The line: from Algini: “—we shall track it, and we will act.”
I’ll almost lay you money a copyeditor is going to come to a screeching halt and try to draw both statements into uniformity. Which will remove a layer of meaning. And which I shall have to stet. So, I think I WILL insert the [sic] (Latin for ‘thus’) into the text and hope the copyeditor does not fail to strike THAT printer’s notation before it’s set in print.
Do you read that the quality of copyediting is going down by the stern? You’d be right.
Here’s the grammar involved, and it’s really quite simple.
The present tense of the verb ‘track’.
First person means “I,” and “we” (closest to you.)
Second person means “you singular” and “you plural”, ie one, and more than one.
Third person means “he, she, it” and “they” farthest from you, over there.
The rule of shall and will is simple. Shall is only first person when it means future action. “I shall track” and “we shall track.”
Will is second and third person when it means future action. “you will track,” “you pl. will track,” “he will track, she will track, it will track, and they will track.”
NOW, the tricky and subtle bit. The rule totally reverses when it indicates determination about the act.
If you say, “I will track,” it’s as good as italicizing ‘will’ and speaking it with emphasis. It is a subtlety of expression which expresses Intent. 😉
So it becomes, by reversing the above rule: for Intent: I will track, we will track. Then: you shall track, you pl. shall track becomes an Order, isn’t that clever?
And yet one more trick: he shall track, she shall track, it shall track, and they shall track become a Legal Directive.
If you remotely think this is a distinction without meaning, well, the State of Oklahoma managed to void its inheritance law by screwing up the “he shall track” bit. Instead of “he shall track”, they wrote “he will track,” which made it legally ineffective, and unenforcable by the law.
Just one more of the little slippery slopes American English has been skating down ever since it abandoned grammar instruction in favor of the “people naturally talk right” rule of teaching English.
English is a marvelous edged weapon if you know how to wield it.
oh yes, I agree NosenDove, personally I can’t read stuff that isn’t written VERY well!
the subjunctive in English – oh yes, do please explain, CJ, I see from Wiki that it seems to consist of saying I be rather a lot …
PS wiki on the subjunctive is fascinating but horrible …
I be, you be, he be…now that you’re dizzy. It’s pirate-speak, yes, but it’s actually one of the delicate functions of English.
Mood deals with reality and hypothesis, different from futurity: a regul would have a mental breakdown here.
There are several Moods: Indicative– it IS. He STANDS… a simple declaration or denial of what IS reality. “It is, it isn’t; he stands, he stood, he will stand, he doesn’t stand…” All indicative mood.
There’s the Imperative: “Be! Stand! Don’t be! Don’t stand!” That one’s pretty easy.
And then the Subjunctive—which is for Degree of Reality. Indicative verbs shift only in time: they are, or they were, or they had been…doing or being something.
Imperative verbs can’t shift. They just say Be! or Don’t be!
But when a Subjunctive Verb shifts through its phases, it actually shifts not so much through time, but through Degrees of Reality. Science fiction folk should be quite happy with this.
The word “if” is our most common indicator that a subjunctive may be coming.
But first, let’s talk about how to form a subjunctive. Take the infinitive, the “TO BE” “TO STAND” and take the ‘to’ off. That’s your root. The subjunctive is formed from the root.
Its “present” or “most real” state is I be, you be, he be. If I be, If you be, if he be.
Weird as it sounds, you HAVE heard it from our founding fathers: “If this be treason, make the most of it!” [That’s a subjunctive followed by an imperative, not an indicative in sight.]
Its past or ‘less real’ state is I were you were, he were. Do you see that it does NOT change for I, you, he, we, you, they? It’s always the same. So “If I WERE you—” I’m not, so it’s a Condition Contrary To Fact, a prime reason for using the Subjunctive. Remember, constantly, that when you talk about ‘tense of a subjunctive,’ you’re not talking about time. You’re slipping through degrees of reality.
“If I had been…” is a Past Condition Contrary to Fact”…
We don’t often use it without ‘if’ or a similar conjunction. Just remember it’s only one spelling for ALL forms, whether I, you, he, we, you pl, or they; and that it’s not about TIME, it’s about REALNESS—or lack of it. It is the mood of hypothesis or conjecture.
Which will bring me to May and Might, Coulda, woulda, shoulda.
But only after you’ve all caught your breath.
“Which will bring me to May and Might, Coulda, woulda, shoulda.
But only after you’ve all caught your breath.”
Argh! Have you ever consider writing a serial for the site? You got the cliffhanger thing down pat.
(Permission, capability, willpower, prediction…) Will this sequel appear here, in this rapidly aging entry, or in a new entry. I don’t want to miss it!
The four kinds of pronoun in Latin are interesting. What little Japanese I learned was that it had three: here, there (approved or not), and by you. “There was, kore, are, sore, if I recall correctly.
As to English word order, isn’t there always a way to get the order you want? I recall a discussion with a friend that insisted Subject Verb Object was the inherently logical order of the world. I pointed out verbs end sentences in Japanese, and I believe Latin is pretty much, put the words in a blender and the sentence still means the same thing. But back to changing order in English:
SVO: Dick likes Jane.
SOV: Dick, regarding Jane, likes (her).
VSO: Like, does Dick, Jane.
VOS: Likes Jane, does Dick.
OSV: Jane is by Dick liked.
OVS: Jane, Dick likes.
My Japanese isn’t very good, but I’m pretty sure “kore” is “this,” “sore” is “that” and maybe “are” is “that over there.” “Koko” is “here,” “soko” is “there within view,” and “asoko” is “way over there out of view.” “Kono” is “this right here” and can be used as a possessive — “kono te” can be interpreted as “this hand” or more Englishy “my hand”, “sono” is “that” and can also be used as a possessive “sono te” (that hand, or maybe your hand), and I suspect there’s an “asono” I haven’t encountered yet. What I really like is how first syllable tells you your relation to the thing, and the second syllable tells you what you’re discussing. And using “do” as the initial syllable makes it interrogative, although I’m not 100% sure that will hold in all these examples. It does hold for “doko” though — “where,” as well as other questions like “doushite” – why, “douyo imi desu” – what does that mean, etc. I’m still an early learner though, so if I’m wrong here, feel free to correct me. 🙂
Of course, in a discussion of the vagaries of the English language, Japanese is kind of a no-show. We pretty much only use Japanese words regarding martial matters. Although I wonder if “skosh” (sp? and the meaning is “smidgen” if anyone doesn’t recognize it) comes from the Japanese “sukoshi” (sp? which also means a small amount).
I’ll stop now.
😆
And absolutely skosh is Japanese. I recall when the word first arrived in Lawton, Oklahoma, courtesy of families coming back from Japan.
Aha! I was right! 🙂
OH! You’re not saying He Who Must Not Be Named is incorrect ALL the time, you’re saying it’s incorrect SOME of the time… ne? This clears things up marvelously, thank you!
Absolutely! Perfectly fine until the “he” part needs to be the object of a verb or preposition.
be that as it may …..
there is a nice page of examples here, from adverts, tv, overheard speech …. and at the bottom, how not to ..
I have been researching on google 🙂
ooops, forgot the url, LOL!
http://www.ceafinney.com/subjunctive/examples.html
In downloaded a search-able copy of She from Project Gutenberg. Haggard’s heroine is called “She-who-must-be-obeyed” — quotes, italics, hyphens, and all. Haggard seems to be doing his best to communicate that this is a name or title, and as such does not change form depending on its use in the sentence.
Rowling seems to have substituted capitalization for the hyphens and thus blurred the distinction between a name and a descriptive phrase. If a descriptive phrase, He/Him/His certainly should apply. If a name or title, then Haggard’s constant “She” is defensible.
(Haggard is also clear that the original form of this title is not English. The narrator of She and Allan translates it as She-who-commands — still italics but no quotes.)
I’d have thought that it was pretty clear from the context that “He who must not be named” functions as a name / title rather than a purely descriptive phrase. The wizards and witches that named him speak using reasonably colloquial English – and I can’t think that anyone would use the form “Him who must not be named” in everyday use. So, maybe not grammatically correct but certainly OK in a literary sense 🙂
I admit that with a side of my family being proudly educated and German, most of my English grammar education leaned towards the Germanic forms. It may not be the most correct interpretation but having the extra education at home certainly set up some conflict with the East Texas school system of the 1970’s and that last comma rule. Among other things.
Now with the Internet age I see that my usage has changed a great deal in chat. With the lack of body language I use extra punctuation and “shift” words to cue the reader to what is really going on emotionally. I have often questioned if it might develop into some very bad habits.
Nowadays some of the grammar usage sets my teeth on edge, but there are days I am just as happy not to see people mixing up something as simple as Then and Than.
one of my pet hates is seeing perfectly intelligent people use loose instead of lose … always when typing quickly on the internet, but still!