SCOSE NOTES
Language researcher Irene Poinkin summarises recent discussions at SCOSE, the ABC Standing Committee on Spoken English.
May/might
As some research shows, the word may is nowadays often used instead of might. But a recent news report was an occasion where using might would have resolved some ambiguity. The report said a Chubb security guard had been shot and that “having body armour may have saved his life”. Alas, he didn’t survive (nor was he wearing body armour) – he was taken to hospital where he later died. Using the word may suggested that the guard had body armour and that perhaps it saved his life. But using might in this context would have made it clear that he was not wearing body armour and that, if he had been, it would possibly have saved his life.
May and might are more or less interchangeable (with some subtleties) when referring to possible future events, but for past events they introduce this ambiguity between what we don’t know about what happened and what we know didn’t happen but could have. Since reporting is mostly about past events, the distinction remains important.
Commas
I sometimes think it’s unfortunate that the importance of understanding the difference between a restrictive and a nonrestrictive clause is downplayed these days, because despite the general trend towards lighter punctuation journalists often use a comma before a relative pronoun that’s clearly meant to be part of a restrictive clause:
The war crimes court in the Hague has heard testimony from the model Naomi Campbell, which contradicts evidence given by the actress Mia Farrow.
With the errant comma this says that Mia Farrow’s evidence implies that Naomi Campbell never gave this testimony. Without the comma the sentence simply says that Campbell’s testimony contradicts Farrow’s evidence.
The researchers say [Vitamin D] could help to protect certain nerve cells, which are essential to a variety of brain functions.
The words after the comma make the banal observation that nerve cells are essential to certain brain functions. Remove the comma and they form a restrictive clause specifying which brain cells are protected (by an intake of Vit D) – the ones that are essential to …
Establishing usage
It’s surprising how often listeners will object to an established usage – either because they have been unaware of it or because they consider it to be faulty in some way. It highlights the importance of using a good, up-to-date dictionary and having a healthy appreciation of the productive nature of English. A few genuine examples will illustrate my point.
Asserts one listener: “Will you please advise your colleagues that the word unviable does not exist. The correct form in nonviable.”
But the listener is mistaken. The fact that unviable has made it into the Macquarie Dictionary means it has become a part of standard English. The dictionary has definitions for two separate senses of the word.
Let’s be wary of being too literal-minded. A listener suggested that the expression speaking live was foolish because no-one can speak when they’re dead. However, speaking live is not the opposite of speaking when dead. It is the opposite of pre-recorded speech.
We need to be reminded occasionally that natural language is messier and much more fluid than they may realise, and that dictionaries can take some time to catch up with new usages.
“I hope that snuck is not an ‘approved’ word on the ABC”, said one listener who read in
an article about the bashing of Carl Williams that another prisoner had “snuck” up behind Williams and hit him on the head. Approved or not, snuck now has a firm place in colloquial Australian English. Journalists should use their judgement of style when deciding whether to use the informal snuck or the regular past tense sneaked. Readers may be interested to know that the New Oxford Dictionary of English says, in a usage note in its entry for sneak, that in the US snuck ‘is now regarded as a standard alternative to sneaked in all but the most formal contexts’ and “In the Oxford Reading Programme, there are now more US citations for snuck than there are for sneaked, and there is evidence of snuck gaining ground in British English also”.
When it was reported that an Australian skier at the Vancouver Paralympics “did not believe he was a chance of medalling”, a listener wrote to say:
“I wish to complain about the use of made-up words in today’s News … There is no such word as medalling.”
In a sense all words are “made-up” words. The verb (to) medal is a proper word and by no means new – it has been used in sports contexts for a long time. Australian listeners are familiar with it and it is listed in the Macquarie Dictionary.
Lastly, one from my in-tray:
“I was interested to learn that the Macquarie Dictionary had replaced both Daniel Jones and/or the Oxford Dictionary as the arbiter of English language pronunciation but I can’t help but wonder when, and by whom, that decision was made.”
The people of Australia, who as far back as the nineteenth century had established their own identity and distinctive variety of English, in effect made that decision decades ago.
Click here to read the SCOSE Notes in the previous edition of Australian Style (16.2). |
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