Linguistic Pet Peeves

I hate comma overuse. I blame leigons of English teachers who said "don't worry about the comma rules; just put a comma where you'd naturally pause."Lame!

Why? You can do that in English - retask words just by shuffling them around in sentences. Heck, I did it just now.

The only time you use "an" is to avoid glottal stops. Since there would be no glottal stops in the h-words you've chosen, a is the proper use.On the other hand, the h in "herb" is silent, so the proper use is "an herb."

Verb tense. Actually, we're looking at two different main verbs in these phrases. The main verb in the first is "has"; in the second, the main verb is "does."You can see that, in fact, they're in the same tense, and the plurality rule does hold. You're just getting hung up on the fact that a verb form of "have" is in both sentences; it's not, however, the main verb in both sentences.But that is a tricky point. That one bugged me all night until I figured it out in the shower.

These are your pet peeves?Who the hell do you hang out with? The Mighty Thor?

Are you sure it's subjunctive mood? That was my first thought as well, but I couldn't see that this was a subjunctive situation, particularly since it's an interrogative and not a counterfactual/conditional statement:

quote:

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The subjunctive mood is used to express counterfactual (or conditional) statements, and is often found in if-then statements, and certain formulaic expressions. It is typically marked in the present tense by the auxiliary "were" plus the continuous aspect () form of the verb.

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"Does God have" is the same kind of verb phrase as "God does have"; when you contrast "God has" and "God does have", it becomes pretty obvious that we're dealing with declarative mood in both cases, and that the only difference is the main verbs - "Does" in the first, and "has" in the second. After all, you could just as easily say "Has God free will?"If we were in the subjunctive mood, it seems to me that the phrase would be "had God free will", and it would be a dependant clause. Subjunctive, according to the Wiki, uses the continuous form, not the infinitive. The presence of the infinitive "have" in Lam's second phrase implies, to me, that it is an auxillary verb to the main verb "does."You're free to disagree, I guess. Am I all turned around on subjunctive mood? It's Wiki's fault.

My sandwich place goes it one step further: "French Dip with au jus sauce for dipping."I guess they want to make absolutely sure you get your sauce...

Wait till he gets hammered!Get it? Hammered! Dan Caroll, your A$$ is 0wz0rd!This message has been edited by crashfrog, 10-19-2004 11:36 AM

Verbs have mood; in English, there are four verb moods.Subjunctive is when something would have happened, if something else had happened."Had I known you were going to the store, I would have given you the shopping list."Compared to the conditional: "If you are going to the store, I'll give you the shopping list." Conditional is when something will happen if something else happens.Then, there's the imparitive: "Go to the store." And the declaritive is the simplest of all, it's really just the default mood, and is almost always in the active voice: "Lam goes to the store."

None of the grammar sources I'm using suggest that there is such a thing as "emphatic mood", in any Indo-European language. English only has four moods, declaritive, imperative, conditional, and subjunctive. Ok, but the subjunctive mood uses the continuous form, not the infinitive form. No, I meant declarative. Both of those statements make simple declarations of what is true; they just do so with two different main verbs.But I guess some sources call that "indicative." Mine refer to it as "declarative", and I think that makes a bit more sense. Fair enough:
English grammar - WikipediaWell, it wouldn't be the first time that the Wikipedia wasn't quite right. Mine says this:

quote:

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The subjunctive mood is used to express counterfactual (or conditional) statements, and is often found in if-then statements, and certain formulaic expressions. It is typically marked in the present tense by the auxiliary "were" plus the continuous aspect () form of the verb.

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I'm not entirely certain that matters. I may be wrong, and I'm open to correction if you can cite your source, but I understood that the main verb was the verb that was inflected to match plurality of subject, etc. It has nothing to do with having or doing.This is a sticky wicket, though, for sure. But I'm not really convinced you're not making up moods as you go along. Can you cite a source for your purported "emphatic mood"? None of the grammatical sources I've been reading give any hint of such a thing.

Yes, I did. The funny thing about that list is that it doesn't include any mention of a purported "emphatic mood." Yes. Four of them: declarative, imperative, conditional, and subjunctive. Verb negation in English is not a function of mood; it's a function of the adverb "not." There are only four main verb moods in English.I don't see any reason to continue discussing the subjunctive mood, as we've both agreed that it doesn't apply here, so I'm going to skip over your remarks on that subject. So, emphatic is a tense? Or is it a mood? Oh, I guess it's a tense after all.I'll agree that this is emphatic tense. That was my second thought, but I couldn't find support for it anywhere. You seem to have done so.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 10-25-2004 03:37 PM

Rather, if I can't find a source for it, I need more than your say so.And if you're going to quote a Wikipedia list to support your point, shouldn't the list actually contain what you say it contains? Just a thought. Fair enough. You didn't really portray that level of uncertainty in your post, however.I'm content with the ambiguity. Grammars are always descriptive, not perscriptive. "Moods" and "tenses" don't really exist; they're just models we use to describe phenomena in language.

Imperative mood. The subject "you" is implied.

No, just stupid.

If you wanted to go to the park, or were going anyway, then you "bring Junior." If you don't want to go to the park, or have no reason to go except to convey Junior there, then you "take Junior." Seems to me that's how it works, anyway. That's certainly the connotation those phrases have to me.