More about adjectives

In many languages, adjectives come after the word they modify. This makes sense—first you find out the word, then you learn some details about it. Not so English. Almost all the time we put the adjective first, and make you hold your breath until you find out what’s being modified. Fortunately, we also insist the the adjective be as close as possible to the word it modifies so the wait is short, and to prevent extra candidates from getting in the way. So we say “the literature book” and avoid saying “the literature that-was-assigned-by-my-teacher book.”

Another thing about adjectives is that they don’t show number. It’s “literature books.” “Literature doesn’t change to, say, “literatures” to go with “books.” In many languages adjectives do show number—and gender, too. This match-up of number and gender is called agreement, by the way.

English has three exceptions to the adjective-first rule. Three that come to mind, anyway; perhaps someone can remind me of more. They are “court martial,” “notary public,” and “attorney general.” The second word is the adjective. If you want a plural, you say”courts martial,” “notaries public,” and “attorneys general.”

One particularly tricky adjective is “only.” We tend to put “only” at the very front of the sentence if we can, rather than in front of the word it modifies. This bad habit has been around for along time. I quote the November 1911 Scientific American:

The importance of the industry which turns out the little splinters of wood tipped with sulfer is only recognized when the average smoker tries to contemplate his predicament if he had to go back to the time when he had to coax a spark from a tinder-box.

Man managing modern match-making machinery

The “only” in this sentence really refers to the clause that starts with “when the average smoker…” It’s grammatical for it to refer to “recognized,” but other words can fit there, too.  In fact, we can improve the sentence more. As it stands, the sentence is not strictly true. This importance can be recognized on other occasions; for example, when someone reads about it in Scientific American. How about using a less absolute word in place of “only”? Something like “easily.”

Here’s another example, from one of the most scholarly books I have read lately, The Five-Factor Model of Personality, edited by Jerry S. Wiggins.

Ozer and Reise (1994) warn us: “Personality psychologists who continue to employ their preferred measure without locating it within the five-factor model can only be likened to cartographers who issue reports of new lands but refuse to locate them on a map for others to find.”

Is making this comparison the only thing you can do with these people? Couldn’t you correspond with them? How about buy their books or read their papers? The writer is saying that the best comparison  is about them being a misguided cartographer, not that comparing is the only thing you can do with them. I suspect the word “only” could be removed from this sentence altogether without harm.

The point is if you want your writing to be as clear as possible, put “only” right in front of the word it refers to, and be sure you really mean “only.”

My wife suggested I post this conversation, no lie. And no pictures, either.

Recently I mentioned how to use the verbs “lie” and “lay.” “Lie” is intransitive—it doesn’t take a direct object. When you stretch out on the bed, you lie down. “Lay” is transitive—it takes a  direct object. You lay the book on the bed. Recently also I posted the hundredth post on this humble site, a post about good writing.

One fine evening, as we prepared for bed, my dear sweet wife and I were talking about the hundredth post on The Writing Rag, and things grammatical in general. As we lay there (past tense of lie), she complained that due to some recent minor surgery “I wish I could lay on my left side.” I waited two beats and said “It’s lie,” and fortunately for my life, she laughed (I long ago learned never to correct someone’s grammar unasked). Then she turned toward me, and asked, with a twinkle in her eye, “So do you wanna get laid or do you wanna get lied?”

Ah, yes, the life of a grammarian can be exciting. The question was strictly academic, of course.

Grammar has a specialized term, number. To English and many other language speakers, this means singular or plural. Some languages, such as classical Greek, have another number, called dual, meaning exactly two. We have some vestiges of this in English with words that mean exactly two, such as “pair,” “both,” the poetry term “couplet,” and sometimes the vernacular “couple.” I remember in sixth grade a friend telling me that Sharon and I made a nice couple. (The trouble was I liked Sandy better.)

We also make this distinction between dual and plural when we use “between” and “among,” and that’s today’s topic.

Use “between” when you are referring to two things and “among” with more than two. Here’s a good example of “among” being used correctly on purpose (I hope) in a context where “between” would, at first glance, look correct and mean something rather different. This quote is from the December 2011 issue of Blue Water Sailing, a magazine about sailboat cruising where the closest land is straight down.

As we sail into the holiday season, we begin to think about the gift giving that goes on among families and friends. We sailors are easy, since we are always happy to receive anything to do with our boats. A simple rigging knife is as welcome as a full foul weather suit.

This is a deluxe rigging knife, but you get the idea

Two items, right? Therefore the writer should have used “between,” right? As the song goes, ’tain’t necessarily so. “Between” works, and it means a single group of families gives gifts to a single group of friends. How often would that happen? Using “among,” however, fixes this unlikely situation, allowing multiple individual families and multiple individual friends to give gifts in any combination. We have here a good use of the correct word to convey a subtle difference in meaning.

Here’s a word puzzle that plays on this same concept:

It’s a misunderstanding between friends, yuk yuk. Two friends, therefore “between.” If the picture had had the word “friends” more times, it would be a misunderstanding among friends.

I can’t resist making a curmudgeonly suggestion about the passage quoted above. The second sentence violates the second rule of good writing.  The first time you read the sentence, what did you think when you came to the word “easy”? Did it cross your mind that sailors are easy? As you continue through the sentence you figure out that the writer could not have intended this lowbrow and somewhat salacious meaning. Depending on how familiar you are with the meaning of “easy” by itself, meaning loose sexual standards, you got a jolt as you figured out that the writer really meant. Perhaps the sentence should have read “We sailors are easy to give gifts to…”

If you don’t know, ask in the comments or by email and I’ll tell you what the second rule is.

Lynn Margulis, a famous evolutionary biologist died recently. Here’s a sentence from an article about her.

 She was also a major contributor to the Gaia theory, which posits that Earth is a self-regulating complex system, and was once married to astronomer Carl Sagan.

Lynn Margulis

The rule in English is that you never separate a subject from its verb with an odd number of commas. This sentence has a compound predicate, so you have a subject and verb before you get to the first comma. So the sentence is grammatical as it stands.

I’ll get into this more in a future post about the sin of pretentiousness in writing, but you need to have a comma before “which.” “Which” and what comes after it is really an aside, supplying extra information about the Gaia theory.

After the second comma you find a verb but no subject. What’s the subject? Normally you go back to the first suitable noun, in this case, Earth. Carl Sagan was an unusual person, but I doubt the earth was married to him! That second comma to the rescue—it ends the aside and makes you jump clear to the front of the sentence.She and Carl were married. Still a pretty interesting situation, but at least possible.

Editorial comment: That aside is so long, it somewhat separates the second verb from its subject, even with the comma. Maybe they should have changed that last comma to a period and made a second sentence starting with “She.”