blame (was: Prescriptivism and the cinema)

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Jul 15, 2010, at 12:51 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> In high school, we used a prescriptive-grammar textbook
> unfortunately-titled, English Grammar. According to this grammar,
> _blame_ could *not* be used as a verb. The Jesuit teaching the course
> suggested that, as a mnemonic, we keep in mind the song title, "*Put
> The Blame On* Mame."

i have this funny feeling that we've done this before, but here goes, possibly again...

if this is what you were actually taught -- that "blame" cannot be used as a verb, period -- then that is quite extraordinary, and i would like to see *evidence* that this is what you were taught (rather than your recollection about what you were taught), so that i could write this up as a proscription unmoored from its original domain of applicability and incorrectly generalized to apply to all sorts of innocent victims.

as usual, i recommend that you look at the (excellent) MWDEU article of "blame".

in addition, Language Log has looked at the situation at least twice:

ML, 12/26/07: Blame it on Kipling:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005260.html

AZ, 12/30/07: Blameless:
 http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005272.html

where various sources are cited: OED, MWDEU, Ayres (1881), Funk & Wagnalls (1915), and Garner (2000); Levin (1993:sec. 2.10)

(the history is that the verb and the noun were both borrowed into english ca. 1300, and both have continued in great health since then.)

now, the big fuss among peevers is over the two argument structures:

(a) blame SOURCE (for CONSEQUENCE)  (blame Kim (for the disaster))
(b) blame CONSEQUENCE on SOURCE  (blame the disaster on Kim)

the peevers' claim (since the mid-19th century or so) is that only (a) is acceptable and that (b) is simply wrong wrong wrong: you can't blame *something*, they say, majestically (you can put the blame on Mame, you can blame Mame for it, but you can't blame it on Mame).  but (b) has been used by polished, good writers for a very long time, and continues in such use today (alongside (a); the two variants have different virtues).  some handbooks still deprecate it, and some mark it as colloquial, but these attitudes bordered on the loony a hundred years ago, and there's no rational defense for them now.  (of course, if you choose not to use the (b) structure and opt for (a) instead, that's your business.)

now observe that even the loonies have "blame" as a verb (in structure (a)), and that's been around, undisturbed, since early middle english.

you can see why i'd be interested in seeing a textbook that actually says that "blame" cannot be used as a verb, period, which entails that (a) is as unacceptable as (b) is sometimes thought to be.

in terms that i have sometimes used, this would be a case where the claimed unacceptability of (b) *contaminates* the innocent (a).

arnold

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