When a linguist writes ungrammatically.

I must make it clear that I generally do not care much about grammar and correctness. People who know me well will readily testify that such 'correctness' and I are worlds apart and  never the twain shall meet but when a teacher of linguistics at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) writes an article in the local newspaper about Singlish, you will doubtless accept that I can't be faulted if I expect her to write grammatical sentences which are clear and unambiguous. That is the least anyone should expect of a teacher of linguistics.

When a friend on Facebook referred me to an article in the Straits Times written by one Tan Ying Ying,  Associate Professor of Linguistics at NTU, I read it immediately because I could see that unlike Singlish bashers (and there are many, particularly language ignoramuses such as that disgraceful Speak Good English Movement), she accorded some respect to Singlish and regarded Singlish as a colloquial form of a Singaporean language and I totally agree with her there. But I was disappointed to see that her article did not do justice to the weighty subject of her discussion because it was fraught with errors of all kinds, some of which I am prepared to attribute to an oversight on her part but others of which I cannot help but suspect to be errors which are more serious than mere carelessness.

You may read her full article which was published in the Straits Times on 19 May 2019 by clicking here.

The first sentence in her article was enough to warn me of what more I could expect.  This is what she wrote:

The narratives surrounding Singlish has dominated both the public and academic imagination. 

I am prepared to say that this ridiculous error is due to an oversight. But did she not check what she had written before sending it to the Straits Times? This is not her personal blog; it's an article that relates to her work as a linguist and it's published in the Straits Times. That's her first sentence that greets her readers.

Tan's second sentence is no better. It's the one shaded in blue below:

I may be wrong but I firmly believe that we are now no longer dealing with inadvertent mistakes. As the next error in Tan's article will show even more clearly, this error may indicate some problem the writer has with auxiliary verbs in English. This is a common enough error in Singapore. I have dealt with this same error in my other blog posts and if you are interested in reading them, a link at the bottom of this article will bring you to a summary of the blog posts I have written on this subject and various other language matters.

Any reader is sure to be misled by that sentence and will misunderstand totally Tan's meaning until he continues to read the two subsequent sentences which make the meaning clear. It will then become clear to the reader that what Tan should have written is the simple present:

Singlish has her share of supporters and detractors.

Let us now look at the next error which stems again from an imperfect understanding of the auxiliary verb or more specifically the perfective.

Immediately preceding this excerpt, the writer explains that in the 1960s and 1970s, linguists held a particular view which she doesn't agree with. She then says that current scholarship dismisses such a view as outdated and erroneous.

But because of her incorrect use of the perfective coupled with 'then' instead of the correct simple present, the reader is again misled into thinking that she is talking about the old view held by linguists in the 1960s and 1970s. But because of the rule of adverbial incompatibility (if I may use the term which I think is formulated by Sir Randolph Quirk), I naturally thought the writer meant to use the simple past. But as I read on, it became clear to me that what the writer meant was the simple present.

I have no problem with writers making grammatical errors but when the errors are so serious as to throw the reader off the intended meaning of the writer, the reader is justifiably irritated.

One small point which I am loath to bring up pertains more to style than grammar. I don't like ill-advised personification and you may say that is a personal taste and I will agree with you that my taste is not important here. But Sir Ernest Gowers feels the same way and he quotes Fowler with approval when he writes that such use is common 'to those who make futile attempts at decoration'.  Both Gowers and Fowler are particularly scathing when there is vacillation in its use. If Tan must use personification, she should at least be consistent. This is one small point I would not have brought up if Tan were not a linguist. I expect linguists to know better.


For a list of all articles I have written in this blog on language, especially, the outrageous errors of the notorious Speak Good English Movement, please click here.