PSAT reactions

[Arnold Zwicky]

forwarded by geoff nunberg:

Subject: some letters to the Washington Post

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I believe Kevin Keegan, a high school journalism teacher in
Montgomery County, is conflating the rules for relative and personal
pronouns when he complains that "Toni Morrison's genius enables her
to create novels that arise from and express the injustices African
Americans have endured" is grammatically incorrect ["Grammar Glitch
Pushes PSAT to Rethink, Rescore," front page, May 14].

While relative pronouns do require antecedents (which cannot be nouns
in the possessive case), personal pronouns do not. "I" and "you" most
often appear without antecedents. Similarly, third-person pronouns
sometimes appear with no apparent antecedent; the antecedent is
implied.

Such is the case in the sentence in question. The antecedent of "her"
is not "Toni Morrison's," it is implied -- Toni Morrison. That
grammar books sometimes say different things about the same point of
grammar doesn't make them all correct. It just makes some of them
wrong.

-- Jason L. Bakke

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I have to agree with Kevin Keegan that something is wrong with the
following sentence: "Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create
novels that arise from and express the injustices African Americans
have endured."

Unfortunately, the error is not what Keegan professes.

The phrase "Toni Morrison's genius" is actually shorthand for "The
genius of Toni Morrison," and the sentence's grammar should treat it
as the latter. The use of the direct object "her" clearly alludes to
Toni Morrison; therefore, this is not the source of the error.

The error resides in the phrase "the injustices African Americans
have endured."

What is missing is the conjunction "that" between the noun
"injustices" and the subordinate clause modifying it, "African
Americans have endured." While this omission is common in your paper
and in ordinary speech, this (mis)usage does not necessarily make it
part of Standard English. I submit that its omission constitutes a
grammatical error, even if it is commonly accepted.

-- David L. Wagger

----
The disputed sentence in your May 14 article is not the only one to
contain a grammatical error. At least two sentences in the exchange
between the Educational Testing Service (ETS) specialist and
journalism teacher Kevin Keegan also contain errors, mainly in word
placement.

On Page A13, reporter Linda Perlstein quotes the ETS specialist: "The
reader knows full well that her can only refer to Toni Morrison." In
the preceding sentence, "only" is misplaced. The correct placement is
"refer only."

Perlstein then quotes Keegan as saying, "If you have a rule that in
two grammar books contradicts itself, you either don't test it or you
accept both answers." Keegan should have said "either you don't test
it or you accept both answers."

Near the end of her article, Perlstein pokes fun at the dispute:
"Keegan's success has given him some satisfaction -- oh, wait.
Keegan's success has given the teacher some satisfaction. . . ." Had
the second sentence appeared in isolation in the PSAT, the meaning of
"the teacher" would have been unclear. Keegan could be an accountant
or a nurse. And then there is the problem of a student's perhaps
thinking that Toni Morrison is a man. To whom does the word "her"
refer?

-- Bernis von zur Muehlen