Louis Menand, the Chicago Manual, and the PAP

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

from Louis Menand, "The end matter: The nightmare of citation" [review
of the 15th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style], The New Yorker,
7/6/03, pp. 120-126.

p. 124:  One major addition... is a ninety-page section on Grammar and
Usage.  For some reason... the authors felt it necessary to cover the
field from scratch...  On the other hand, common sources of solecism
receive less attention than they might.  The College Board would still
not have avoided the mistake it made on a recent P.S.A.T. exam, where
it replaced the phrase "Toni Morrison's genius" with "her," if it had
consulted the Chicago discussion of pronouns and antecedents.
------
oh, spit.  *louis menand* getting it wrong!  and in a remarkably
obscure way; if you hadn't already seen the sentence he was talking
about (which begins "Toni Morrison's genius enables her to..."), i
doubt that you'd understand what he says here.  to start with, he seems
to be assuming that pronouns are replacements for repetitions of a full
NP (so that "As for Toni Morrison, not everyone likes her work" would
be derived from "As for Toni Morrison, not everyone likes Toni
Morrison's work").  and then he assumes the truth of the PAP, so that
"Toni Morrison" is unavailable as an antecedent for "her", which means
that the only available antecedent for "her" is "Toni Morrison's
genius".  therefore, according to menand, what the exam writers did was
replace "Toni Morrison's genius" with "her".  of course, what the exam
writers actually did was treat "Toni Morrison" as the antecedent of
"her".

on the other hand, i'm pleased to see that the Chicago Manual doesn't
subscribe to the PAP.

elizabeth zwicky pointed me to this passage as soon as i got home from
talking at cornell (about the PAP and also about the "gay voice")  and
saw this issue of The New Yorker on top of my pile of mail.  first
things first!

while in ithaca, i took in the enormous Friends of the Library book
sale (on its first day, but i didn't stand in line overnight to get in
early for the good stuff) and found several grammar and usage manuals
that i didn't have already that were innocent of the PAP.  also a copy
of allan metcalf's Predicting New Yords (2002), apparently untouched
and in perfect shape, for $4.50.  (my apologies, allan; i understand
that this time around you don't get any royalties on this copy.)
entertaining reading for the trip from syracuse to detroit to san
francisco.

we've already had the discussion of "zhoozh", which appears in allan's
book with the spelling "szhoosh" and a 1999 invention date (long after
its use in Polari).  otherwise, i'd object only to the glossing of
"guppies"  as "geriatric urban poor persons".  i'm sure allan has
citations for this use, but where i live, guppies are gay urban
professionals (parallel to buppies).   ask the man who is one.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu), dismayed at the shocking lowering of
standards at
    The New Yorker