British subjects

Hot on the heels of HeadsUp’s discovery of a 1940s style guide covering flying verbs, which advises against their  use “if the verb might be understood to be in the imperative mode”, here’s a good example of an imperative and a flying verb side by side:

Seeing them in close proximity, you realise how easy it is to distinguish one form from the other when that golden rule is followed: “Hid” (clearly implied subject: third person, unknown) against “Go” (clearly implied subject: you). There is none of the confusion caused when, for example, POLICE ARREST DANGER MAN becomes ARREST DANGER MAN.

Nonetheless, it’s still quite ambitious: I’ve never before seen a flying verb headline introduce a second, explicit, subject (“we”) before clarifying who the implied one is (“him”). And the most striking thing of all is that this appeared on the BBC news website: only the second flying verb I have ever encountered in a British-English publication. The article headline itself contains an explicit subject, so the distinctively transatlantic omission on the homepage is presumably only for space reasons. But still, if the classic British existential headline* is now starting to appear in the US, as HeadsUp has observed, perhaps a full-scale cultural exchange is under way?

 

*Those starting FURY AS… , OUTRAGE AS… , JOY AS… , etc

Flying on holiday

While Ten Minutes Past Deadline is on its short break, your attention is drawn to this fantastic discovery from Fred at HeadsUp – a US newspaper manual from the 1940s that lays down chapter and verse on the use of the flying verb (sorry, “implied subject”), including warning about the risks of their being misread as imperatives, and even has advice to offer about claim quotes. Says well worth a close read. 

The France connection

Why is it the “Vietnam war” and the “Iraq war”, but not the “Korea war”? We always say “Korean” – the adjective, not the noun. The spoons we use in the kitchen are plastic (noun), metal (noun) or wooden (adjective). And we jokingly refer to “man flu” and “girl talk”, but, for some reason, “woman’s work”.

The use of nouns instead of adjectives – what are called “attributive nouns” – is such a common and convenient part of the language that we hardly realise we’re doing it.  Sometimes it happens because there is no suitable adjective to use: but often we do it even when there is, as Mignon Fogarty, the Grammar Girl, explains:

Not all nouns have related adjectives. “Cotton” and “fleece,” for example, are your only choices for describing a cotton shirt and fleece jacket. But when there is a related adjective you get to choose. For example, since “wool,” and “silk” have the adjective forms “woolen” and “silken,” you get to choose between the attributive noun and adjective. You can wear a silken scarf with your woolen sweater, or you can wear a silk scarf with your wool sweater. Both ways of saying it are correct.

There is no particular rhyme or reason to this: as Fogarty says, “it’s more about what sounds right to you than any logical choice”. Because English can tolerate nouns as adjectives, it appears that one phrase simply becomes preferred over another and hardens into idiom. It’s not grammatically incorrect to call it the “Iraqi war”: we just don’t. Attributive nouns are not chosen by rule, but by ear: that makes it hard to set out guidelines for their use, but also easy to hear when something’s wrong.

As it does in this paragraph, spotted by regular reader Jeff:

The “France president”?

Most reporters and editors are relaxed about nouns as adjectives, but there is one part of a newspaper where they have special significance: the sport section. In international football, for example, a careful distinction is always made between (say) a “French striker” and ” a “France striker”. The former is a forward of undetermined gifts who happens to be French; the latter is a forward who is not only French, but has been picked for the national team and played for France. The choice of the noun rather than the adjective is deliberate: it is a shorthand way of signalling the level of a player’s talent.

Although this article about the Rugby World Cup is largely a politics story, it’s written by the sports desk. And so, I suspect, the sports desk has thought: Macron’s not just a president who happens to be French; he’s the president of his country, a full international. But of course there are no club-level presidents in politics, and no presidents (pace the birthers) whose nationality differs from their country of office; so there is no distinction to be made here by way of an attributive noun. In politics, rather than in sport, they just sound wrong.

And with that, thanks to the beneficence of the Tribune’s management and the negotiating power of its highly unionised workforce, Ten Minutes Past Deadline is off for a brief sabbatical! Normal blogging service will resume at the end of the month, on what no doubt will be a wintry autumn day. (See: you can even use adjectives and attributive nouns together.)