#22142
03/10/2001 9:32 PM
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From a workshop I was at earlier today: defined as a seemingly clever statement that makes a superficial, basically incorrect point. Example: Verdi's greatest opera was his Requiem.
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#22143
03/11/2001 4:06 PM
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I don't know much music, but perhaps the Requiem was an opus not an opera?
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#22144
03/11/2001 4:50 PM
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Faldage>From a workshop I was at...A comment on Verdi at another time, but since, Faldage, you used the above in your post, I'll just mention that it is one of the truly aggravating mistakes often made by English speakers! In Hebrew & Arabic (and probably other languages as well), one cannot make this mistake as the concept simply does NOT exist in that form. One MUST say (in translation) "from a workshop at which I was [in attendance]..." or "from a workshop I attended"... I guess there is a *pet peeves* thread, but since it was used here, I felt compelled to answer it here! Sorry 'bout that! Now, I suppose you could say I am agita over that!  Shoshannah
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#22145
03/11/2001 4:57 PM
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actually®, Sh, (as I understand the term) you have agita over that. 
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#22146
03/11/2001 5:08 PM
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But nobody has said what the error was in calling the Requiem an opera. Was it part of an opera?
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#22147
03/11/2001 5:19 PM
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here's some commentary I found which may shed some light:
The requiem was embraced by a whole continent. The general opinion was in favor of the requiem. Many shared Brahms' opinion that -"only a genius could have written such a work". There were, however, those who were less enthusiastic.
Hans von bulow, the great conductor, called it:"An opera in ecclesiastical robes", and Wagner, having heard the requiem, is reported to have said, simply, - "it is better to say nothing.."
It is true that the requiem has something of the operatic in it. However, in good performances, the dramatic touch only strengthens the power of this composition.
The question of whether it is truly 'ecclesiastical' is more problematic.
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#22148
03/11/2001 5:41 PM
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Dies Irae! I won't steal Faldage's thunder (yes, there's a pun there  ) by explaining his witicism , and while I can't think of another example of such (yet) I must address the grammar point brought up: There is nothing incorrect in English in saying "I was at a workshop," or inverting it for that matter (and love anastrophes I do!). That a structure is inexistent in one language does not make it incorrect in another. Were we to use that logic, then the Spanish "No tengo nada" would be incorrect simply because double negatives are ungrammatical in English.
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#22149
03/11/2001 5:55 PM
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There is nothing incorrect in English in saying "I was at a workshop," or inverting it for that matterThank you, AnnaS. I had not thought that there was anything grammatically incorrect about "a workshop I was at", and it's reassuring to have my assumption validated.
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#22150
03/11/2001 7:09 PM
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Well - in MY grammar class a long long long time ago, dear Mrs. Kriminger taught us never to end a sentence, or a thought for that matter, with a preposition (in this case, the little 'at'). For instance, you certainly may say "I was at a workshop" but NEVER "A workshop I was at..." Americans (and perhaps other English speakers) consistently use the expression "Where are you from?" But that is also incorrect, for again, the sentence ends with a preposition! The correct form would be "From where are you?" It may sound awkward, but so what, if it's correct?!That grammar is different in different languages has nothing to do with it - I was only sharing that little bit of information for your edification!Of course, I now hear lots of people saying, "He gave that to Joe and I." When I question the use of the pronoun ('I'), the response is that it is more 'proper' to use 'I' when a 'proper name' is used at the same time! So, pray tell, have all the rules of grammar been swept away in a tide of what is 'proper' or easy or 'in style' and do I HAVE agita over this for nothing? AARRGGH! Shoshannah tsuwm - a question: why would I BE agitated but HAVE agita?????
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#22151
03/11/2001 7:27 PM
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Re:"Well - in MY grammar class a long long long time ago, dear Mrs. Kriminger taught us never to end a sentence, or a thought for that matter, with a preposition"
Dear Shoshannah: Winston Churchill, whose English is almost univerally admired, had a hilarious sentence mocking the compulsion of avoiding sentences with a preposition at the end. I cannot quote it exactly, but it ends "....up with which I will not put."
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#22152
03/11/2001 7:41 PM
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wwh>Churchill..."....up with which I will not put."Bill - that's right, and it may sound awkward. The fact is, Churchill's phrase was not only correct, but also memorable, as YOU remember it and the correct form BECAUSE of it! Good one! Shoshannah
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#22153
03/11/2001 7:55 PM
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Shoshannah, I'll go so far as to agree with you on a construction such as "Where are you at?" which can be easily replaced with "Where are you?" Other than that, nothing else to say on the matter for right now. I'd like to hear what others have to say. Dr. Bill, I think it's: "A preposition at the end of a sentence is something up with which I shall not put." And, another favorite, from the little kid gong to bed: "Dad, why did you bring that book I didn't want to be read to out of up for?"
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#22154
03/11/2001 8:59 PM
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::sigh:: dear ASp, this keeps coming up. the last time, someone posted a really good rebuttal against. I'll see if a can find it lurking around. keep your chin out. [sometime later] here's *a thread: http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=4180[sometime later still} and now I'm going to quote the whole section from the alt.usage.english FAQ, just because I really think it says everything that needs to be said on the subject... Preposition at end ------------------ Yes, yes, we've all heard the following anecdotes: (1) Winston Churchill was editing a proof of one of his books, when he noticed that an editor had clumsily rearranged one of Churchill's sentences so that it wouldn't end with a preposition. Churchill scribbled in the margin, "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put." (This is often quoted with "arrant nonsense" substituted for "English", or with other variations. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations cites Sir Ernest Gowers' _Plain Words_ (1948), where the anecdote begins, "It is said that Churchill..."; so we don't know exactly what Churchill wrote. According to the Oxford Companion to the English Language, Churchill's words were "bloody nonsense" and the variants are euphemisms.) (2) The Guinness Book of (World) Records used to have a category for "most prepositions at end". The incumbent record was a sentence put into the mouth of a boy who didn't want to be read excerpts from a book about Australia as a bedtime story: "What did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to from out of about 'Down Under' up for?" Mark Brader (msb@sq.com -- all this is to the best of his recollection; he didn't save the letter, and doesn't have access to the British editions) wrote to Guinness, asking: "What did you say that the sentence with the most prepositions at the end was 'What did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to from out of about "Down Under" up for?' for? The preceding sentence has one more." Norris McWhirter replied, promising to include this improvement in the next British edition; but actually it seems that Guinness, no doubt eventually realising that this could be done recursively, dropped the category. (3) "Excuse me, where is the library at?" "Here at Hahvahd, we never end a sentence with a preposition." "O.K. Excuse me, where is the library at, *asshole*?" Fowler and nearly every other respected prescriptivist see NOTHING wrong with ending a clause with a preposition; Fowler calls it a "superstition". ("Never end a sentence with a preposition" is how the superstition is usually stated, although it would "naturally" extend to any placement of a preposition later than the noun or pronoun it governs.) Indeed, Fowler considers "a good land to live in" grammatically superior to "a good land in which to live", since one cannot say "a good land which to inhabit".
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#22155
03/11/2001 9:33 PM
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The fact is, Churchill's phrase was not only correct,
but also memorable ... for its customary pithy tongue-in-cheek quality. tsuwm, thank you for the look-up.
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#22156
03/12/2001 1:09 AM
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Dear tsuwm: re: "Excuse me, where is the library at?" "Here at Hahvahd, we never end a sentence with a preposition." "O.K. Excuse me, where is the library at, *asshole*?"
That story had to be made up by a real anal orifice who never saw the inside of the Yard. The Widener Memorial Library is the largest building there and has its name in foot high letters easily visible from almost any part of the Yard. And that had to be a Yale man talking to the visitor.
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#22157
03/12/2001 1:56 AM
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Not disputing the OED or tsuwm , would never dare!
The way I heard it, from my Dad, was that an American editor cabled Winston that many of his sentences ended with prepositions and asking the great man to re-work several sentences for the American edition of one of his books. Churchill then shot back a cable saying "That is a pedantry, up which I will not put."
That's the story going around the newspaper circles at the time. (late 1940s) I simply repeat it ... keeping myths alive is part of the High Priestess job isn't it??
wow
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#22158
03/12/2001 2:05 AM
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Example: Verdi's greatest opera was his Requiem
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In the Oxford Press American Desk Encyclopedia , after noting Verdi's operas Rigoletto, Il travatore, La traviata, Don Carlos and Otello, it says : "Among other compositions are several sacred choral works, including Requiem (1874)."
wow
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#22159
03/12/2001 1:19 PM
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Well, I don't see an opus number on the score, whatever that means.
Opus means work. Opus 34, e.g., on a piece of music simply means that that piece of music is the 34th piece written by that particular composer. An opera (plural of opus) is so called because it is a collection of works.
The joke is that Verdi was best known for his operas and the music of the Requiem has a very operatic feel to it. There were other aspects of it that the speaker of the workshop mentioned that were operatic in nature but to call it an opera was to ignore its true nature.
It grew out of a single section that Verdi had written for a project that he had started when the Italian poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni died. Verdi suggested that the great composers of Italy collaborate to compose a Requiem to honor Manzoni and he took on the task of writing the Libera me section. The resulting Requiem was a failure. It was never performed but Verdi built his Requiem on his section. That Requiem was not a failure.
Verdi, by the way, was an agnostic.
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#22160
03/12/2001 1:28 PM
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Or as I countered some one with once-- with a half wittism of someone elses-- "oh yes, I know the rule--A preposition is something you are never supposed to end a sentance with!"
They almost nodded in agreement-- and then realize what i said!
I try not to do it in formal writing-- but I think it is fine in informal speaking.
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#22161
03/12/2001 1:31 PM
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pray tell, have all the rules of grammar been swept away….?[rant] Earth calling, Earth calling. Wake up, girl, wherever you’ve been the last 140 years, cause you gotta hear the news – not only have “the rules” been swept away, but also so have their basic validity as a linguistic concept. It is now widely taken for granted that like all other meta-language, linguistic constructions such as ‘grammar’ are post-facto creations of the human mind – they are descriptions, models, attempts to find the patterns in what is, not some frumpy schoolmarm-ish code of what must be. Descriptions of how particular speech communities use their variety of language – yes. Guidance notes as to what may therefore be preferable to fit certain social norms – sometimes. Rules – never. So sorry, as you seen to have an insecure craving for The TRUTH – but RealLife™ is more complicated. As for your assertion that It may sound awkward, but so what, if it's correct? – I can be bothered to raise nothing more grand than a big fat raspberry. If you cannot hear the natural euphony of a language, you are failing to even get to first base. And hence your ability to turn the famous Winston Churchill quote through 180° of meaning - no dabbling in the box of coloured crayons can recompense for that. [/rant]
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#22162
03/12/2001 1:49 PM
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"a silly rule, up with which I shall not put."These things are not always prepositions, see http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=12094. A good example of the difference might be something like: 1) Jack and Jill went up a big hill. This is a classic example of subject-verb-object (prepositional phrase). It would not be correct to say: 2) *Jack and Jill went a big hill up. But: 3) Jack and Jill ran up a big bill. Up is not a prepostion. This is an example of the phrasal verb ran up of which a big bill is the object. We can say: 4) Jack and Jill ran a big bill up. This structure is common to many of the Germanic languages, see the German separable prefix. The form of these separable prefixes is generally identical to prepositions and may, in fact, predate them, but that's another subject. The notion of the phrasal verb seems to have been lost to the grammar of the prescriptive, if it doesn't match Latin there's something wrong with it, grammarians. It's my not so humble opinion that the cases in which the thing at the end of the sentence actually is a preposition are a result of the burying of the phrasal verb concept by those prescriptive grammarians and the reaction of native speakers who understood the phrasal verb on a native speaker level (without having any formal rule to quote) but were unable to separate it from the prepositional phrase structure. And a challenge for anyone who thinks that "up with which I shall not put" is correct: parse that phrase; tell me what is the object of each of those things that you think are prepositions.
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#22163
03/12/2001 2:15 PM
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old hand
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Dear Faldage, Mind the corner you painted yourself into : A good example of the difference might be something like:
1) Jack and Jill went up a big hill.so far so good. What wrong with: That's the big hill Jack and Jill went up ?
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#22164
03/12/2001 3:11 PM
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wsieber asks, "What's wrong with: That's the big hill Jack and Jill went up ?
A good question. Which gets us to the simple fact that the rules, such as they are, are reinvented every generation. We learn what sounds right by the time we are about three and anything that doesn't sound right is wrong, regardless of what some defender of the received rules may say. If this weren't the case we would still be speaking an inflected language in which relations between words would be expressed more by case structure than by word order and we would know the difference between prepositions and phrasal verb affixes. As it stands we have nothing to rely on except William Safire's rule, "If it sounds funny, the hell with it." Most of us who think that "it is I"* sounds funny will continue to say "it's me" and let the linguists worry about whether the verb to be has gained a transitive sense.
*Does anyone argue that it should be "it am I"?
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#22165
03/12/2001 3:28 PM
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Dear Faldage: How about a discussion of the correct usage of "will" and "shall". In the Churchill quote, it seems to me that "I shall not put" is weak, and "I will not put" is stronger, indicating volition, where "shall" is simple futurity.
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#22166
03/12/2001 3:31 PM
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where "shall" is simple futurity.
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Was he not talking about what he would or would not do in the future?
wow
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#22167
03/12/2001 3:48 PM
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No, he was telling what he damned well would not do.
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#22168
03/12/2001 3:52 PM
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I have this rule categorized (rightly or wrongly) as another one of those rules that someone decided people should follow without any basis in historical usage. I was once given an assignment in an English linguistics class to listen to normal usage and count the occurrences of will and shall. I heard zero cases of will and an equal number of cases of shall; I heard many cases of 'll.
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#22169
03/12/2001 4:07 PM
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If someone asks you to submit to some humiliation, would you not think "I will not!" stronger than "I shall not"? I shall not sounds wimpy to me.
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#22170
03/12/2001 4:45 PM
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The rule changes depending on whether the subject is first person or second/third person.
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#22171
03/12/2001 5:02 PM
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Pooh-Bah
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In reply to:
*Does anyone argue that it should be "it am I"?
I do.
-- Sam.
Leading me to the question: is the marvelous Dr Seuss known outside the US?
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#22172
03/12/2001 5:03 PM
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As when your Mother says "You shall do as I wish."
Meaning, if you don't, you'll regret it!
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#22173
03/12/2001 5:17 PM
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>shall not sounds wimpy
in the world of technical writing -- specifically writing system, hardware and software requirements -- "will" is wimpy. "shall" is used as the flag signifying "this is a requirement". this is actually Rule One for writing requirements in many shops.
-joe (rule two: the voice of the customer) friday
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#22174
03/12/2001 6:12 PM
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If this weren't the case we would still be speaking an inflected language....
Beautifully put, Faldage.
And Dr Seuss, oh Sparteye? oh, yes, sirree!
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#22175
03/12/2001 6:16 PM
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Leading me to the question: is the marvelous Dr Seuss known outside the US?
What??!! You can't be serious, surely? Dr. Seuss is truly world-famous, even if it's a crying shame that more world leaders didn't get the point of The Lorax.
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#22176
03/12/2001 6:28 PM
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Pooh-Bah
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Sorry, Max. I try to avoid assuming that somebody famous in the US is famous anywhere else, even if it is the extraordinary Dr Seuss. One of his great secrets: if you are having a hard time thinking of a word which rhymes, make one up!
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#22177
03/12/2001 6:36 PM
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Your modesty does you credit, Sparteye. This tread has inspired me to add the good doctor to my list of "victims to plunder for the anniversary thread." 
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#22178
03/12/2001 7:25 PM
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veteran
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There's a problem with having your (only) computer in your office. I come in on Monday and find a brand new thread going onto 4 pages, lots of discussion, and already branching out into other subjects. Such is the nature of this amazing forum.
I had two responses to Faldage's original posting:
the first was that the statement about the Verdi Requiem is really funny and not far off base;
the second was to recall a bon mot of my father's: "He thinks he's a real wit, and he's half right."
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#22179
03/12/2001 8:43 PM
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You respond late, you're right at the top of the list.
"He thinks he's a real wit, and he's half right."
I like it.
The guy doing the workshop went on for about ten minutes defending the "greatest opera" quip and then pointed out all the reasons it wasn't that clever. I don't remember any of them.
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#22180
03/12/2001 9:40 PM
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I shall not sounds wimpy to me.
Is there a lawyer on the Board who would care to give the legal distinctions between "will" and "shall"?
wow
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#22181
03/12/2001 10:17 PM
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Mav - I wrote a long and involved reply, but since you don't really care about 'the rules' and have decided to write them for yourself as you go along in your life, such as it is [do you live in chaos? Ah, I thought so], this simple reply will do.
Get a grip, Mav! Many more educated, more intuitive, more intelligent people have gone before you and have determined a more realistic and down-to-earth way of living that makes it possible for us to all get along in this, the only world we have.
THE RULES makes this possible, don't you know!
Shoshannah
And BTW - you don't really think that I don't know about REAL LIFE, do you??? What a thing to say! You do realize that my version of REAL LIFE has to do with LIFE and DEATH on a daily basis and TRUTH is the only thing worth striving for in a situation like this??? Pay attention, Mav - REAL LIFE and TRUTH may be calling you!
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