Fwd: commas and restrictive clauses

Sat Aug 4 17:58:05 UTC 2007

Perhaps I should have added that from the early 1950s till the early 1960s I taught what we used to call "Freshman English" at New York University.  I won't go into the numbers of books I have written and co-authored, the number of papers of mine published in recognized journals, and my editorship of Verbatim, The Language Quarterly, for twenty-three years, during which I edited every syllable that was published in it.
  Zwicky will, I am sure, be happy to learn that the title of my latest book, which will be published this October/November, is "The Last Word."
  L. Urdang

"Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
Subject: Fwd: commas and restrictive clauses
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meant for the whole list...

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
> Date: August 4, 2007 9:13:25 AM PDT
> To: Laurence Urdang
> Subject: Re: commas and restrictive clauses
>
>
> On Aug 3, 2007, at 12:17 PM, Laurence Urdang wrote:
>
>> Zwicky:
>> a restrictive relative
>> ("(that) the
>> angels did say") set off by commas, something we
>> (mostly) don't do
>> any more.
>
>> They do it all the time in British writing.
>
> commas around restrictive relatives occur in american as well as
> british writing, but not with great frequency (at least in writing
> for publication by serious writers). most of the handbooks suggest
> that the practice is more common in british writing than in
> american, and that's the impression of almost every linguist who's
> collected some data. i assume there's some actual research on brit-
> am differences (holding things like genre, style, register, etc.
> constant), but i'm working at home today and don't have easy access
> to my sources.
>
> when you look at student writing in the u.s., you see a fair number
> of errors involving commas in relative clauses. in a 1988 study by
> connors & lunsford, a careful count of errors in 300 student papers
> found 36 types of errors with at least 4 occurrences in the 300
> papers. error #10 was "no comma in non-restrictive phrase" (75
> occurrences) and error #12 was "unnecessary comma with restrictive
> clause" (50 occurrences). 10 of the top 36 errors involved commas,
> in fact.
>
> a 2007 follow-up study by lunsford & lunsford (now in press) found
> pretty much the same situation with respect to commas (other things
> have changed, in interesting ways, but the comma errors have
> scarcely changed in 20 years, and in fact look much the same in
> other studies of u.s. student writing earlier in the 20th century).
>
>> They put commas everywhere,
>> especially separating subjects from their verbs and verbs from
>> their objects...
>
> this is the sort of global generalization that linguists should
> resist. you're maintaining that british writers are *generally*
> fond of commas, and you're lumping together all sorts of different
> phenomena. i suspect that your impressions of general british-
> american differences here would not be supported by actual
> research. certainly, the handbooks make no such observation about
> commas separating subject and predicate or commas separating verb
> and object. (both on the connors & lunsford u.s. student list, but
> not very high on it: #28, frequency of 14, and #32, frequency of 6,
> respectively.)
>
> MWDEU does note that the comma between subject and predicate "is an
> old convention that has fallen into disuse and disfavor. It was
> common in the 18th century..." (with examples from distinguished
> writers, one british, one american) "This comma is now universally
> frowned on and tends to be found only as a vice of comic-strip
> writers, advertisers, and others who are not on their guard."
>
> as i say here again and again, impressions (even the impressions of
> people sensitive to language use) about who uses which variants,
> for how long, how often, on what occasions, and for what purposes
> are not at all reliable; our judgments about such things are
> affected by a variety of factors that distort them significantly.
>
> it's also true that elements that serve many functions almost never
> vary across all the functions in the same way. people aren't
> *generally* fond of the preposition "of", or infinitivals, or
> commas; instead, their preferences are different in different
> contexts. (in other words, variation is structurally, as well as
> socially, local in character.)
>
>> ... But Brit punctuation has changed since about 1900, an
>> observation that eluded Lynne Truss: before that, it was more in
>> keeping with our present practice. For instance, much late 19th-
>> century text shows a period or comma preceding a closing quotation
>> mark, while today it almost always follows. American typographers
>> decided years ago that such practice was unaesthetic, which is why
>> periods and commas are now always inside.
>
> this is yet another topic, concerning minute details of what are in
> fact arbitrary conventions about punctuation. (MWDEU just refuses
> to take these on.) virtually nothing hangs on punc-quot vs. quot-
> punc order, or on the presence or absence of the serial comma
> (though reasoned arguments have been made for quot-punc and the
> serial comma, and these are my practices). yet style sheets,
> editors, and writing teachers are passionate in their insistence on
> one practice or another (different practices in different places).
>
> in any case, i don't see any relationship between preferences in
> these practices (which vary from place to place and time to time)
> and any other variations in the use of commas.
>
> arnold
>
>
>
>

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