The Grammar Logs -- Number Three

The
Grammar
Logs
# 3

Question What's the rule (if any) about the usage of "the"?

I'm going to school. I'm going to THE library.
I'm going to church. I'm going to THE synagogue.
Why does THE belong with some destinations, but not others?
Source & Date
of Question Colt's Neck, New Jersey
6 April 1997
Grammar's
Response Good question! I once asked a friend of mine who teaches English as a Second Language the differences among a, an, the, thinking she would give me a piece of paper, a handout. She gave me a book! It's a tougher problem for some ESL students than it is for others; most Latino students seem to master it with no problem; some otherwise fluent eastern European students never do.
Briefly put, the problem you're describing resides with what are called mass nouns. (No, nothing Catholic here. A mass noun is a singular noun that names something not normally countable. The trouble is that many nouns can sometimes be mass nouns and sometimes be countable nouns -- like school.) The rule says "Do not use the with a plural noun or a mass noun when the noun refers generally to all representatives of what it names." So when you say, "I'm going to college," that doesn't mean any particular college, so you leave out the definite article. As soon as we know what college you're specifically talking about, you're going to say, "I'm going to the college." Other examples: "Men (not the men) are different from women (not the women)." and "Democracy (not the democracy) fosters freedom (not the freedom) of expression (not the expression."
Authority: The Little, Brown Handbook by H. Ramsay Fowler and Jane E. Aaron, & Kay Limburg. 6th ed. HarperCollins: New York. 1995. By permission of Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc.
If this doesn't do it for you, you should go to the bookstore of a college where they have a good English as a Second Language program and pick up a basic writing text (but check out the Table of Contents first to make sure they cover this sticky point).

Question What is an elliptical clause?
Source & Date
of Question Park Ridge, Illinois
6 April 1997
Grammar's
Response An elliptical clause is grammatically incomplete but nonetheless acceptable because its meaning is clear from the context of the sentence. (Remember that the definition of a clause is that it normally contains a subject and verb.) According to my Little, Brown Handbook, the elements most often missing are the relative pronouns that, which, and whom from adjective clauses or the predicate from the second part of a comparison:

My father is taller than I (am).
Affection was about the only thing (that) my late husband didn't display.
Though (he was) often miserly at heart, he gladly paid for his daughter's wedding.
Authority: The Little, Brown Handbook by H. Ramsay Fowler and Jane E. Aaron, & Kay Limburg. 6th ed. HarperCollins: New York. 1995. By permission of Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc.

Question What are the main types of adverbial clauses, and by which words are they introduced?
Source & Date
of Question ????, Spain
7 April 1997
Grammar's
Response I'm not aware of types of adverb clauses unless you mean how can they be described by function. In that case, they usually tell how, why, when, where, under what conditions, or with what result. Adverb clauses are introduced by words or phrases known as subordinating conjunctions or dependent words. Here is a partial list:
after, although, as, as if, as long as, as though, because, before, even if, even though, if, if only, in order that, now that, once, rather than, since, so that, than, that though, till, unless, until, when whenever, where, whereas, whenever, while

Question How would you make a word like america possesive?
Source & Date
of Question Union, New Jersey
7 April 1997
Grammar's
Response I'm not sure what you mean by a word like America; it would be an unusual situation, though, not to capitalize America. To make it possessive, however, is a simple matter: simply add an apostrophe then an s -- America's intention. . . . Is that what you mean? It is possible, of course, to speak of the Americas, meaning North and South and Central America together. In that case, you could still create a possessive of this pluralized word: the Americas' position (with the apostrophe coming after the s), although one is more likely to hear of "the position of the Americas," I suppose.

Question {a partial quote} So, your task is this. Here are two sentences:

His dog Rover is a collie.
His dog, Rover, is a collie.
Both sentences are grammatically correct but each has a different meaning. What do we know about the man in the two sentences? is it the same man? what do we know about his life? where does he live?
. . . These are some of the things I think I can determine from those sentences:

In the sentence 'His dog Rover is a collie.', the antecedent of the possessive pronoun, 'His', owns more than one dog.
In the sentence 'His dog, Rover, is a collie.', the antecedent of the possessive pronoun, 'His', owns only one dog.
As a person cannot both own only one dog and own more than one dog, the antecedent of the possessive pronoun, 'His', in the two sentences cannot be the same person.
As Roman conquerors brought sheperd's dogs, the ancestors of the Collie, to Scotland and Northern England, the antecedent of the possessive pronoun must have lived or live after the Roman period. [Not really a grammatical point.]

Source & Date
of Question Arlington Heights, Illinois
8 April1997
Grammar's
Response Restrictive elements of all kinds are essential to the meaning of the sentence and thus are not set off by commas. (For that reason, I much prefer to use the word essential or its opposite, parenthetical; the word restrictive, to me, suggests the opposite of what it means and I know it confuses students.) So you're right about what we do know: that in one sentence ("His dog, Rover, is a collie.") he's got one dog and in the other ("His dog Rover is a collie") he's got more than one.
Other than that, I don't know what we can discern. That he's not very original when it comes to naming his dog(s)? This doesn't make him stupid, but it might make him bad company, say, on a longish evening on the moors. I wouldn't put much into the capitalization/non-capitalization of the word. Maybe these dogs are called collies only in certain countries? (Are they sheep-dogs elsewhere, or something like that??) That he never watched Lassie? That he's lonely, prone to long fits of depression, that he doesn't floss regularly, that he loved his mother but he's nonetheless uncomfortable talking about sexual matters in mixed company?

Perhaps other readers of these logs will contribute something here?

Question What is the proper usage of the words got and have. A lot of people commonly use "I've got", "We've got" rather than "I have" or "We have". What's the deal?
Source & Date
of Question Raleigh, North Carolina
9 April 1997
Grammar's
Response My sixth husband used to rail against the vulgarity of the word got, and look where it got him. True, it's an ugly word, but what are you going to do? Where have will do the trick, I always say, use it, and leave out the got. When used together -- "You have got to see that movie!" -- the got seems to add emphasis; however, if you can get along without the got, again -- "You have to see that movie!" -- you're probably better off. Chalk another one up to the Village Idiom! (Get it?)
Authority: Quick Access: Reference for Writers by Lynn Quitman Troyka. Simon & Schuster: New York. 1995.

Question I am having a hard time understanding what gerunds, infinitives, and participles do in a sentence. How can I know the difference?
Source & Date
of Question Ridgecrest, California
10 April 1997
Grammar's
Response Big question! Infinitives, gerunds, and participles are often called verbals -- verb forms that look like verbs because they contain the idea of action or being but aren't really verbs because they perform a different function in the sentence.
Infinitives contain the word to plus the root of the verb. To sleep, perchance to dream. . . Infinitives can function in many ways: To dance is wonderful. (noun/subject) I love to dance. (noun/object) The decision to quit was completely hers. (adjective modifying decision) It's very difficult to quit smoking. (adverb modifying difficult)
If you find a verb form ending in -ing without an auxiliary nearby, it's probably a verb form, but not a verb. If it's acting like a noun, it's a gerund. Running for office without a hope to win seemed silly. (Running is the subject of the sentence; well, actually, the gerund phrase "running for office" is the subject.) He hated running for office. (noun/object of the verb hated) He wrote a book about running for office. (noun/object of the preposition)
However, an -ing ending without an auxiliary might be a present participle, a verb form acting as an adjective. My aging mentor is losing her marbles. Not all participles end in -ing, though. You can have past participles, which will have either an -ed ending (The faded jacket fell to the floor) or other endings for irregular verbs (The frozen popsicle slipped to the kitchen floor).

Question I work for an "executive search" firm or "head-hunter." We type reports on candidates to fill specific jobs. We frequently use bullet points to list out an individual's accomplishments for his/her various positions. What is the proper way to punctuate such a list? A typical example of what we type would be as follows:
Mr. Jones principal accomplishments during his tenure at XYS Company are as follows:

Assisted in SEC offerings for convertible securities and common stock.
Developed and implemented financial systems, including merchandise stock ledger, payroll, automated time and attendance, cash management, and others.
Assisted in negotiations and the finalization of a $300 million back-up credit facility for commercial paper.
Participated in the acquisition of a 75 percent interest in ABD Corporation in Brazil. Consolidated systems and put stores on retail method.
There is a continual discussion in our office as to whether periods at the end of each bullet point are correct, or if we should use semi-colons. Please let us know your thoughts. We strive for perfect grammar/punctuation and usually have a minimum of three people proof-read every document we send out to clients, so we are anxious to resolve this matter.
Many thanks for your assistance!
Source & Date
of Question Atlanta, Georgia
11 April 1997
Grammar's
Response The way you've got that list set up looks fine to me. I wouldn't use semicolons there. The periods seem to end each item satisfactorily; then it's as if you go back and repeat the beginning for each new bulleted string. The important thing about a list like this is conceptual and syntactic parallel form, which you've achieved with the consistent use of past tense and the same essential form -- verb followed by completer. (Is that last "Consolidated" line supposed to be a separate item or is that supposed to be tucked into what he did in Brazil? That's the only possible ambiguity I see.) Consistency here is the primary virtue, and you seem good at it. I'd hire the guy. What's he look like?
Authority: Publication Manual of the American Psychological Assocation American Psychological Association. 4th ed. American Psychological Association: New York. 1994.

Question What is the term used to describe a phrase with double meanings? Example: Blue Bayou or blue by you Thanks
Source & Date
of Question Elkhorn, Wisconsin
13 April 1997
Grammar's
Response I don't think you mean homonyms such as their, there, they're. I think you mean a double entendre (dooble ahnTAHNdre) , or "double intention," in which two phrases which sound alike are spelled differently and mean quite different things. One of the phrases usually has an indelicate meaning. I love them, but it's 8 o'clock Sunday morning and I can't think of a one!

Question How do you know when to use the words bad or badly in a sentence?
Source & Date
of Question Grafton, Wisconsin
13 April 1997
Grammar's
Response In other than casual speech or writing, we should try to distinguish between bad the adjective and badly the adverb. The tricky part is that often we need to use bad with linking verbs or the to be verb. So we should say (and write) I feel bad, even though it looks as though we need an adverb to modify the verb. But here we have a linking verb, to feel, which is not modified in this situation. (I feel badly would mean that something is wrong with my sense receptors.) On the other hand, he played badly. (Because we need an adverb form to modify the verb.) If you confuse the two in casual speech, don't feel bad.
Authority: The Little, Brown Handbook by H. Ramsay Fowler and Jane E. Aaron, & Kay Limburg. 6th ed. HarperCollins: New York. 1995. By permission of Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc.

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Question	What are the main types of adverbial clauses, and by which words are they introduced?
Source & Date of Question	????, Spain 7 April 1997
Grammar's Response	I'm not aware of types of adverb clauses unless you mean how can they be described by function. In that case, they usually tell how, why, when, where, under what conditions, or with what result. Adverb clauses are introduced by words or phrases known as subordinating conjunctions or dependent words. Here is a partial list: after, although, as, as if, as long as, as though, because, before, even if, even though, if, if only, in order that, now that, once, rather than, since, so that, than, that though, till, unless, until, when whenever, where, whereas, whenever, while

Question	How would you make a word like america possesive?
Source & Date of Question	Union, New Jersey 7 April 1997
Grammar's Response	I'm not sure what you mean by a word like America; it would be an unusual situation, though, not to capitalize America. To make it possessive, however, is a simple matter: simply add an apostrophe then an s -- America's intention. . . . Is that what you mean? It is possible, of course, to speak of the Americas, meaning North and South and Central America together. In that case, you could still create a possessive of this pluralized word: the Americas' position (with the apostrophe coming after the s), although one is more likely to hear of "the position of the Americas," I suppose.

Question	What is the term used to describe a phrase with double meanings? Example: Blue Bayou or blue by you Thanks
Source & Date of Question	Elkhorn, Wisconsin 13 April 1997
Grammar's Response	I don't think you mean homonyms such as their, there, they're. I think you mean a double entendre (dooble ahnTAHNdre) , or "double intention," in which two phrases which sound alike are spelled differently and mean quite different things. One of the phrases usually has an indelicate meaning. I love them, but it's 8 o'clock Sunday morning and I can't think of a one!