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enthusiast
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Maybe because "people" is a collective noun, like "team"? I'm sure either El padre prescriptivo, or Der preschriptiwischt Punschter will be along soon to explain the full horror of the preamble.
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Carpal Tunnel
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the grammar police are obviously hustling over to our declaimers, all previously depicted as ESLers (especially Grog), to pointedly inform them that they must insert a verb; to wit, we ARE the people.
HTH,
ron obvious
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Pooh-Bah
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enthusiast
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Can someone explain this cartoon to me, please--that is, the why of the second word balloon?
Others have suggested that there is something in the phrase "We, the people" which is grammatically incorrect, Jackie, but that is not what the cartoonist has in mind. His touch is far lighter than that.
What brings the guard out is the rebellious expression "We, the people". They have been dispatched to suppress the expression of freedom, not the expression itself.
It is the play between the shallowness of the cave-dwellers and the principle of free expression which creates the humor here.
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Pooh-Bah
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Bollocks. It's exactly as tsuwm said. Go away.
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Bollocks
I'm with Rock Island, here. It's the missing comma. And I should know. I went to a Computer Science Club Halloween party once as a missing comma.
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stranger
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"Wordminstrel" is still another of the sock puppets (or alternate handles) of an individual who has been banned by management from this board -- and others -- for flagrant abuse.
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Pooh-Bah
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Faldage
please, please, pleeeeease describe your costume.
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The phrase "the people of the United States" is an appositive which, in your better constitutions, is set off within commas.
El padre prescriptivo
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Like the Constitution of the State of Hawaii, which begins: We, the people of the State of Hawaii. . ..
I was actually amazed to see Faldage agreeing that having a comma would be better. The archdescriptivist may actually be coming over from the dark side (at least just a tiny bit!)
I suspect that there was no debate over the need for a comma after We at the time, because those people who were so deft at sowing commas were still all in India, where the comma suturer first appeared.
TEd
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Pooh-Bah
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'Course, I may be wrong, but...
I think Faldage was being a model descriptivist and just 'splainin' the joke. (After all, why let him speak for himself?)
;-)
As a rhetorical matter, it is extremely unlikely that the omission, if there was one, was deliberate, and that the framers chose to present it as a close appositive so as to leave no doubt that "we" *are* the people . . . but possible.
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Yep, it is an appositive. The verb of the subject we doesn't show up until some clauses later: do.
"We ... do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
I thought that prescriptivists would insist that a restrictive appositive phrase would not be set off by commas; cf. the punctuation rules of restrictive relative clauses.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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the lack of a comma is entirely too subtle (and debatable, as we have seen); the humor of the cartoon (if there is any) stems from the audacity of the grammar police; to wit, they assume too much.
-joe (context, everything is context) f.
edit for word selection.
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It's not restrictive, is it? It's actually parenthetical in nature. Here's the rule: The important point to remember is that a nonessential appositive is always separated from the rest of the sentence with comma(s). "I'd like you to meet my wife, Peggy." "I'd like you to meet my brother Bob." Wife and Peggy are separated by a comma because Peggy is not strictly necessary to the sentence because people generally only have one wife. However, I might have five brothers, so the absence of the comma signals the importance of the bond between brother and Bob. The Gospel according to http://www.chompchomp.com/terms as well as a "host" of other sites.
TEd
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It's not restrictive, is it? It's actually parenthetical in nature.
"parenthetical appositive" 21 ghits
"restrictive appositive" 502 ghits
Isn't a nonessential appositive just another name for restrictive appositive?
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Pooh-Bah
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>>context<<
You may be right, but the same (political) commentary is implicit in the restrictive/non-restrictive interpretation, and I, for one, would never have thought the expression was eliptical -- whether intentional or not.
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A) they were a lot looser with commas back in them days. E.g.:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
2) Some folks use commas not to represent grammatical concepts but to represent pauses in speech. Thus you could say, e.g., "I'd like you to meet my wife Peggy" without implying that you have more than one wife, but merely to indicate that when you say it, there is no pause between the words "wife" and "Peggy." Both styles go back to the days when commas were first used.
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Faldo:
What people say and what people write (or should write) are not exactly synonymous. Certainly commas represent pauses, but what I started to say and then got distracted and forgot in my last post was that these usages were for written more-or-less formal English.
TEd
TEd
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these usages were for written more-or-less formal English.
Wull, y'see, 'ere's the parblem. Ain' nobody minds if y'all perscrippivis's goes round settin' no rules for no special occasions. It's when y'all starts garbigin' aroun' pulin' an' micturatin' about anybody does anyth'n differmints in any situation whatsoever.
An' ifn you checks 'at document wit all nem funny commas an stuff, they's a thang in nere says cain't bus nobudy fer doon someth'n what ain' bun made illegal yet. When did y'all start spewin out nem rules bout where y'all kin an cain't stick no commas?
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Pooh-Bah
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Commas are rules, even if the rule is "pause here." Either that, or they are stray markings.
Where is the meat in the prescriptivist/descriptivist divide? So much seems the fault line of a parlor row.
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> meat
yeah, seems to me to be skating the thin line between stagnation and anarchy.
formerly known as etaoin...
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the thin line between stagnation and anarchy. As in "The Thin Blue Line"? The grammar police?!
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After Deconstruction]
say Jackie, back to your original question: are you laughing yet?!
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Pooh-Bah
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>>police<<
Smile
But I'm serious. Descriptivists, for example, may observe uses or 'gramars' that are not captured by the categories of prescriptivist grammar(s) which are themselves also based, in part at least, on observation. To some extent, the prescriptivists only convert observed into a rule. At the same time, descriptivists convert 'liberty' to a rule. Related is the approach to use in legal writing. It does more than pretend to accuracy, but also strategically subverts meaning.
Edit: I guess this is true of a lot of discourse. An ancillary question, then, is what distinguishes the subversive behaviors of legal speech and writing from those of other forms of discourse.
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are you laughing yet?! Yes! I hadn't expected that what I thought was a simple question would spark off such a debate, but that's fine. But I loved eta's getting back to the opening point!
Edit: darn it, why can't I learn/remember NOT to use the same word twice in close proximity!!
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I wish I could take credit for thinking of the Thin Blue line ref, but I was actually just sort of thinking out loud about what would happen were one scriptivist camp to win...
ok, I'll take credit anyway. <wink>
formerly known as etaoin...
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At the same time, descriptivists convert 'liberty' to a rule.
Exactly. The rules are there. Even in the most illiterate speech, there are rules. What the descriptivist does is describe those rules.
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Ain't this whole *thing similar to "nature-vs-nurture".... whereas one has history and the other makes history?
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! Well, at least I'm not the only one who "totally didn't get it". Thanks, m.
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Pooh-Bah
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How on Earth do you read the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, if not as, in order: subject/appostive (with prepositional phrase)/parenthetical [including list*]/verb phrase/prepositional phrase:
(*what do you call that?)
We/the People (of the United States),/ in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,/ do ordain and establish this Constitution/ for the United States of America.
Where does a copulative come in, unless it were "We and the people," which is counter-intuitive and, if mere jingoism, counter-productive.
And how do you read "We are the people," when the verb phrase is "do hereby. . ."
last sentence deleted
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One describes what ain't going on and the other describes what is.
Yet, this does come from something that purports to speak as a/the wizard of id, so it must be the child in us seeking the pleasure of *just asking the question.
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I. YOU DA MAN
>how do you read "We are the people," when the verb phrase is "do hereby. . ."
see, that was my point when I said the GP (in the comic) assumed too much. to quote the British, "Wait for it!"
II. pay no attention to the man behind the curtain
>Yet, this does come from something that purports to speak as a/the wizard of id.
B.C. is not the same as the Wizard of ID, although Johnny Hart does collaborate with Brant Parker on the Wizard.
-ron o.
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D'Oh!!!!
My bad... I'd always thought (though never looked) that they were the same art(ist).
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Pooh-Bah
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>>wait for it<<
I like that.
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please, please, pleeeeease describe your costume.
OK, I've left you hanging long enough. The key phrase is the old Fortran* error message: "Missing comma expected here."
They expected me at the party and I never showed.
*IIRC, it might could have been a Basic error message.
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veteran
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Least we, the people, forget, words are about meaning, that is, words are about the transfer of information about sensory perceptions from one sapient entity to another. Cooccurring with the usage of the clarifying aside "the people" in the United States Constitution, the use of the phrase "we the people" became a single thought unit, a rallying cry in direct opposition to "we the ruled and oppressed". Somuchso that if written without prescription "we the people" would read "wethepeople" as a single word. Today the term "we the people" is used by Americans to remind our entrenched government officials that they exist only at our pleasure and discretion. And as of yet they haven't sent out any troops. Maybeso? Metheposter thinks so anyway. 
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