Balderdash!

"Consumes."

Toby Mindless Windlass-Hyphen, FRGS

I agree with Carol: the biggest problem is not the consume/consumes issue. I went and looked at your crib, Andrew, which I neglected to do before because I was focusing solely on the question you had raised about "consumes".

Your Crib:
Crying with suffering and sighing with anguish [Painful weeping and anguished sighs] destroy my heart whenever I find myself alone, such that it would displease/bother/be insupportable to anyone who heard me:

Your Translation as it stands now:
To sigh my anguish and to cry my ache
consume my heart whenever I abscond,
such that would pierce the one who overheard.

I have to say, there's a lot of strange stuff there. If it had been just one strange thing, maybe it wouldn't matter so much.

Really? I don't think most users of a language are ever very troubled by its fluidity too much. I suppose it poses certain challenges in specialized areas of literate discourse, but for the most part speakers seem to work out what they mean to say to each other one way or another.

In a language of multiple dialects with incredibly complex patterns of code-switching and whatnot, it doesn't seem problematic to me to think of more than one acceptable standard of usage, sometimes based on context or register or "levels," as you use the term, sometimes based on dialect.

But even within a given dialect, say "standard dialect," there is fluidity, transition, controversy. Spitting infinitives seems like an interesting place to look for this right now. Rules and usage about it are changing even as we speak, so to...well...speak. I just mean to say that fluidity means fluidity, not discrete leaps, and transitional periods of usage occur without really seeming to cause much anxiety for most speakers.

I get the feeling Andrew is carefully considering his choices. Meanwhile, allowing "does it sound good" to be a criterion in that decision making process doesn't seem to lesson the degree of care involved.

Again, who said anything about "a willy-nilly, haphazard, by-guess-and-by-gosh process?" You don't consider "how things sound" when you write poems? The word poet means maker, and that is what poets and artists do. they makes things. Sometimes they make things that weren't even there before they made them. Writers and poets coin phrases, invent neologisms, and stretch usage all the time. No need to worry about it, if they go too far, no one will understand what they are saying, and they will have little impact.

David R.

David:

I have no argument with your remarks. You present a lot of good points and ideas. Perhaps I wasn't as clear as I could have been in some of the points I was making. For example, when I said that the fluid and changing nature of language usage may be troubling for some people at times, I was thinking largely of my experiences teaching high school English.

I'll give a quick example concerning subject/pronoun agreement. According to the traditional rules of grammar, the following sentence is incorrect: Someone left their notebook in the room. Someone is singular, so the plural pronoun their is considered ungrammatical, since it doesn't agree in number with the singular antecedent. The sentence should read: Someone left his notebook in the room. In recent years, of course, it's become common and even preferable to say Someone left his or her notebook in the room. And it seems that the usage Someone left their notebook in the room is, in fact, becoming standard and accepted usage. I have no problem with this, for it's the way language works, evolves and changes. This is what I was protesting when I said the argument of "sounds right" is not dependable. Someone left their notebook sounds correct to many people, and no doubt it will become acceptable usage, if it hasn't already, but that has not always been the case. That's the point I was trying to make when I used the I've drank example. I wish I had a dollar for every former student who thought I've drank sounded better than I've drunk. And maybe I've drank will evolve into accepted and standard usage, but as of now it isn't. I think your example of split infinitives is another good example of this same point.

I'm not a straightjacket grammarian. I like the fact that writers pull and stretch and create and experiment with the language. I think the sound of lines and sentences is of paramount importance in good writing. But that's not what I was referring to when I criticized the "it sounds right" point of view. I was talking about very specific points of grammar and usage.

Your commentary made for good reading.

Regards,

Richard

Richard,

Kind of funny how we've ended up like this this past couple of days. Anyway, I don't suppose I have much argument with you last post. I'll I ever meant to say was that nobody here is suggesting Andrew go with "consumify" or "consumnablize" or something. I just think if there is even a weak argument to support the better sounding usage, the poet should feel free to go with it, if he chooses. Or not.

David R.