grammar question - Wordsmith.org

what is the term for the style, or voice, that would use 'would' for the past tense? e.g., "The second half of the game would be defined by..."

Well, I'd call it the conditional mood (link).

In the following case, "would" is used to express the past, but it doesn't seem conditional to me:

"Our parents would take us to see relatives on Sunday."

What am I missing?

Seems to me in tsuwm's example he is using it in a past narrative where the narrative has not yet reached a point that is, for us, also in the past. A conditional mood would be something like "I would help you if I knew what you were looking for."

yes, there's no actual 'condition' involved in my example; i.e., no if statement.

here's an entire example (please forgive/ignore the sport context - it happens to be where I see a lot of this):

�The second half of the game would be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play. In the third quarter, the Lakers, making their push to try and win this game early, would eventually extend their lead to 15, but Phoenix would show their determination to not go quietly and went on their own run. The Suns took advantage of some sloppy Lakers play and raced the floor for easy baskets. By the time the third quarter was over, Phoenix would cut the Lakers lead to four and I think all Lakers fans were prepared for another close game that could come down to the final possession. And while this game wouldn�t be that close. . . �

this all happened in the past, of course. : )

it all seems a bit.. contrived to me, esp. for a sports blog. (and another thing - it's not consistently used.)

Another seldom-used construction with "would" is very much conditional, but the mood is indicated more by the subjunctive (I think) of the main verb:

"I would that she were here now."

There's an implied "if" in this case, since it's clear she is not here now. The "would" injects wishfulness, but it's hard for me to see where it contributes to the conditional mood of the sentence, which is established by "were."

Originally Posted By: beck123

What am I missing?

Nothing... "would" has more than one use.

Beck's latest reminds me that the origin of would is as the past tense of will; will not as a periphrastic future marker but will meaning 'desire'. This, however, would reinforce my claim that would in the original question was indicating that it was being used in a historical future sense.

Is would used as a replacement for used to? If so, used to is firmly in the past. (Not in the original question. That appears to be a - present continuous tense in the past!)

It seems more like a future tense, expressed as past events:

"After having lost their first two matches, they would go on to win in the finals."

Originally Posted By: goofy

Originally Posted By: beck123

What am I missing?

Nothing... "would" has more than one use.

Certainly it does, but in reading the quote at the start of this thread, I didn't see why "would" was considered conditional by one of the respondents. I still believe it does not create a conditional mood in that particular construction.

well yeah, that was, in fact, my original question. is there a term for this "mood" or style?

Is would used as a replacement for used to? - In my opinion, you are closest to the "truth". So what is the grammatical term for the formulation with "used to"? Habitual tense? - Yet it is still not a 1:1 replacement. In a narrative, you can write "would" repeatedly, while "used to" sounds clumsy if repeated. In Tsuwm's example it seems overdone and possibly wrong: was the course of the game really identical on several occasions?

Sorry about that, folks. I was tired and a bit in a hurry when I posted without really looking at the sample sentence all that hard. It is not the conditional mood at all, as you have all pointed out. Just wish I'd caught it sooner.

Well, the voice of the example is passive. As others have suggested it seems to be a kind of historical future. A future tense expressed within the context of the past. The mood is just plain indicative as there is nothing in doubt about the event (the definition) occurring.

Again sorry for the noise caused by my earlier confusion.

Strange. I wanted to see more context so I googled up the article the sentence fragment occurred in (link). The paragraph which is opened by the example sentence reads just a little bit strange to me, perhaps because would is often used in conditional sentences. If you rewrite the paragraph:

Quote:

The second half of the game would be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play. In the third quarter, the Lakers, making their push to try and win this game early, would eventually extend their lead to 15, but Phoenix would show their determination to not go quietly and went on their own run. The Suns took advantage of some sloppy Lakers play and raced the floor for easy baskets. By the time the third quarter was over, Phoenix would cut the Lakers lead to four and I think all Lakers fans were prepared for another close game that could come down to the final possession. And while this game wouldn�t be that close, there were moments of anxiety as the Suns kept it close and battled the Lakers hard by contesting shots in the paint and, though overmatched physically, not giving an inch.

The second half of the game was defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play. In the third quarter, the Lakers, having made their push to try and win this game early, eventually extended their lead to 15, but Phoenix showed their determination to not go quietly and went on their own run. The Suns took advantage of some sloppy Lakers play and raced the floor for easy baskets. By the time the third quarter was over, Phoenix cut the Lakers lead to four, and I think all Lakers fans were prepared for another close game that would come down to the final possession. And while this game wasn't that close, there were moments of anxiety as the Suns kept it close and battled the Lakers hard by contesting shots in the paint and, though overmatched physically, not giving an inch.

I don't think anything was lost by rewriting all these woulds into simple past tenses and making the one odd could into a would.

wiki[conditional mood] would turn out to be extremely unhelpful, "Conditional verb forms can also have temporal uses, often for expressing "future in the past" tense."

"Conditional verb forms can also have temporal uses, often for expressing "future in the past" tense."

Well, thanks. You learn something new everyday. I had never heard of the future in the past, but it does occur (link). I wonder when the term was coined?

@ zjm changing the woulds - I think a sports buff would say you do not get the feeling of live action it is too much a reportage over and done with.

my reason for stating that wiki was "unhelpful" with this statement is that the statement stands on its own and is not really related to the "conditional" aspect!

I guess that this "style" was just contrived by someone who was bored with the indicative mood.

I found an explanation online (the link may not work outside of the States).

Quote:

Relative tenses represent deictic tenses in relation to other deictic tenses. (In McCawley 1971: 91, and Hornstein 1981: 120, the relation in question is syntactic subordination: in what McCoard (1978) calls the "embedded past" theory of the perfect, the present perfect derives from a past tense embedded under a present tense.) Thus had sung is the past-in-the-past, has sung the past-in-the-present, and will have sung the past-in-the-future. Similarly would sing is the future-in-the-past, is (about) to sing the future-in-the-present, and will be (about) to sing the future-in-the-future. Coincident (relatively present) tenses are ignored by many contemporary theorists, though Lo Cascio (1982: 42) writes of the imperfect, which is considered in traditional grammar a present-in-the-past, as a past coincident tense. (link)

my reason for stating that wiki was "unhelpful" with this statement is that the statement stands on its own and is not really related to the "conditional" aspect!

I think what the article was saying is that the conditional mood in English has been overloaded with a tense usage. I don't really see what value-added using the future-in-the-past gets you in the paragraph quoted above. And when reading it, the conditional was always lurking on the periphery of my consciousness. "The second half of the game would have been defined by ..., if it hadn't been for that UFO landing in the middle of downtown LA."

I guess that this "style" was just contrived by someone who was bored with the indicative mood.

Well, the tense exists. I was just questioning its use in that paragraph. For me, putting the future in the past does nothing but make for longer sentences.

[Addendum: I have been reading up on the future-in-the-past and find that it occurs in the Romance languages as well, where the conditional mood of the auxiliary 'to be' (in the present tense) is used with the past participle, e.g., in Italian La settimana scorsa, Maria mi ha informato che Paolo sarebbe tornato il giorno dopo ("Last week, Maria informed me that Paolo would return the day after").]

Originally Posted By: tsuwm

I guess that this "style" was just contrived by someone who was bored with the indicative mood.

... Or wanted to achieve live action in what is basically reportage. While writing there is sometimes a strange need to avoid the simple past. I have experienced it and then over come it, because, yes, longer sentences and ..... untidy language.

Last week, Maria informed me that Paolo would return the day after - sorry, but this use of would doesn't correspond to the one in tsuwm's example - because here, you have a dependent sentence referring to a different time. This is a clear case of "future in the past", contrary to the sports text.

you have a dependent sentence referring to a different time. This is a clear case of "future in the past", contrary to the sports text.

So, what is the verb form, in the sports quote, called? And what is the sports text if not future-in-the-past?

past-in-the-future?
-joe (tongue-in-the-cheek) friday

The second half of the game would be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play.
The second half of the game could be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play.
The second half of the game should be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play.
The second half of the game can be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play.

Which one would you choose if you could and what tense will it be?

Bran, if you ask me (and you did), those choices can all be interpreted in slightly different ways:

The second half of the game would be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play.
This is the 'original', and seems to be best described by future-in-the-past tense - it states how things played out.

The second half of the game could be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play.
This is another way of saying "the second half might be defined by..." - conditional?

The second half of the game should be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play.
opinionated.

(or, actual future/predictive)

The second half of the game can be defined by offensive runs from both teams and tough, physical play.
see #2.

I guess I would recast it somewhat like jheem has done; simpler and clearer. options 2, 3 and 4 change the voice, I think.

Thanks, I like the explanation and will go puzzling no less when I'll have to make choices. These auxiliary verbs shall, will, may and can; also must, have to and should are the most difficult part of English grammar to me.

options 2, 3 and 4 change the voice, I think.

No, the voice remains passive, but the mood changes. Here are two sentences that illustrate the active versus the passive voice:

1. I read newspapers.
2. Newspapers are read (by me).

Both are present tense and indicative mood. The modal verbs (aka auxiliary verbs) in English a rather complicated little things, e.g., can implies ability (but nowadays it's often used in a permissive sense, like may). Historically, these verbs were from a different class of verbs in Germanic called preterite-present. They main trait is they exist only in present and past forms, and they do not distinguish between third person singular present and the other persons and numbers, i.e., I may, *I shall may, I can, he can, I read, he reads. Most of our traditional grammar terms come from the Graeco-Latin grammatical tradition. A big difference between Latin and English is that we have very little verbal inflectional morphology left and most of our verbal conjugations are done periphrastically.

There's probably enough 2 centses in here already, but I throw in 2 more: in Spanish, the idea of "used to" is expressed in the imperfect tense, a past tense form. I'd be interested to know why it's called "imperfect".

These auxiliary verbs shall, will, may and can; also must, have to and should are the most difficult part of English grammar to me

From what I've seen of Dutch grammar, you've got some complicated verbal paradigms, too. For example, the modal particles dan, eens, even, maar, misschien, nou, ook, soms, and toch. Ga maar zitten is polite, but can you say ga zitten for a stronger, ruder sense?

Originally Posted By: twosleepy

There's probably enough 2 centses in here already, but I throw in 2 more: in Spanish, the idea of "used to" is expressed in the imperfect tense, a past tense form. I'd be interested to know why it's called "imperfect".

Not sure about the Spanish usage but the imperfect generally does not imply a completion to the action.

>>options 2, 3 and 4 change the voice, I think.

>No, the voice remains passive, but the mood changes.

thanks for that; I can't seem to keep the two straight.

I originally posted here thinking there must be a simple answer to the question, "what is this voice/mood called," so that I could reprimand the cited blogger. you know, "you shouldn't use the farshimalt mood in this situation because it is likely to ramfeezle your readers." alas and feh.

For example, the modal particles dan, eens, even, maar, misschien, nou, ook, soms, and toch. Ga maar zitten is polite, but can you say ga zitten for a stronger, ruder sense?

Yes, ga zitten can be polite (invitation) or rude (command) only depending on the tone/voice/. The maar is of no consequence for either meaning. You can say : "ga dan nou toch maar eens even zitten" ( invitiation/ familiar ) and the nou dan dan maar eens even, those you call modal particles, mean in fact nothing. But even with the whole range of modal particles it can be said in a commanding threatening way.

When I considered English to be the easiest of the three neighbouring languages to learn it was because English does not have like French ( Italian and Spanish too) these two past tenses: the imparfait and the pass� d�fini. Nor the conjunctif or conditionel. And German has those horrible F�lle and Kasus-Fallendungen. ( but now I saw those tenses wriggle up some difficulties in English too in their own way).

I'd be interested to know why it's called "imperfect".

Short answer is that the Roman grammarians called it that: imperfectus as opposed to the other past tense the perfectus. And, Faldo is right. The ancient grammarians did not have a grammatical category called aspect (German Aktionsart, Russian вид vid) which "defines the temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described event or state. In English, for example, the present tense sentences "I swim" and "I am swimming" differ in aspect (the first sentence is in what is called the habitual aspect, and the second is in what is called the progressive, or continuous, aspect). The related concept of tense or the temporal situation indicated by an utterance, is typically distinguished from aspect." (link)

German has those horrible F�lle and Kasus-Fallendungen

It's interesting how the older German grammatical traditon translated these Graeco-Latin grammatical terms into German. Greek πτωσις (ptōsis) meant literally 'falling, fall'. The romans translated this as casus (< cadō 'to fall'), and the Germans carried on the tradition with Fall. The idea was that the nominative case was normal and the oblique cases fell away from that. In older grammars, this is called accidence. English got rid of its cases and so did all the Romance languages, but the Slavic languages held on tight to theirs. It's not really a question of simplifying the language but making it complicated in different ways.

there must be a simple answer to the question

Languages are much more complicated things than Lynne Truss and other grammaticohooligans would have you think.

Originally Posted By: tsuwm

"you shouldn't use the farshimalt mood in this situation because it is likely to ramfeezle your readers." alas and feh.

works for me.

btw, ramfeezle got picked up by my spellcheck, but not farshimalt.

>ramfeezle got picked up by my spellcheck, but not farshimalt.

my spellcheck (and that used here at AWAD) chokes on 'spellcheck'.

Breaking away from the sports example above: Can periphrastic sentences be considered beautiful in a wild untended sort of manner?

Originally Posted By: tsuwm

>ramfeezle got picked up by my spellcheck, but not farshimalt.

my spellcheck (and that used here at AWAD) chokes on 'spellcheck'.

heh

Originally Posted By: Avy

Breaking away from the sports example above: Can periphrastic sentences be considered beautiful in a wild untended sort of manner?

I think they're quite beautiful. By sacrificing the simplicity of the basic verb constructions (which simplicity has a beauty of its own, related to its economy,) periphrasis adds convolutions, which - when used judiciously - are able to 1) add complexity and texture for those who appreciate such things, and 2) express subtleties of thought and expression that may be lost with simpler constructions.

As a fluent speaker of English, I still have to pause occasionally when assembling a periphrastic phrase in the course of speaking. The innumerable options periphrasis affords (as evinced by this thread) enrich and beautify our language, in my opinion.

the forms 'more beautiful' and 'most beautiful' are (at a minimum) periphrastic. : )

We'll have to use them once in a while :-)

Originally Posted By: beck123

I think they're quite beautiful. By sacrificing the simplicity of the basic verb constructions (which simplicity has a beauty of its own, related to its economy,) periphrasis adds convolutions, which - when used judiciously - are able to 1) add complexity and texture for those who appreciate such things, and 2) express subtleties of thought and expression that may be lost with simpler constructions.

I could not have put this better, but I am looking for help to answer a simple question should I use a longer sentence if I want to do away with the severity that brevity imposes at the cost of everything beautiful that brevity has to offer? Also will it be correct to generalise that brevity is of the intellect and wordiness is of the senses? Would that mean haiku works a dyptich of brevity and sensuousness? (3 questions. The first is most important for me. Thanks for your thoughts on this.)

Originally Posted By: zmjezhd

English got rid of its cases and so did all the Romance languages, but the Slavic languages held on tight to theirs.

I guess it depends on your definition of 'case'. Equating 'case' with the grammatical markers used to indicate case makes for some strange combinations. In Latin, for example, in first declension genitive and dative singular are the same case and in second declension dative and ablative singular are the same case. I would prefer to think of case as the actual relation a noun has with other elements in a sentence.

it depends on your definition of 'case'. Equating 'case' with the grammatical markers used to indicate case makes for some strange combinations.

Most linguists these days go for a bit of both: overt grammatical markings (the surface morphology of case) and the function (the syntax of words and the function of case.

In Latin, for example, in first declension genitive and dative singular are the same case and in second declension dative and ablative singular are the same case.

That's not how the Romans or today's grammarians would have analysed it. They distinguished case from case-endings (or other kinds of overt markers). Even the Indian grammarians of Sanskrit, who came from an entirely different tradition, separated case-endings from case. They also divided the cases into a myriad of functions, e.g., the genitive of possession and the partitive genitive. While the names given to cases are essentially arbitrary--in fact, the Sanskrit grammarians just numbered their cases, first through seventh--they are convenient tags to discuss the various phenomena of case.

>use them both

irregular periphrastic adjectives, non-beautiful subdivision
more furshlugginer .. most furshlugginer

It isn't fursluggishness but I'm still trying to get behind periphrastic and following the indications of the American Heritage I went from periphrastic via periphrasis to
cir�cum�lo�cu�tion

The use of unnecessarily wordy and indirect language.
Evasion in speech or writing.
A roundabout expression. (and now I vaguely have an impression of where this case leaded to)

In morphology, periphrasis is when you use a phrase rather than a single verb form. for example, in Latin the present indicative active and passive forms of a verb are a single verb form: amo 'I love' and [i]amor 'I am loved'. In the English glosses to those two forms, the second one, the passive, is a periphrastic construction.

@ tsu & Bran: I concur; use them both. What works for haiku (or a limerick) does not work at a retirement luncheon. There are a goodly handful of esoteric names in rhetoric for devices that use repetition of one form or another, and repetition is periphrasis, so the pedigree is there.

"I love" and "I am loved" do not say the same thing, do they? The comparable passive voice for "I love [her]" would be "She is loved [by me]," not "I am loved [by her]."

"I love" and "I am loved" do not say the same thing, do they? The comparable passive voice for "I love [her]" would be "She is loved [by me]," not "I am loved [by her]."

No, they don't and I did not mean to imply that they do. I was just trying to illustrate that some constructions are periphrastic in that they have more than one word to convey a grammatical category. So, in English the passive voice is a periphrastic construction, "I am loved", but in Latin the passive is usually a single word, amor.

Originally Posted By: zmjezhd

it depends on your definition of 'case'. Equating 'case' with the grammatical markers used to indicate case makes for some strange combinations.

Most linguists these days go for a bit of both: overt grammatical markings (the surface morphology of case) and the function (the syntax of words and the function of case.

In Latin, for example, in first declension genitive and dative singular are the same case and in second declension dative and ablative singular are the same case.

That's not how the Romans or today's grammarians would have analysed it. They distinguished case from case-endings (or other kinds of overt markers). Even the Indian grammarians of Sanskrit, who came from an entirely different tradition, separated case-endings from case. They also divided the cases into a myriad of functions, e.g., the genitive of possession and the partitive genitive. While the names given to cases are essentially arbitrary--in fact, the Sanskrit grammarians just numbered their cases, first through seventh--they are convenient tags to discuss the various phenomena of case.

I was going for a sort of reductio ad absurdum with my comment on the first declension genitive and dative singular being the same case. If we look at it entirely disconnected from any inflectional morphemes then we would have, who knows, some 25 or 30 cases including at least two for subjects of sentences. This is all in aid of my internal rantings against the Huddleston/Pullum categorization of bush as a preposition in the sentence 'On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head bush on their own.' Pullum's argument is here. Click on the little SHOW.

I was going for a sort of reductio ad absurdum with my comment on the first declension genitive and dative singular being the same case. If we look at it entirely disconnected from any inflectional morphemes then we would have, who knows, some 25 or 30 cases including at least two for subjects of sentences.

I see. Not sure I quite understand. Do you mean if you ignore the overt markings you can analyse sentences in such a way that in Latin or English there are something like 20 or 30 cases? There's probably way more than that. I once listened to a nervous little East german professor read stiffly from his poorly translated paper why there were hundreds of different kinds of and, logically speaking, not grammatically. I think the Roman, Greek, and Indian grammarians did a fine job of abstracted the overt morphological markers from the grammatical functions when it came to case. If you look at Latin's five declensions, you get a good feel for there being five cases, and maybe an extra one thrown in for the 2nd declension vocative. That some cases in certain declensions have identical endings did not seem to confuse them very much, but who knows, maybe you're on to something. You should write it up and send it to Language or Linguistic Inquiry.

This is all in aid of my internal rantings against the Huddleston/Pullum categorization of bush as a preposition in the sentence 'On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head bush on their own.'

I don't know. I've always felt that the fiddly bits of parts of speech that are left over in the linguistic rag bag after all the heavy lifting and categorization are done, make for interesting perusal. There is something about prepositions, verbal particles, and adverbs, that is all messy and overlappish. Pullum's discovery is at least interesting, but then again if it rubs you the wrong way, rant on, dude! You'll be in good company. every linguistic conference I've ever gone to is full of ranting, peevish linguists disagreeing with each other and sometimes with earlier versions of themselves.

I guess if you count all the different ablatives as one case I suppose you could limit it to 5 or 6. I just picked 25 or 30 because I don't know of any language that recognizes more than that in the formal grammar. Fifty might work, too. I haven't given the actual number that much thought.

And I don't think that bush in the Pullum sentence is an adverb. It's what it has always been; a noun. It's the word that names the place the chicks go to and it's in whatever case it is that defines things gone to.

It's what it has always been; a noun. It's the word that names the place the chicks go to and it's in whatever case it is that defines things gone to.

Yeah but, you cannot replace it with another noun AFAIK. You can replace it with an adverb or a preposition or two.

I just see words changing parts-of-speech-hood at the drop of a clitic. Some languages force you to use derivational morphology is all, but some like Mandarin Chinese and to a slightly lesser extent English let you get away with morpher.

But it's not worth getting hot and bothered about, so I'll let it slide. Heading on out of here or skywards, p'raps.

Originally Posted By: zmjezhd

in English the passive voice is a periphrastic construction, "I am loved", but in Latin the passive is usually a single word, amor.

Got it. Thanks, too, as this is all new to me. This has been a very informative thread so far - more in line with what I expected when I signed up.

"Yeah but, you cannot replace it with another noun AFAIK. You can replace it with an adverb or a preposition or two"

What about a gerund like "hunting?" Would "hunting," if used in place of "bush" in that sentence, even be a gerund?

ZM In morphology, periphrasis is when you use a phrase rather than a single verb form. for example, in Latin the present indicative active and passive forms of a verb are a single verb form:

Quote:

amo 'I love' and amor 'I am loved'. In the English glosses to those two forms, the second one, the passive, is a periphrastic construction.

Yes, I understood right away that here periphrastic is used for a grammatical construction. You cannot get behind this when you look it up as an independant word in a dictionary.
FALD.

Quote:

This is all in aid of my internal rantings against the Huddleston/Pullum categorization of bush as a preposition in the sentence 'On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head bush on their own.'

People like to make these constructions, whatever you call it grammatically, as a way of being creative with language. (often in advertizing) It can be irritating when those things become too fashionable.
I hope the chicks made it safely to the bush though God knows which chick devouring creatures were lurking there.

Originally Posted By: zmjezhd

Yeah but, you cannot replace it with another noun AFAIK. You can replace it with an adverb or a preposition or two.

Umm. Lessee. 'On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head bush (north/east/south/west/home) on their own.'

(north/east/south/west/home)

All adverbs for me. It's pretty uncontroversial categorization, (see, for instance, A-H link). YMMV. I should also say, bush is not an adverb for me, but I see how Pullum could analyze it that way for the Australians who made the utterance..

What about a gerund like "hunting?"

I suppose if the -ing form was used as a noun, it'd be OK., But remember those forms are sometimes adjectives. Cf. His hunting days are over with Hunting gave him great joy.

1. On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head bush on their own.

2. On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head hunting on their own.

For me both sentences are weird, but then I don't savvy Strine.

Thanks, too, as this is all new to me.

You're welcome.

Originally Posted By: zmjezhd

What about a gerund like "hunting?"

1. On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head bush on their own.

'
Still with number 1. Does it look strange because when heading means moving somewhere, it is usually followed by 'for'?

VERB:
intr.
To proceed or go in a certain direction: head for town.
To form a head, as lettuce or cabbage.
To originate, as a stream or river; rise.

I mean, this looks quite kosher, I think.

On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head for bush on their own.

On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head for bush on their own.

I would write: On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head for the bush on their own. The prepositional phrase for the bush fills the adverbial adjunct slot in this sentence for me. Pullum is not saying that bush has become preposition in standard English, he was just enthusing over a preposition in the birthing process. For those who like their grammar and language fixed, like a butterfly pinned to a placard, this can be annoying.

Yes, the the sounds even betterder. But head bush is fine with me. I think I'll head book for the rest of the day.

I think it can be correct without the article, but it definitely needs the preposition in the northern hemisphere.

On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head for (shelter, town, Mom, high ground, etc., none of which requires an article) on their own

I should have written:(within this context) I'll head book and read for the rest of the day.
It can become really ugly when like me people take it one step further by messing it up. Since the seventees we are left with results from people making creative derivations from bibliotheek=library. People thought it cute to combine all sorts of words with the ending: "theek" .
From art-o-theek , which was still an artworks lending service to
Snack-o-Theek, the old fashioned cafetaria or "frietkot".
(fiets/Bike-o-Theek, speel/Play-o-theek, kook/Cook-o-theek) Things that no longer have to do with preservation or lending at all.

Originally Posted By: zmjezhd

(north/east/south/west/home)

All adverbs for me. It's pretty uncontroversial categorization, (see, for instance, A-H link). YMMV. I should also say, bush is not an adverb for me, but I see how Pullum could analyze it that way for the Australians who made the utterance..

Pullum and Huddleston classify all of the above as prepositions.

Usage Note:
It was John Dryden who first promulgated the doctrine that a preposition may not be used at the end of a sentence, probably on the basis of a specious analogy to Latin. Grammarians in the 18th century refined the doctrine, and the rule has since become one of the most venerated maxims of schoolroom grammar. But sentences ending with prepositions can be found in the works of most of the great writers since the Renaissance. English syntax does allow for final placement of the preposition, as in We have much to be thankful for or I asked her which course she had signed up for. Efforts to rewrite such sentences to place the preposition elsewhere can have stilted and even comical results, as Winston Churchill demonstrated when he objected to the doctrine by saying "This is the sort of English up with which I cannot put."�Sometimes sentences that end with adverbs, such as I don't know where she will end up or It's the most curious book I've ever run across, are mistakenly thought to end in prepositions. One can tell that up and across are adverbs here, not prepositions, by the ungrammaticality of I don't know up where she will end and It's the most curious book across which I have ever run. It has never been suggested that it is incorrect to end a sentence with an adverb.

the calamities of ungrammaticalities

"theek"

I've always liked the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. It was founded in 1882. The Glyptothek in Munich, opened in 1830, is also cool. Also, in Germany there is often an Apotheke on the corner to buy something to help with your language-squeamishness.

But, seriously, Greek βιβλιοθηκη (bilbiothēkē) just meant a 'bookcase' or 'collection of books'. Thēkē. just means receptacle. Nothing to do with lending. I admit the first time i saw a department store in France called magasin it gave me pause to wonder. They must have a lot of journals and newspapers to sell in there.

Pullum and Huddleston classify all of the above as prepositions.

Well, bully for them. I said in the beginning (or in some other thread), there's a whole lot of similarity between things called adverbs, prepositions, and verbal particles. I'll have to crack my copy of H&P's Grammar and read up to see if I agree with their analysis. In the late days of the waning of American Structuralism (right before the enfant terrible of linguistics, Noam Chomsky came along and stirred things up), folks like Zelig Harris (Chomsky's advisor at UPenn) advocated dumping all the old terminology and starting anew with semantically opaque terms like class X or class Q. Pretty much all of grammar these days has to do with the slot filling of sample phrases or sentences.

Originally Posted By: zmjezhd

"theek"
your language

squeamishness.

.

Allright, allright and thanks for the theek, but would you mind calling it a light case of language sensitivity?

would you mind calling it a light case of language sensitivity?

Sure, and very light it is. Course, it's better than prepositional preservation anxiety syndrome.

It's interesting how these bits of language get reanalyzed and assigned to different categories. for example, back in the '50s and '60s, -orama (< panorama < Gk οραμα (horama) 'sight', got tacked on to a whole bunch of words; later, -gate (< toponym Watergate) developed and is still with us. Another long-lived one is -burger (< Hamburger 'of or relating to Hamburg').

Originally Posted By: Faldage

[quote=zmjezhd](north/east/south/west/home)

Pullum and Huddleston classify all of the above as prepositions.

Altho I haven't read CGEL, my understanding is that the argument goes that there's no reason to reclassify a preposition as an adverb when it isn't followed by a noun phrase. For instance, why classify "down" different ways in "I fell down the stairs" and "I fell down". After all, verbs are still verbs whether or not they are followed by noun phrases.

Originally Posted By: zmjezhd

What about a gerund like "hunting?"

I suppose if the -ing form was used as a noun, it'd be OK., But remember those forms are sometimes adjectives. Cf. His hunting days are over with Hunting gave him great joy.
1. On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head bush on their own.
2. On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head hunting on their own.
For me both sentences are weird, but then I don't savvy Strine.

I only savvy a little Strine, but "to head bush" is subtly different to "to head to/for/towards/into the bush". I'm not really sure I can explain it though, which isn't particularly useful for anyone. The bush in the former implies a state rather than a place and "head bush" is the verb, if that makes any sense.

If I come up with anything better I'll let you know.

I only savvy a little Strine, but "to head bush" is subtly different to "to head to/for/towards/into the bush". I'm not really sure I can explain it though

Ah, an informant. Wonderful!

"to head bush" is subtly different to "to head to/for/towards/into the bush".
To 'head bush' or 'go Bush' is to get away from it all.

Given the context of newly hatched chicks I don't think it applies in this case.

Unless they're ocker chicks gone bush

I think in this case, the implication is that the chicks are heading into the bush to live, rather than heading to the bush to hide.