You is all I want for Christmas

A few days before Christmas 2009 a colleague at the college arranged for all the students to join together and watch a video of the movie Love Actually.  Towards the end of the movie, the character Joanna (Olivia Olson) sings the song All I want for Christmas is you, which a) is not really about Christmas – it might as well be All I want for any occasion is you, b) I am likely to have in my head all day now, and c) you are likely to have in your head all day now.

After the movie, a student said to me “She was singing ‘Is you?’. Should that be ‘Are you?’?”. I said (I paraphrase) no, because she was singing about “All I want for Christmas”, not about “you”. “All I want for Christmas” is singular, even if “All I want for Christmas” is “five gold rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves and partridge in a pear tree”. The singularity or plurality of the gift(s) doesn’t affect the the form of the verb. On the other hand, if we invert the sentence and say “You _ all I want for Christmas”, then “you” determines the form of the verb.

Also late in the movie, the character Jamie (Colin Firth) travels to Portugal to make a declaration of love to Aurélia (Lúcia Moniz) … in very bad Portuguese. A student from Brazil was sitting in front of me (maybe he was the one who asked the question afterwards), and he cracked up completely during that scene. 

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Grammarbites part 6 – sentence types

Part 1 – introduction

Part 5 – nouns

Part 2 – auxiliary and modal verbs

Part 3 – regular and irregular main verbs

Part 4 – consonant clusters

1 – Five basic sentence types

(1a) Juliet is a young woman.
(1b) Juliet is in love.
(1c) Juliet is happy.

(2) The Prince banishes Romeo.

(3a) This makes Juliet sad.
(3b) This makes Juliet cry.

(4) Friar Lawrence gives Juliet a potion.

(5) Juliet dies.

come, become, have, behave

This morning for some reason I started wondering whether behave is related to have in the same way that become is related to come. After some research, the answer is yes, no, maybe, no.

Become is literally ‘come to be’: I came to be an ESL teacher in 2006.
Behave is not literally ‘have to be’: I have to be good/bad. Rather, it is reflexive: I have myself ?good/?bad; that is, I bear or comport myself *good/*bad/well/badly. There are two clues that behave is now a different word than be + have, if it ever was ‘the same word’. The first is pronunciation. The second is grammar: have is irregular – have had had, while behave is regular – behave behaved: *I behad well yesterday.

The prefix be– used to be more common and productive than it is now. A few months ago the Irish editor/language writer/blogger Stan Carey found himself Bewondered by obsolete be- words.

Grammarbites ch 3

I seem to be on a roll about Grammarbites (I have now decided on Grammarbites rather than Microgrammar), especially about verbs, which I find more interesting than anything else – I don’t know why. The first two installments are here and here.

Vs and Ving – spelling and pronunciation

All main English verbs have at least V/plain present, Vs and Ving forms. Regular verbs also have a V-ps/V-pp form, which is made by adding –ed to the V form. Irregular verbs have either no, one or two additional forms for V-ps and/or V-pp. There are about 100 common and 50 uncommon irregular verbs.

3rd anniversary, 400th post

I know my blogiversary is the 1st of November, but I found out recently that I was coming up on 400 posts, so it seemed a good idea to combine the two. (By the way, the stats tell me that that I’ve had more readers already this year than in the whole of last year. I welcome/encourage comments, please, please, please!)

I have recently started a series called Microgrammar or Grammarbites, I can’t quite decide. The first installment is here. Following that, I probably should have first written about nouns and pronouns, but I’ve had verbs on my mind.

engaged

Yesterday we celebrated the engagement of one of my nieces and her fiancé. So who is engaging whom, or are they both engaging each other?

The past participle form of a verb can used as a verb to show a process, or as an adjective to show the result of that process.

My employers engaged me to teach English. I was engaged to teach English by my employers. I am engaged in teaching English.
She engaged me in conversation. I was engaged in conversation by her. I am engaged in conversation with her.

The change from to teach English to in teaching English and by her to with her is a sign that something has happened to the grammatical status of engaged in each case.

In my niece and nephew-in-law-to-be’s case, presumably:

He engaged her. She was engaged by him. They are engaged.

Ummm ….

‘Wilt thou leave me so dissatisfied?’

This week’s chapter of the textbook contained a lot about changing nouns into adjectives and vice versa using suffixes, and modifying adjectives using prefixes, including making negative adjectives. English has rather too many ways of making negative adjectives, including a-, dis-, il-, im-, in-, ir-, –less, non– and un-. Of these, a– is the most restricted and the textbook didn’t even mention it. il-, im-, in– and ir– are fairly restricted (compare illegal and unlawful), and –less can only be added to a noun. The three most general are dis-, non– and un-, probably in that order of restriction: we can say ‘uncool’ and ‘non-cool’, but we can’t say ‘discool’. (There are restrictions on the root adjective as well: we can say ‘unhappy’, but probably not ‘unsad’ and certainly not ‘unmiserable’.)

We have sets of words like comfort (verb), comfort (noun) and comfortable, but discomfort and uncomfortable. uncomfort and discomfortable exist, but are vanishing rare. Sometimes two adjectives sit side by side. Some combination of dissatisfying, unsatisfying, dissatisfied, unsatisfied, dissatisfactory and unsatisfactory cropped up in one lesson. dissatisfying and unsatisfying seem to be more subjective and dissatisfactory and unsatisfactory seem to be more objective: a movie might be unsatisfactory because of the picture or sound quality, but unsatisfying because of the story or acting.

Dictionary.com lists unsatisfactory, dissatisfactory, unsatisfying and dissatisfied, but dissatisfying redirects to dissatisfy, and unsatisfied to satisfied. On the other hand, unsatisfy and unsatisfaction don’t exist; the verb and noun are dissatisfy and dissatisfaction. Google Ngrams shows unsatisfactory and dissatisfied considerably ahead of unsatisfied and unsatisfying, slightly ahead of dissatisfying and dissatisfactory. So unsatisfactory and unsatisfying are clear choices, while dissatisfied is the better choice, but unsatisfied is not ‘wrong’. But there are two differences. The first is grammatical: Google Ngrams shows that dissatisfied is standardly followed by a function word (dissatisfied with, and, that, in, as, at, because, than, by and to) (and is therefore standardly used predicatively), while unsatisfied is followed by a noun more often than not (unsatisfied with, and, demand, desire, in, by, desires, longing, longings and curiosity) (and is therefore used attributively and predicatively). The second is semantic: people and demands, desires, longings, and curiosity can be unsatisfied, but only people (and maybe larger animals) can be dissatisfied.

Shakespeare has Romeo ask ‘Wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?’, but we can hardly draw any conclusions from on random example from more than 400 years ago.

Call me maybe

Kim Jeong-Eun calls Donald Trump ‘mentally deranged’
Kim Jeong-Eun calls Donald Trump a ‘dotard’
Bill Shorten calls Tony Abbott

The first two (slightly adapted) headlines probably need no explanation, but to those of you from places other than Australia, the third (also slightly adapted) probably does. Australia is currently suffering from an unnecessary, expensive and divisive public debate and official survey on the question ‘Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?’. The current (centre-right) prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull is personally in favour, but is being held hostage by a further-right group within his party, which is opposed. A former prime minister, Tony Abbott, is one of this group. The (centre-left) opposition party, led by Bill Shorten, is either officially in favour or willing to allow its members a conscience vote. Yesterday, Tony Abbott was headbutted on a public street by a man wearing a ‘yes’ badge, and suffered ‘slight swelling’ of his upper lip.

(asterisked strong language follows)

Grammar in pop songs – Lucy Lucy Lucy

Picture yourself
Somebody calls you
You answer
A girl

Flowers
Look
She’s gone

Lucy
Lucy
Lucy

Follow her
Everyone smiles

Taxis appear
Climb in
You’re gone

Lucy
Lucy
Lucy

Picture yourself
Someone is there
The girl

Lucy
Lucy
Lucy

Lucy
Lucy
Lucy

Lucy
Lucy
Lucy

In the loved-by-some, loathed-by-others Elements of Style, William Strunk Jr and EB White say ‘Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs’ and ‘Omit needless words’. Very well then …

I have taken that advice to its logical extreme and wielded the delate button on Lucy (in the sky) (with diamonds) by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The result is possibly comprehensible if you already know the song and possibly not if you don’t. To be fair, Strunkandwhite don’t mention the other word classes, especially prepositions, but I’ve erred on the side of comprehensiveness.

have

My house (1) has a bath and shower and I (2) have a bath or shower every day. I (3) have to have a bath or shower every day. My previous apartment also (4) had a bath and shower and I (5) had a bath or shower every day. I (6) had to have a bath or shower every day. This was a good thing because my first apartment (7) had had only a shower and I (8) had had a shower every day. I (9) had had to have a shower every day.

Most of that is made up to illustrate a grammar point, namely the various uses of the verb have as an auxiliary verb, a main verb, a catenative verb and an ‘extra verb’.