Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Passive in English (2011)

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 65 posts

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#21

Post by defrost »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #19
defrost wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another again to be some kind of bizzarro universalist . . . [1] is a funeral with Hawaiian shirts, [2] is a funeral but likely not as you know one. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8dmj_Gkq2s [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI6TRTBZUMM

Sorry for the tacit assumption of the audience of HN, but I think that demanding constant awareness of all possible cultural differences is quite inadequate. Anyway, I don’t see how those links disprove my point? Those cultures have different expectations; and my point is that those expectations are valid .

You're explicitly discussing language and linguistics.

Last time I checked in at /r/linguistics that covered more than just your tacit assumption of the world at large.

Your point also seems to be both that cultures have expectations and that those that do not meet those expectations will receive criticism (that would be wrong to shrug off as "merely judgemental").

As someone who's travelled widely in the past few decades across a number of cultures I've frequently stood out like the only person in black in a sea of Hawaiian shirts; it's rare that I've been criticised, more common to have been thanked for attending.

I find communities that critically judge differences to their expectations to be relatively rare, many communities recognise that others have other behaviours, I myself do find that those communities with a rigid set of expectations that are overly judgemental of those that do not meet those expectations to be worrisome.

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#22

Post by agalunar »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #17
msla wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really points up the difference between linguists, who understand language, and grammarians, who merely peeve about it.

There is a difference between understanding linguistics and understanding language. Many linguists who carry the banner of descriptivism completely fail to do the latter. It’s one thing to understand that wearing dark formal attire to a funeral is just a part of etiquette without intrinsic meaning; it’s a whole nother matter to come to a funeral in a Hawaiian shirt and dismiss all criticism as judgmental.

Can you provide any examples? In my (limited) experience, linguists have been just as aware of pragmatics, social convention, or current culture as anyone else. (And lexicographers are even more attuned than most.)

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#23

Post by torstenvl »

tkgally wrote: post #2

I enjoyed this rant at the end of the article: “[T]he people who criticize the passive the most tend to use it more than the rest of us. George Orwell warns against the passive in his dishonest and rhetorically overblown essay "Politics and the English language". E. B. White does likewise in the obnoxiously ignorant little book by Strunk that he revised and put his name on, The Elements of Style. Both of these author…

> more than 20 percent of their clauses with transitive verbs are cast in the passive

I smiled. Brilliantly played.

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#25

Post by nicbou »

coliveira wrote: post #9

I aways took the aversion of English speakers against the passive voice as a sign of linguistic incompetence. Instead of teaching students how to write well on the passive and active voices, they prefer to reduce the language to its minimum denominator. The confirmation is in [1]: many journalists and writers don't even know how to define the passive. It is a sad thing to watch. [1] http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/p…

The hate is often justified.

I write in English about German bureaucracy for non-native speakers from all over the world. Using active voice in the second person makes instructions far clearer if you have a tenuous grasp of the language. You know exactly who does what.

I also find active sentences easier to parse in languages I'm not fluent in.

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#26

Post by mdp2021 »

tgv wrote: post #24
tempodox wrote: post #16

Passive voice should not be used in documentation of software.

Let's ignore that your sentence is in the passive voice, your reason is?

> Let's ignore that your sentence is

(That - and the drastic tone lacking justifications - indicates a probable intention to joke...)

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#27

Post by ogogmad »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #17
msla wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really points up the difference between linguists, who understand language, and grammarians, who merely peeve about it.

There is a difference between understanding linguistics and understanding language. Many linguists who carry the banner of descriptivism completely fail to do the latter. It’s one thing to understand that wearing dark formal attire to a funeral is just a part of etiquette without intrinsic meaning; it’s a whole nother matter to come to a funeral in a Hawaiian shirt and dismiss all criticism as judgmental.

There's one famous US magazine that set up a UK branch. They hired an editor who said in his two-sentence biography that he's "a descriptivist, not a prescriptivist". As a result, this editor didn't edit. And given that he was writing to an audience of nerds, most of the responses to his articles were people taking issue with sentences like "Thanks to the improvements in AI that have happened due to Moore's Law..."

Needless to say, the UK branch got closed down.

Your analogy with funeral attire and Hawaiian shirts is excellent.

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#28

Post by MrJohz »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #19
defrost wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another again to be some kind of bizzarro universalist . . . [1] is a funeral with Hawaiian shirts, [2] is a funeral but likely not as you know one. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8dmj_Gkq2s [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI6TRTBZUMM

Sorry for the tacit assumption of the audience of HN, but I think that demanding constant awareness of all possible cultural differences is quite inadequate. Anyway, I don’t see how those links disprove my point? Those cultures have different expectations; and my point is that those expectations are valid .

But isn't that also the point of descriptivism in linguistics? That linguistics is the study of language as it's actually used in the context of different groups and cultures, rather than as an officially described, created thing?

For example, the habitual be isn't part of any prescribed English dialect, but it still has its own grammar, and can be used correctly or incorrectly. The goal of descriptivism here is not to say "you can say anything you want, and others have to accept you", but rather to say "dialects spring up organically, and our job is to study them as they arise, rather than to define them from the top down".

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#29

Post by mrkeen »

coliveira wrote: post #9

I aways took the aversion of English speakers against the passive voice as a sign of linguistic incompetence. Instead of teaching students how to write well on the passive and active voices, they prefer to reduce the language to its minimum denominator. The confirmation is in [1]: many journalists and writers don't even know how to define the passive. It is a sad thing to watch. [1] http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/p…

In fiction, the active voice is usually clearer and flows better.

In non-fiction (especially journalism) it's frustrating when it's used to hide who did the action.

..or..

In non-fiction (especially journalism) it's frustrating when the writer uses it to hide who did the action.

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#30

Post by mrkeen »

In Latin, deponent verbs are verbs which are written in the passive form but have an active meaning. The textbook I used said there are no deponent verbs in English.

But it got me thinking, it must all be relative. Can native speakers of a language even think they have deponent verbs without having another language to compare to?

English has "to be born". You could argue that it's passive (the active is "to bear"), but it's not how the word is used. But French has the active "naître" as "to be born". Does that mean French speakers think that English has deponent verbs?

Post reply on HN