#172854 - 01/24/08 09:19 PM
Re: And to begin a sentence
[Re: Bigwig Rabbit]
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 09/28/00
Posts: 2888
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Allo Bigwig.
When I took creative writing classes in college, we were taught that current usage allows for using "and" at the beginning of a sentence, that it a common technique when writing as if one is speaking out loud.
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#172861 - 01/25/08 02:54 AM
And the earth was without form ...
[Re: tsuwm]
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 08/13/05
Posts: 3269
Loc: R'lyeh
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Oh, big sigh. Good writers have been using and and but to begin sentences since Old English. (Just take a gander at how many sentences begin with and in the King James version of the Bible (starting with Genesis). According to John McElroy, in his Structure of English Prose: A Manual of Composition and Rhetoric (1885), George Campbell, the peevish, was the first to rant about this common usage in his Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776). Happy reading. (BTW, I agree with my esteemed colleague, tsuwm, in his suggesting Professor Crystal.)
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#173376 - 02/09/08 04:54 AM
Re: And to begin a sentence
[Re: tsuwm]
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enthusiast
Registered: 11/24/07
Posts: 390
Loc: कहीं &...
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And I like end-placed prepositions and sentences beginning with conjunctions. Some of these old grammatic shibboleths need to be tossed out with the bathwater, and don't bother shouting gardyloo.
(I highly recommend David Crystal's The Fight for English for much more on this topic.)
-joe (to boldly rant) friday Also, the excellent Linguistics and Your Language by Robert A. Hall Jr., and Language Myths edited by Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill. One of the myths examined in the latter is "women talk too much", with some quite astonishing and slightly scary data.
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#173390 - 02/09/08 10:31 AM
Re: And to begin a sentence
[Re: latishya]
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 08/13/05
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Loc: R'lyeh
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the excellent Linguistics and Your Language by Robert A. Hall Jr.I second the motion. I own the first, vanity-published edition, under a different title Leave Your Language Alone! Also good is Ronald Wardhaugh's Proper English: Myths and Misunderstandings About Language. "women talk too much"This meme has been much discussed on Language Log.
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#173400 - 02/09/08 03:07 PM
Re: And to begin a sentence
[Re: zmjezhd]
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enthusiast
Registered: 11/24/07
Posts: 390
Loc: कहीं &...
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Also good is Ronald Wardhaugh's Proper English: Myths and Misunderstandings About Language.
Thanks. I read the two I mentioned after seeing them lauded by languagehat. I only borrowed them through my local library, but now must own them. I shall look out for Wardhaugh's as well.
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#173401 - 02/09/08 03:37 PM
Re: And to begin a sentence
[Re: Bigwig Rabbit]
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 12/01/00
Posts: 13653
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The word "and" is a conjunction and therefore should not begin a sentence. Is it OK to use "and" to begin a sentence if you're using it as a verb?
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#173404 - 02/09/08 04:22 PM
Re: And to begin a sentence
[Re: latishya]
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 08/13/05
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after seeing them lauded by languagehatYes, Steve is a great language blogger. (I see I mentioned Wardhaugh in my comment to the entry linked to; I learned about him via Geoff Pullum's entry on Language Log.)
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#173405 - 02/09/08 04:23 PM
Re: And to begin a sentence
[Re: Faldage]
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 08/13/05
Posts: 3269
Loc: R'lyeh
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Is it OK to use "and" to begin a sentence if you're using it as a verb?
<Grin> I wonder if and is an adverb in try and V constructions?
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#173414 - 02/10/08 09:07 AM
Re: And to begin a sentence
[Re: tsuwm]
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 12/01/00
Posts: 13653
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OR the result with 11111.
-joe (posts, that is) friday
Too true. And then some.
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#173457 - 02/11/08 08:46 PM
Re: And to begin a sentence
[Re: Faldage]
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Carpal Tunnel
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Here is the text of Archbishop Wulfstan's early 11th century Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, considered one of the masterworks of English rhetoric. It contains 80 sentences. Thirty-eight of them begin with the word and.
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#175598 - 04/05/08 05:46 PM
Re: And to begin a sentence
[Re: Faldage]
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 12/01/00
Posts: 13653
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Just thought I'd bring this back up. Recently ran into this old post from Mark Lieberman at Language Log on beginning sentences with and.
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#175615 - 04/06/08 10:31 AM
Re: And to begin a sentence
[Re: Faldage]
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 08/13/05
Posts: 3269
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Thirty-eight of them begin with the word and.
I've always thought that particles like this were a kind of punctuation in non-metrical oral literature. Beginning a sentence with and or but indicates that one sentences has stopped: sort of a rhetorical version of a period (or full stop).
Also, how does one handle the sentences to be coordinated if they are distributed between two writers?
John said "Do not end a sentence with a preposition."
"But better writers than you did it all the time!" Mary replied.
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#175636 - 04/06/08 07:13 PM
Re: And to begin a sentence
[Re: Bigwig Rabbit]
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Carpal Tunnel
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The word "and" is a conjunction and therefore should not begin a sentence. The unspoken assumption here is that conjunctions can only be used to conjoin two things that are in the same sentence. Since good writers have been using them to conjoin things in separate sentences I can only assume that this is not a rule that applies to the language we use on a daily basis. But then the prescriptivist's basic rule seems to be: If it works in practice but not in theory something must be wrong with the practice.
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#175637 - 04/06/08 07:25 PM
Re: And to begin a sentence
[Re: zmjezhd]
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old hand
Registered: 02/20/08
Posts: 1067
Loc: Tasmania
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Oh, big sigh. Good writers have been using and and but to begin sentences since Old English. (Just take a gander at how many sentences begin with and in the King James version of the Bible (starting with Genesis)....
Thirty-eight of them begin with the word and.
I've always thought that particles like this were a kind of punctuation in non-metrical oral literature. Beginning a sentence with and or but indicates that one sentences has stopped: sort of a rhetorical version of a period (or full stop).
In translations of the bible it is simply reflecting the cadence and flow and structure of the original languages and/or authors. This is particularly true of the King James version, whose authors actually changed some of the grammatical habits of English usage by ignoring English grammar in favour of an over-literal rendering of the Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek of the Old and New Testaments. As far as 'And' goes, this is especially true of Mark's Gospel. The KJV's formulaic translation of Mark's kai egeneto is the familiar "And it came to pass...". Greek often starts sentences with kai, and Mark even more than your average Greek writer. Mark's favourite expression seems to be kai euthus, which is usually translated "And immediately..." As zmjezhd notes, in cases like this 'And' at the start of a sentence is almost a kind of punctuation mark - and not just in 'oral literature' - remember that originally uncial manuscripts had no punctuation marks or spaces between words, so this was more necessary than later when those things were invented.
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#175642 - 04/06/08 08:06 PM
Re: And to begin a sentence
[Re: The Pook]
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remember that originally uncial manuscripts had no punctuation marks or spaces between words, so this was more necessary than later when those things were invented. Which makes it kind of hard to tell where sentences begin or end.
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#175643 - 04/06/08 09:41 PM
Re: And to begin a sentence
[Re: zmjezhd]
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member
Registered: 01/16/08
Posts: 155
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And as the first word of a sentence, especially when followed by a comma, seems to me to often serve as well as moreover—not that I'd easily give moreover up.
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#175658 - 04/07/08 10:41 AM
Re: And to begin a sentence
[Re: The Pook]
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 08/13/05
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Greek
I think the deprecation of sentence-initial and is due to something very much like the etymological fallacy. Because one traditional term for and is conjunction, the grammaticules think that it must conjoin two words, phrases, or sentences. Greek has a whole passel of little words called particles. The British Classical scholar J D Denniston wrote, in just over 650 pages, a book about them. One interesting thing about Greek particles (e.g., δε (de) 'on the other hand', γαρ (gar) 'in fact, indeed, for') is they typically come after the first word in a sentence. The word και (kai) 'and' can be analyzed as a conjunction or as a sentence-initial particle: cf. Smyth Greek Grammar §2868 "και is both a copulative conjunctive (and) connecting words, clauses, or sentences; and an adverb meaning also, even". I feel most of the time we forget that a word's lexical class (aka lexical category or part of speech) is not an inherent property of the word, but an indication of how it is used in sentences. (Also, in Hebrew, ו (w-) 'and' is a proclitic adhering to the word it precedes.)
As The Pook implies above, punctuation (including the almost-as-important-as-zero space) is a rather modern invention in regards to the rest of written language, but many of our punctuation terms come from Greek rhetorical terms: e.g., period 'circuit; sentence, period', comma 'bit cut off; short clause', apostrophe a turning away from; digression', parenthesis 'a placing around; a parenthetical clause', ellipsis 'a falling short; an omitted word, clause'. Not all Greek or Roman MSS lack word separation, but the space (and the interpunct ·) were not mandatory as they are today. And there are clues other than just punctuation that one can use to determine what constituted words or sentences, e.g., prosody, morphology, syntax.
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#175689 - 04/08/08 08:21 AM
Re: And to begin a sentence
[Re: zmjezhd]
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old hand
Registered: 02/20/08
Posts: 1067
Loc: Tasmania
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I feel most of the time we forget that a word's lexical class (aka lexical category or part of speech) is not an inherent property of the word, but an indication of how it is used in sentences. As indeed grammar itself is not an inherent property of a particular language but an indication of how that language is used. The use of 'and' in Greek is a fascinating study, thanks for the above post. Kai is a more versatile word than our English 'and,' nevertheless, even our English 'and' is not just a conjunction. Even when used as a conjunction, 'and' can combine words into something more than just the sum of their parts. It can be used to form a hendiadys for instance - where 'x and y' isn't just a list of two separate nouns, but is more like adjective-noun in meaning - a 'y-ish x.' For example, "The Power and Glory of Rome" means effectively the glorious power of Rome. In cases like this 'and' is operating more like a particle, even though it is doing its normal job of conjoining words. This can happen in English, but not so often as it does in Greek, and usually in poetry rather than prose. In both Greek and English (and other languages) initial 'and' can be used as a storytelling device, like in the Uncle Remus stories, or for emphasis or other reasons mentioned above. It has a wide variety of functions that change according to times and customs and dialects. I don't think you can end a sentence with and. 
Edited by The Pook (04/08/08 08:23 AM)
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