I have posted a couple of items (here and here) responding to a post by Eric Muller about the propriety of taking race into account in assigning students to sections of a third grade class.
Muller thinks it’s a good idea because it may prevent some minority students from feeling isolated and no real discrimination is involved. Refusing to do so, he argues, can be based on nothing more than rigid fealty to an abstract proposition. I disagreed, arguing that there are substantial costs to violating the colorblind principle even where there are no immediate victims of overt discrimination.
In many respect this sort of disagreement — in the legal world, it is often framed as one between realism and formalism — is about the nature and importance of rules, and as such it is analogous to debates over grammar. (For more on this, see Sandy Levinson and Jack Balkin, “Constitutional Grammar,” 72 Texas Law Review 1771 [1994])
Some people approach rules, principles, propositions the same way they approach punctuation: they grab a handful of commas, for example, and throw them at the page, perhaps arranging them a bit afterward in an artful pattern. Others see punctuation exclusively as an aid to clarity, and if clarity is assured they believe proper punctuation really isn’t very important. Still others think grammatical rules are sacrosanct even where clarity is not an issue. They are likely to attribute the decline of western civilization to the increasing tendency to ignore the serial comma rule. That’s the rule that says in a series of three or more items — a, b, and c — the “and” must be preceded by a comma. (This theory has the added virtue of laying a good deal of blame for our problems at the feet of newspapers, whose narrow columns led editors to drop the serial comma to save space.)
The Washington Post has an article today that can provide a useful Rorschach test. A high school journalism (!) teacher waged an ultimately successful campaign against the Educational Testing Service, which said that the correct answer to a grammatical question about the following sentence on the PSAT is that there is no error in it:
Toni Morrison’s genius enables her to create novels that arise from and express the injustices African Americans have endured.
Kevin Keegan, the Montgomery County, Maryland, high school teacher pointed out that the antecedent of “her” is “Toni Morrison’s,” an adjective, which is improper. “Many grammar manuals insist that a pronoun such as ‘her’ should refer only to a noun,” WaPo explained, “not, as in the case of the possessive ‘Toni Morrison’s,’ an adjective.”
He submitted a complaint, and ETS responded in a letter that there is disagreement on that rule’s validity. “The reader knows full well that her can only refer to Toni Morrison,” an assessment specialist wrote.
That’s not the point, Keegan wrote in response. The exam isn’t testing whether sentences are clear but whether they are correct.
Indeed. Jessie had to learn physics on her own, but no one can say I didn’t teach her important things: she had learned and internalized the serial comma rule before she was six.
Besides, as every good grammarian knows, you should never end a sentence with a proposition.
“Besides, as every good grammarian knows, you should never end a sentence with a proposition.”
That, sir, is the sort of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.*
8-)
Doug Sundseth
* Attributed to Winston Churchill, possibly apocryphal.
Immediately after posting, I noticed the spelling of “proposition”. Let me thus change the statement to, “That, sir, is the sort of errant pedantry up with which I will not put.”
8-)
http://www.diablogger.com/archives/000277.html
Like most academics, I have an abnormal relish for complexity. Give me one hundred and one causes, a thousand interactions,
This is bizarre and nonsensical. Someone claims that the possessive “Toni Morrison’s” is an *adjective*?! The sentence is perfectly fine, grammatically.
Compare: Bob’s friendliness is one of his most endearing qualities. The genius of TM is manifest in her writing.(Did TM become a noun since it’s the object of a preposition instead of being in the possessive case?)
“A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it” (Love’s Labour’s Lost V.ii) The antecedent of “it” is “jest’s.”
Of course, semantically the sentence is somewhat silly.
Believing At Least Two Impossible Things Before Breakfast
John Rosenberg has an amusing letter from a reader. At least, I found it amusing, so it goes without saying that if you don’t, there’s…
And don’t start sentences with conjunctions
John Rosenberg was canny enough to end a posting with this sentence: Besides, as every good grammarian knows, you should
Doug: Not to be pedantic or anything, but don’t you mean “arrant pedantry”? Unless you’re referring to a pedant who roams the world righting writing errors, like a knight errant.
The “errant” was because he spelled “preposition” as “proposition” in his first post.
I got it, Doug, but it took me a minute.
Actually, I didn’t spell “preposition” as “proposition.” I meant to spell “proposition,” sort of as a pun/take off on the fact that the post was about propositions, as in fealty to. Now look what I’ve done….
Eugene Volokh blogs (correctly, I think)in favor of the sentence as written. Other readers supplied quotations from Shakespeare to back it up.
Volokh failed to discuss how NRO used this as a launchpad for a very unpleasant diatribe about Toni Morrison. Calpundit has a good analysis.
‘Actually, I didn’t spell “preposition” as “proposition.” I meant to spell “proposition,” sort of as a pun/take off on the fact that the post was about propositions, as in fealty to. Now look what I’ve done….’
8-)
I rather liked the pun, which occasioned my second post. Too bad I didn’t see it on first reading.
But then I thought my second reply was a rather clever pun as well. (But then I would, I suppose.)
Doug Sundseth
ps. I’m blaming Churchill for the confusion. Dead, white, male, smoker, and a conservative…how much more guilty can you get?