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January 20[edit]

El burro delante para que no se espante. Syntax taboos[edit]

If in Spanish you start saying "Yo y Lola..." ("I and Lola...", probably you will be corrected with "El burro delante para que no se espante" ("The donkey first so that it doesn't get scared.") because it is impolite to put "I" in an enumeration in a position before the last one. Is there a branch of linguistics that studies this kind of social restrictions on syntax? Pragmatics? Are there similar syntax taboos in other languages? --Error (talk) 00:03, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, yes, the same "rule" is also applied - or, at least was applied in English. In elementary school (late 70s, early 80s, SW Ontario) we were taught that it should be "Mike and I went out." and not "I and Mike went out." I'm certain there is a term for this, but I can't seem to recall it. Matt Deres (talk) 01:27, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think this phenomenon is called Linguistic prescription. It's often contrasted with Linguistic description. If prescriptive grammars try to show how people should speak, then descriptive grammars show how people actually do speak. They're kind of at odds with each other, but kinda not too. I think of them as a little bit like Nature vs. Nurture. People work themselves into a huff over which one's more important, but the reality is you probably need a little bit of both to make things go. Bobnorwal (talk) 03:49, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect people were talking to each other quite competently for tens of thousands of years before there were any prescriptivist grammarians telling them what mistakes they were making. CodeTalker (talk) 04:54, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this is a grammatical rule, even for prescriptivists, most of whom would admit that there's nothing syntactically problematic about putting oneself first. It's more a social norm about non-self-aggrandizement.

By the way, there's a tension about this in Italian. The same social pressure applies, perhaps even more strongly, so one hesitates before saying Io e Lola siamo andati.... The problem is that the other way would be Lola ed io, which sounds about the same as Lola e Dio (Lola and God). --Trovatore (talk) 04:57, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I concur about the 'social norm' aspect. As a native BrE speaker, I would in formal register always say "Mike and I went to the pub", while "I and Mike . . ." seems very unnatural, but in casual speech "Me and Mike went down the pub" is more natural than "Mike and me . . . ." {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.12.94.189 (talk) 14:33, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Russian gets around this by using a construction like "we with Mike" (мы с Мишей), where in English we would say either "Mike and I" or "me and Mike". —Stephen (talk) 18:27, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tangent (to a tangent): The informal use of the accusative "me" instead of "I", as part of the subject, is not done in Italian; it would always be io. But the exactly parallel thing does happen in the second person: io e te siamo andati informally instead of the strictly correct io e tu or tu ed io. --Trovatore (talk) 19:31, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

All those who are saying that "we" would say "Me and Mike went", or that it's a more "natural" way of speaking - speak for yourselves! Some people do indeed say this informally, but many others would rather eat crushed glass. I'm with the latter group. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:47, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think I was the only commenter to refer to this usage in English, and I was both careful to say that "I" rather than "we" say it/find it natural (although of course I do not markedly differ in vernacular speech from my proximate community), and careful to specify that I am a British English speaker. You, Jack of Oz, as a presumed Australian English speaker do not fall under that umbrella, though you are quite welcome to fall under a bus :-). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.12.94.189 (talk) 12:42, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That would be the second death in my close family this month. My siblings might be relieved, but just in case not, I'll steer clear of buses for the moment, thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:11, 21 January 2017 (UTC) [reply]

My sincere sympathies, Jack. Of course I was not being literal. {The poster formerly knownn as 87.81.230.195} 94.12.94.189 (talk) 11:33, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I knew that. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 12:43, 22 January 2017 (UTC) [reply]

But it's surprising how many people (not you of course, Jack) say "Mike and I" for the objective case when grammar requires "Mike and me". From my listening (original research) this seems to be the most common grammatical error on BBC Radio 4. Dbfirs 10:12, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Between you and I me, that's an extremely common error. Even the Queen would have to think twice before saying "I thank you for your gracious remarks about my husband and me". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:37, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

She would say " ... about my husband and myself", I think. Dbfirs 21:50, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

…or "one's husband and oneself". (Would she italicize it?) —Tamfang (talk) 02:01, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

She doesn't say "One's husband and one are pleased to ...". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:10, 22 January 2017 (UTC) [reply]

I am sure there is some Italian joke based on that, Trovatore :) . There are Spanish jokes based on the rule. --Error (talk) 19:03, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Anyway, getting back to the original question, the question seems to be about what aspect of linguistics covers this sort of social-politeness-based restrictions on otherwise correct grammar. We got a bit off track on that. (The "prescriptive grammar" answer was simply wrong; it's not about grammar at all.) Does anyone have an answer to that? --Trovatore (talk) 19:35, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's not clearly defined boxes. Proper grammar is a socially defined concept. The social group that gets to define the grammar for the "standard" form of a language, and word choice is a grammar issue. Why do we use "I" instead of "me" and use a certain subject word order over any other? That's still a grammar issue, albeit one defined by sociolinguistics. --Jayron 32 19:38, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You know what I mean, Jayron. It's politeness, not syntax. "Prescriptive grammar" was not a correct answer to the original query. I don't know whether there is a correct answer. We're still waiting for one. --Trovatore (talk) 19:42, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why is Trovatore saying that "me" as the subject of the sentence is accusative? It takes the same form in both the accusative, the dative, and as the emphatic pronoun. The third of these possibilities is the correct one. 2A02:C7F:BE2B:5600:C049:EE2:6F7F:FFEC (talk) 20:56, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am not familiar with this me-as-emphatic notion. Often the accusative and dative are collapsed into the objective case when speaking of English; I could have said that. But in any case I don't see anything particularly emphatic about the usage. --Trovatore (talk) 21:00, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It should be called a 'disjunctive' pronoun; it's certainly not in accusative case. 'Me' in this situation behaves exactly like the disjunctive French moi. Djbcjk (talk) 03:07, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the interesting link (well, search term, but whatever). For now I will continue to call them "accusative pronouns". --Trovatore (talk) 19:25, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Me, I recognise the disjunctive pronoun used (as here) in some English dialects, but that's different from the usage of "me" as a nominative pronoun: "me and ..." without the comma of disjunction. Dbfirs 21:50, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

When I took English class (in California), the term we learned for this was polite order. Enzingiyi (talk) 06:42, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I did not know the rule applied in other languages. It is a pity we don't have an article on it. Searching for it gives me articles about polite commands as well. Cambridge Dictionary doesn't mention it. Merriam Webster has a recommendation.

English personal pronouns doesn't mention it, but it could.

--Error (talk) 19:03, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I find it can get more complicated:

It is said that when some pleasant news is to be announced, the speaker uses this order: II person, III person and I person, and when some unpleasant news is to be announced, he uses this order: I person, II person and III person.

--Error (talk) 19:08, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]