On Richard Jensen's Examples....as an Example of the Current General Discussion.

[Richard Jensen]

James Bass wrote:

> (1) In  the 'correction' below, Richard Jensen introduces other
> problems.  "Committee" is used in different ways in the two sentences
> (which is why the second sounds so clumsy).  In the first, it is the
> subject of the sentence; in the second it is the object of a
> (partially missing) prepositional phrase which modifies a subject
> which is also missing [following the example given in his explanatory
> paragraph].

OK, I'll rephrase my example to read "The committee members are
representatives..." with members being the implicit portion.  Of course,
now the word committee becomes a noun in apposition.  I still don't
think it changes the situation appreciably.

>
>
> Why would anyone drop the subject and part of the modifying
> prepositional phrase?  So, my initial reading of the second sentence
> was maintaining the word "committee" as the subject (as in the first
> sentence) and I assumed it was grammatically incorrect as the missing
> phrase was "made up of"  and thus "committee" would still require a
> singular verb in the sentence "The committee is made up of
> representatives...".  [Dropping this weaker modifier is much less
> clumsy than the rather forced construction of dropping the subject and
> part of its modifier.]  In sum, in your example, your sentence has no
> subject....just the object of a prepositional phrase as surrogate for
> the subject it modifies. Why?

Why?  One reason is to avoid unnecessary redundancy.  Why say "The
family Fagaceae..."?  By convention, Fagaceae is defined as a family, so
it is unnecessary to include the initial phrase.  I guess sportswriters
could always write things like "The baseball team the Chicago Cubs..."
or "The football team the Green Bay Packers...",  etc., but that creates
a very cumbersome form of writing and reminds me of the rule that says
we should avoid things such as "The man he was very old..." (either man
or he is implicit in the grammatically preferred constructions: "He was
very old" or "The man was very old").

>
>
> (2)  I said what is above because I grew up learning U.S. English.
> The British do use the plural verb form with collective nouns.  [See
> The Little, Brown Handbook, Instructor's Annotated Edition, Sixth
> Edition, p. 231.  Oh yes, and note that Little and Brown are not
> descriptive modifiers.]
>
> (3)  A lot of confusion in this whole discussion rests in the use of
> 'collective nouns' in different ways.  One of the most reputable
> sources [Fowler's Modern English Usage] distinguishes seven [7] types
> of collective nouns and in a rather laconic explanation outlines the
> rules of agreement.

I use a "popular" reference quite often.  It is "The Writer's Hotline
Handbook" by Montgomery and Stratton.

> (5)  Please return to beating up on categories for taxa.  Hey, I'm an
> economist who started following this list about 8 months ago as I have
> to work with taxa as inputs into some model building in which I'm
> engaged.  Thus, for me; you're the experts on which I rely for
> 'data'.  I didn't expect agreement among you folks but I at least
> could follow your disagreements easier when they were in the realm of
> the biological and not the grammatical.  You'll never solve the
> problems of the lack of congruence of Romantic and Hellenic grammar
> and of the bastard stepchild, English, being an Indo-Teutonic language
> with a forced Romantic grammar system imposed upon it.  [Where's
> Chomsky when we really need him?]

Effective communication is a necessity in all disciplines.  In this
thread we are discussing a minor aspect of the proper way to construct
our communications.  It may not be very interesting for many, but I find
it an entertaining "diversion" from some of the more general questions
debated here.

>
>
> ....and I have sat on my hands to keep from writing on the fact that
> other fields (physics, economics, etc.) don't have a problem in
> renaming entities when the paradigm changes.  Much of what I've seen
> in the recent taxa discussion dealt with different paradigm [and
> please don't jump on my using the p-word as both singular and plural]
> into which you are now forcing a discussion of grammar to try to solve
> your differences.  Grammar should be a tool of explanation but will
> never solve the problems of differences in paradigm...or even category
> level (again, in the Ryle sense).

I guess we biologists will have to continue our physics envy (and
perhaps add economics envy as well).  It must be nice to work in a
system in which the basic entities are static and unchanging, despite
paradigm shifts.

Cheers,
Dick Jensen

--
Richard J. Jensen              TEL: 219-284-4674
Department of Biology      FAX: 219-284-4716
Saint Mary's College         E-mail: rjensen at saintmarys.edu
Notre Dame, IN  46556     http://www.saintmarys.edu/~rjensen