: I can’t follow all of this.

E: No problem. Let’s just keep on talking about infinitives and gerunds as ‘nouns.’ Look at this sentence:

Mary refused to knit the sweater for her father.

The infinitive ‘to knit’ is the direct object so, as a verbal, it is functioning as a noun just as ‘dancing’ is functioning as a noun in ‘They liked dancing.’ But as I've said, Ehrlich and Murphy don’t call the infinitive a ‘noun.’

B: Because it’s not. It’s a verbal.

E: So is ‘dancing.’ ‘Dancing’ is a gerund — which is just as much a verbal as the infinitive. But then later on in Chapter 3, Ehrlich and Murphy do have a section in which they discuss infinitives as nouns.

B: Hey, stop. I’m getting confused. Does it really matter what you call them? Who cares?

E: Maybe right now it doesn’t seem to matter. But it will in the end. On the other hand, you’re right. Verbals are tough. That’s why people usually just give up on them.

B: They're smart.

E: Sure, but unfortunately, many of the problems people have with grammar center around verbals. So if you can’t explain the verbal system, then grammar starts to look more and more like a meaningless exercise in labeling and nothing more.

B: So we gotta deal with verbals.

E: Yeah. I don’t mean like a linguist but at least in a way that’s relatively consistent and makes sense.

B: Good luck.

E: OK, maybe that’ll be hard. But at least we can appreciate the difficulty of the problems involved so when people have trouble with the verb system we can give them some credit.

B: Like, so they won’t feel so stupid?

E: Yeah, so they won’t feel so stupid. After all, if linguists and philosophers have problems with verbals, what makes us think that a sixth grader will find them so easy. Or a college student.

B: But you’re still going to try to explain them, aren’t you?

E: Yes, but only in a very crude fashion.

B: Sounds like loads of fun — for sure.

E: Well, it is fun — in a strange sort of way.

B: Oh, gosh. I can’t wait.

E: Listen. Do you want me to continue or what?

B: Sure. Why not.

E: Well, remember that we said that if we look at the items contained in the set that they called ‘adjectives’ and the items they called ‘articles’ that they seemed to be making a very arbitrary and empty distinction? Both categories are simply defined as ‘words that modify nouns’ — which doesn't tell us anything.

B: So you're saying that the definitions of the two categories they gave in the glossary did not help us to distinguish articles from adjectives?

E: Yeah, that’s right. There are only two elements in the entire category of article, ‘a’ and ’the,’ as opposed to everything else that goes in front of a noun which they lump together under the category of adjective. That sorta looks suspicious, doesn't it?

B: I guess.

E: Sure, especially when we consider that there are a lot of words that function just like articles even though they're still labelled ‘adjectives.’

B: Like ’some,’ ’all,’ ’these,’ and even possessives?

E: That's right. Again, they act much more like articles than adjectives.

B: But we always talk about articles and adjectives. I guess that's the traditional part of traditional grammar you were talking about.

E: Correct. And we can make the same kind of objection when it comes to the category of ‘auxiliaries’ which they define as a ‘verb used with other verbs to form tense and voice.‘

B: So you think ‘auxiliary’ is also too general?

E: Definitely. Even Ehrlich and Murphy later point out that words such as ‘can,’ ‘may’ and ‘will’ are semantically different from the other auxiliaries, ‘have,’ ‘be’ and ’do’ because they are used to talk about a very specific range of ideas — necessity, probability, ability, obligation, futurity, intentionality and so on.

B: And words like ‘shall’ and ‘ought’ are always followed by infinitives.

E: Yes, that’s another thing I was going to mention. This group of words not only shares common meanings but they also share a common syntactic characteristic — they’re always followed by the infinitive form of the verb.

B: So what do you propose?

E: I'll get to that later. Right now, all I'm interested in is identifying some of the problems presented by the text. In this case, we need a more precise definition. Just calling things that go in front of verbs ‘helping words’ doesn't really help.

B: OK, I see what you mean by inconsistencies and omissions. But let me just ask this. What difference does it make whether we call something an ‘auxiliary’ or an ‘article’ or a ‘noun?’ You said that models should do work. But I

don't really see what good it would do to fix Erhlich and Murphy up.

E: Very good point. Those are exactly the kinds of questions you should be asking. Let me answer you with an example from one of the questions in Chapter 3. There Ehrlich and Murphy present the following two sentences:

1) The OED will have to be included.

2) The instructor may have to delay the examination.

B: You talked about these before. These are supposed to be examples of transitive constructions. The main verb in both is ‘have’ and the infinitive phrase functions as the direct object — which infinitives can do. Is there a problem here?

E: I think so. If it is true that auxiliaries that denote obligation, intention, necessity and the like are always followed by an infinitive, then it should be easy for us to analyze the structure of these two sentences.

B: So the sentences are not really transitive?

E: They are, but if we look at what ‘have’ means in each example, it is clearly suggesting obligation or necessity. Hence, it is an auxiliary. It is not the transitive verb ‘have.’

B: Isn't (1) a passive?

E: Yeah, right, but in (1) the verb is the passive form of ‘include’ as in ‘A includes B.’ Look at the following series where we remove each auxiliary in turn. It becomes clear what the main verb is.

3) Someone will have to include the OED.

4) Someone has to include the OED.

5) Someone included the OED.

B: So the main verb in (2) is ‘delay,’ not ‘have.’

E: Yeah. We have two auxiliaries — ‘may’ and ‘have.’ Look at this progression where we start with the verb and then add the auxiliaries in turn.

6) The instructor delays examination.

7) The instructor has to delay the examination.

8) The instructor may have to delay the examination.

B: Even I can follow that argument. Given Ehrlich and Murphy's analysis of ‘have’ as the main verb, it would be difficult to explain where we come up with the idea of probability or necessity.

E: Exactly. And part of the problem lies in the fact that traditional grammarians are reluctant to treat words like ‘have’ and ‘get’ as auxiliaries that express necessity and the like. So they ignore them altogether.

B: Because they're too informal?

E: Probably. But can you imagine speaking English in real life without using ‘have’ and ‘get’ to express obligation and similar ideas?

B: Your analysis is a lot different from Ehrlich and Murphy's.

E: Totally. So I hope you can see that what we are talking about — reclassifying and renaming parts of speech and such — really makes a difference in how we analyze and, therefore, understand sentences.

B: Anything else?

E: Let me conclude with one more major example which deals with an inconsistency between two definitions given in the text relating to participles as adjectives.

B: Participles are verbal adjectives, so that means they always modify nouns.

E: Right. And so every time we see a participle, the text always analyzes it as a verbal adjective.

B: OK. So what?

E: I only want to look at participles that are in participial phrases that begin sentences.

Driving for the tee, the golfer scored his first birdie.

Having been told the news, he left the room.

Left on her own, she began to mature.

B: OK. You got it.

E: In each of these examples, Ehrlich and Murphy state that the participle modifies the subject noun.

B: Right. It's an adjective. I don't see what you're driving at.

E: Just hold on a minute. Now if we turn to their definition of adverbials, what do we find?

B: Adverbials? What do they have to do with participles?

E: Well, take the definition of adverbial modifier and then apply it to other modifiers, like adjectival participles. You'll be surprised.

B: An adverb is a word ‘used to modify a verb, verbal, adjective, adverb or entire clause or sentence.’ This doesn't tell me anything.

E: I won't argue with that. But why don't you turn to Chapter 6. Look at what they say adverbs do. Look at the kinds of questions they answer about the elements they modify. Then compare them to adjectives.

B: OK. They say that adverbs answer the question how, much, when, where, why and something else about truth or falsity. Under adjective, they say that adjectives name a ‘quality or condition‘ of the noun being modified. I guess adjectives answer the question what kind of or which one when asked of a noun.

E: Outstanding. So, let's look at their examples of adjectival participles again. Now remember, we are not concerned about participles that occur just before or after a noun.

B: Like ‘the newly bathed cat’ or ‘the cat sitting in the sun’?

E: Yes, those are clearly adjectival. The two participles describe and/or help identify the cat. They are not ambiguous. But look at the book's examples of participles that occur in clauses in front of the sentence. They're usually separated by a comma. Tell me what questions the participles answer.

Driving for the tee, the golfer scored his first birdie.

Having been told the news, he left the room.

Left on her own, she began to mature.

B: They answer the questions how, why or when.

E: That's right. They function as adverbials. This fact becomes even clearer when we turn each of these participles into what Ehrlich and Murphy themselves would call an ‘adverbial clause.’

Driving the fastest lap, Nigel impressed the fans.

Because he drove the fastest lap, Nigel impressed the fans.

Having been told the news, he left the room.

After he had been told the news, he left the room.

Left on her own, she began to mature.

Because she was left on her own, she began to mature.

B: Those adverbial clauses don't exactly fit, but I guess they're close enough.

E: They're semantically closer to how we actually understand the sentences than the adjectival interpretation; that's the important point.

B: So I guess that makes Ehrlich and Murphy's definition of participle a little suspect.

E: Yes, but remember that participles are sometimes adjectival, so we can't say that the definition never fits.

B: To tell the truth, if you hadn't switched back and forth between the chapter on adjectives and the chapter on adverbials, I would never have seen the inconsistency. It's not the first thing that pops out at me.

E: Right. And that's why traditional grammar has been able to survive as long as it has. People just look at it linearly — chapter by chapter, rule by rule, problem by problem. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. No big deal. Hey, maybe it works most of the time for most people but the important thing is that they can't worry too much about completeness and consistency.

B: I guess that's not good enough for you?

E: It's not good enough for a lot of people. Trust me on this.

Summary

Obviously, we don't have the time to go over every single problem with the Ehrlich and Murphy text. But this analysis should be sufficient to indicate how to go about evaluating the text. Now what we have done in the meantime is categorized all the problems found in the text and developed a revised traditional grammar key that accounts for many of the major difficulties you will discover. We are going to be presenting this new key in the next chapter, but it must be remembered that it must be used in conjunction with Ehrlich and Murphy. In other words, we are presenting our model as a supplement rather than a replacement. So you can't just skip to the revised key and ignore the book. (Trust me in this.)