News Where can I find a prescriptive English grammar book for British English?

[SW VandeCarr]

SW VandeCarr, your recommendation is not useless to me, I do want to learn all the niceties of English grammar, it's just that I am a beginner now so is a book of over one thousand pages really the right place to start? I don't think so. But after I have learn the basics of grammar I would like to move on to Quirk et. al. after that, so it has been a very helpful suggestion.

As I said, any good grammar text will give the basics. Studiot gave some suggestions and I wouldn't worry too much about prescriptive vs descriptive. The basics are prescriptive. We don't say "we was". That's just wrong, no matter how liberal you want to be about usage. I also said in my previous post that Quirk et al is a good reference to help settle specific questions you may have, but not really a proper textbook.

And in fact I think I know what's wrong with the sentence "Will the government speak for you and I?". "I" should be "me" since it is governed by the preposition "for". In any case, it is logically the indirect object of "speak". If what I have said is correct do not take it as a sign my grammar is above average. I have a slight and patchy knowledge of grammar.

You're correct and you would be surprised how many native speakers don't know that. The sentence, as written, seems to sound (to many) more literate, but if you split it, would you say "for I"?

And since you bring up the genitive, I'd like to ask you something. Is there a difference between "the victims of drink" and "drink's victims"? I only bring this up because I remember reading somewhere in Fowler (I can't remember where) that he says there is a slight difference between the two, but he doesn't say what that difference is. I can't discern a difference.

We can overdo the English genitive. Most of the time, "victims of drink" would be used, but one of the strengths of English is that we can say it more than one way: "The victims of drink are more than drink's victims; they are the victims of our social ills."

 

[Studiot]

Is there a difference between "the victims of drink" and "drink's victims"?

Actually there is a difference.

Compare for instance

The tale of John Smith (as told and owned by his biographer)

John Smith's tale ( as told and owned by JS)

 

[SW VandeCarr]

Actually there is a difference.

Compare for instance

The tale of John Smith (as told by his biographer)

John Smith's tale ( as told by JS)

This is an interesting point regarding the ambiguities in the usage of English prepositions. In the first example, "of'" has the meaning of "about" or "regarding" and is not really a genitive relation. For example: "I just thought of that." can't very well be written "I just had that's thought." The thought is mine, not "thats". (You have to write 'thats' without the apostrophe or else it would be confused with the contraction 'that's' for 'that is'.)

 

[qspeechc]

So in the phrase "drink's victims" drink has in some sense been personalized? As though the victims were attacked by Drink and their addiction is not their fault, whereas "the victims of drink" has no such personalization? Or am I completely off the mark?
This reminds me of the way we use "all" in mathematics. Whenever I read "for all" I sometimes, for a moment, think "all" is being used collectively rather than distributively as a synonym for "each". Though "all" in mathematics is never used collectively no one ever points out this ambiguity of the word. I suppose mathematicians don't care much for English, or maybe it's that many writers of textbooks are not native speakers.

By the way, I've found the article in the second edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage; I'll type out part of it for anyone who's interested.

noun-adjectives. 'Too many ofs have dropped out of the language', said Lord Dunsany in 1943, 'and the dark of the floor is littered with this useful word.' Some twenty years earlier this phenomenon had provoked the following comment in the first edition of the present dictionary: 'It will be a surprise, and to some an agreeable one, if at ths late stage in our change from and inflexional to an analytical language we revert to a free use of the case we formerly tended more and more to restrict. It begins to seem lkely that drink's victims will before long be the natural and no longer the affected or rhetorical version of the victims of drink. The devotees of inflexion may do well to rejoice; the change may improve rather than injure the language; and if that is so let due praise be bestowed on the newspaper press, which is bringing it about. But to the present (or perhaps already past) generation, which has been instinctively away of the differences between drink's victims and the victims of drink, and now finds them scornfully disregarded, there will be an unhappy interim. It is the headline that is doing it.'

 

[Studiot]

So in the phrase "drink's victims" drink has in some sense been personalized? As though the victims were attacked by Drink and their addiction is not their fault, whereas "the victims of drink" has no such personalization? Or am I completely off the mark?

There is no noun case in the english language, that I know of, indicating fault.

However consider the following:

A sober man walking along the highway, is knocked down and killed by a drunken alcoholic driver.

They are both 'victims of drink', one directly , one indirectly. I would contend that only the direct victim is one of 'drink's victims'

 

[SW VandeCarr]

There is no noun case in the english language, that I know of, indicating fault.

However consider the following:

A sober man walking along the highway, is knocked down and killed by a drunken alcoholic driver.

They are both 'victims of drink', one directly , one indirectly. I would contend that only the direct victim is one of 'drink's victims'

You can read meanings into these constructions. However, my only intent was to show that the two ways of expressing the genitive in English can be employed to avoid repetition. The sentence could have been "The victims of drink are more than victims of drink;..." with no substantial change in meaning.

 

[loseyourname]

They are both 'victims of drink', one directly , one indirectly. I would contend that only the direct victim is one of 'drink's victims'

I'm not sure why you would read any specification of causal proximity in the construction chosen. They seem equivalent to me.

I think the confusion about personification above probably stems from a confusion between the possessive and the subjective genitive, the difference between "my wife's shoes" and "my wife's cooking." The first expresses a relationship of ownership but the second expresses a relationship of causal origination. An inanimate object like "drink" can't own something, but it can certainly be the subject of the verb "to victimize."

As for "John Smith's tale" and "the tale of John Smith," those are also identical. They were only made different in context by the additional stipulations that one was told by John Smith and the other was told by a biographer. There is nothing in the construction that tells you anything about who told the tale or even if the tale was ever told at all. These both seem to be instances of the objective genitive, indicating the tale is about John Smith, not the possessive indicating the tale belongs to him, although there is ambiguity again due to the fact that John Smith is a person who can own a tale. "The Tale of Two Cities" is quite unambiguously objective genitive because two cities can't own a tale.

 

[Studiot]

I did think about the ownership.

Why can't an inanimate object own another?

What about 'the book's covers'?

They are just as much part of the book as your own arms are part of you, so please explain further.

It seems to me that there are far more relationships and shades of relationships between linguistic objects than any language can show by declension alone.

So, in a language rich in alternative means of expression such as english, we are often left with custom and practice to determine which presentation we choose. This freedom is also, in my opinion, is why any attempt at formalisation is doomed to long term failure.

 

[loseyourname]

"The book's covers" is partitive genitive, that is, the covers are part of the book. They aren't owned by the book, though. A material whole object doesn't own its parts in the sense of a holding company and its subsidiaries. That might be more clear if we say "the book's words" or the "the book's story." The partitive genitive construction is more obvious in this case because we know that the words and story are owned by the copyright holder, not by the book. The covers of any particular book are owned by whoever owns the book, not by the book itself.

I'd guess the confusion stems from two sources. First, equivocation in the verb "to possess." This can express a relationship of owner to owned or a relationship of whole to part, but these are distinct relationships. Second, the genitive in English expresses so many different types of relationships, being that there is possessive, partitive, subjective, and objective all having identical formal construction. We can only distinguish between them in context.

 

[Studiot]

Thank you for sharing your more detailed knowledge.

How about 'the book's place on the shelf' ?

For those who may be interested the BBC are running a series of interesting investigative/discussion radio programs into english and its usage.

These are on Radio 4 at 9 am. Today's was about the difference in language as seen by different genders.
The programs can also be accessed via the BBC website in listen again mode.

 

[qspeechc]

Oh god, why isn't there a distinction, some inflexion or something, to distinguish the various shades of the genitive case! This discussion shows how ambiguous English is. Maybe it's not so bad; we get along fine with it, mostly. So then Fowler was wrong when he said there was a distinction?
I caught one program on BBC World News where they had an actor and the president of the http://www.queens-english-society.com/pageone.html" discussing English usage the other day, and it was a fatuous discussion, I think. I can't say much about the president of the QES since the questions he was given were quite silly. How often do you hear a BBC presenter with a half English and half American accent? Perhaps Radio 4 is better; I've never listened to it. Actually, the QES looks very interesting...

 

[loseyourname]

With "the book's place on the shelf," I'm pretty sure that's just called genitive, which can also express relationships of origin, description, and reference. In this case, it's a relationship of reference.

Some of these are a little confused, as with description. We'd expect to modify a noun in a descriptive sense using an adjective, right? Say George Washington was honorable. But, we could also say George Washington was a man of his word. The second phrase means the same thing but now we modified a noun with a noun, so the second noun is genitive.

Reference, or location, genitive cases are similar. The most common example I see is something like "the capital of Egypt" or Egypt's capital." This is considered genitive and capital is used as a noun but the same word can be used as an adjective. If we said "the capital city of Egypt," then we still have a genitive construction, but the genitive noun (city) is now being modified by the word "capital" which is straightforwardly an adjective.

By the way, I agree that English is an extremely frustrating and vague language. I think that makes it terrific for literary purposes, however.

 

[Studiot]

Seems to me that following this line of reasoning you could make a case for the construction

...firstnoun's secondnoun...

where there is some relationship between firstnoun and secondnoun and call it the

somerelationship case of the genetive.

A flower's colour
Jupiter's orbit
a shadow's penumbra
a father's son
all my previous examples.

 

[loseyourname]

Pretty much. Even though the genitive case often indicates possession, all it means strictly is that a genitive case noun is a noun acting to modify another noun.

 

[Studiot]

Learning something new every day is what keeps me young.

 

[Studiot]

You might like to chew on this example of multiple genitive from
W Stannard Allen's

Living English Structure

I am my aunt's friend's sister's second child's godmother.