In which I curmudgeon an adverb
Shouldn't "curmudgeon" be a verb as well as a noun, in the way that "bludgeon" is? I mean that it should in the "isn't it fun to pretend?" sense, nothing stronger. Some things one can't bludgeon to death one hopes to curmudgeon to death, such as the use of "like" as a device for quotation, in contexts such as "she was like, ...". Language use is an especially fertile field in which curmudgeons like to frolic about curmudgeoning things. Language Log provides a healthy dose of preventive medicine to those of us who are prone to fits of proscriptivist curmudgeonry. Nevertheless, we occasionally succumb.
A bit of usage I noticed in my very first set of student papers, and which I have seen to be relatively common since then, is the adverb "greatly" as a modifier especially with the verb "differ," as in "Mill and Rousseau differ greatly in their views about human nature." As happens when one takes note of something, I now find this adverb jarring in many contexts. I was jarred today, for example, when I read in the New Yorker "The aquaculture industry, which had disease problems, has greatly shrunk."
With "differ," greatly may be used to indicate differences along many dimensions or of more than one kind, or, if it is possible to plot the relative positions of the items contrasted on some sort of continuum or in an ordered sequence, to indicate the size of the distance between them. For example, 2 and 3 differ, but not as greatly as 2 and 1003, and the vectors (0, 0, 0) and (1, 0, 0) differ, but not as greatly as (0, 0, 0) and (1, 1, 1). I suppose that 2 and (0, 0, 0) differ pretty greatly too. Assuming that standards for what degree or type of difference count as great may be contextually determined, there are contexts, such as those exhibited above, in which it is true that the two things differ greatly. Also if my pants shrink from a size 29 waist to a size 28, they have shrunk, but not as greatly as if they had shrunk from a 29 to a 24. So it may be true, in some contexts, that my pants have greatly shrunk.
In the sentence from the New Yorker, the modifier indicates to the reader that the degree of shrinkage in the aquaculture industry is non-trivial, although any reader ought to be able to infer this even if the sentence read simply, "The aquaculture industry...has shrunk," on Gricean grounds (one assumes that the writer would not bother with irrelevant or misleading assertions of fact, so that the sentence would not be there if the shrinkage were trivial). Here the modifier strikes me as pointless, and I suppose that is at least part of what fuels my curmudgeonly feelings.
In the context that initially called this usage to my attention, I think there is a related reason why I found it jarring. In a student essay that is supposed to summarize what Mill and Rousseau believe about human nature and how they argue for their respective views, it is pointless to assert that their beliefs are different. The sentence "Mill and Rousseau differ in their views about human nature" already seems a violation of the pragmatics of writing a philosophy essay, especially when it is placed in a position (as it usually is) that makes it seem that it is a thesis that is going to be defended (presumably by pointing out that Mill believes one thing and Rousseau the contrary). If there is a thesis to be defended in such an essay, it should be something along the lines of "Mill believes blah blah blah, on such-and-such grounds," and the defense should be textual. Since the assertion of mere difference is itself pointless, it only adds insult to injury when the modifier is inserted, as if to drive home the (false) pragmatic point that this is a proposition worth asserting and defending or to give the (false) appearance that the claim is in fact controversial and thus substantive (since it is presumably harder to differ greatly than to differ simpliciter).
For me, the use of "differ greatly" and even just "greatly X" or "X greatly" has come to be annoying even when there is no corresponding pragmatic failure. In my curmudgeonry, I maintain that we should not use the adjective "greatly" at all. I doubt it is ever necessary. I may express the magnitude of the difference between 2 and 1003, for example, by saying that there is a big difference between the two, or that they differ by 1001. I may express the fact that my pants are a lot, rather than a little, smaller by saying that they shrunk a lot. No "greatly" required. Don't use it.
You will say, as I have admitted, that I am being a curmudgeon. You will also point out that it is a perfectly normal English word that lots of people use, that sentences containing it may have truth conditions I have acknowledged to be in order. Fine. You will conclude that I should just accept it, even if I try to avoid using it myself. On the last point, I beg to differ. Greatly.
P.S. While writing this post, I began to experience the odd phenomenon of no longer feeling sure that "differ" was a word of the English language. Perhaps you will be familiar with the feeling; to experience it, try repeating a word to yourself over and over, paying particular attention to its phonetic qualities. Eventually it will start to sound "weird." Anyway, the point is that, to reassure myself, as I do sometimes when this happens to me, I looked it up at dictionary.com. And what did I see in the very first entry? The following sample sentence.
A bit of usage I noticed in my very first set of student papers, and which I have seen to be relatively common since then, is the adverb "greatly" as a modifier especially with the verb "differ," as in "Mill and Rousseau differ greatly in their views about human nature." As happens when one takes note of something, I now find this adverb jarring in many contexts. I was jarred today, for example, when I read in the New Yorker "The aquaculture industry, which had disease problems, has greatly shrunk."
With "differ," greatly may be used to indicate differences along many dimensions or of more than one kind, or, if it is possible to plot the relative positions of the items contrasted on some sort of continuum or in an ordered sequence, to indicate the size of the distance between them. For example, 2 and 3 differ, but not as greatly as 2 and 1003, and the vectors (0, 0, 0) and (1, 0, 0) differ, but not as greatly as (0, 0, 0) and (1, 1, 1). I suppose that 2 and (0, 0, 0) differ pretty greatly too. Assuming that standards for what degree or type of difference count as great may be contextually determined, there are contexts, such as those exhibited above, in which it is true that the two things differ greatly. Also if my pants shrink from a size 29 waist to a size 28, they have shrunk, but not as greatly as if they had shrunk from a 29 to a 24. So it may be true, in some contexts, that my pants have greatly shrunk.
In the sentence from the New Yorker, the modifier indicates to the reader that the degree of shrinkage in the aquaculture industry is non-trivial, although any reader ought to be able to infer this even if the sentence read simply, "The aquaculture industry...has shrunk," on Gricean grounds (one assumes that the writer would not bother with irrelevant or misleading assertions of fact, so that the sentence would not be there if the shrinkage were trivial). Here the modifier strikes me as pointless, and I suppose that is at least part of what fuels my curmudgeonly feelings.
In the context that initially called this usage to my attention, I think there is a related reason why I found it jarring. In a student essay that is supposed to summarize what Mill and Rousseau believe about human nature and how they argue for their respective views, it is pointless to assert that their beliefs are different. The sentence "Mill and Rousseau differ in their views about human nature" already seems a violation of the pragmatics of writing a philosophy essay, especially when it is placed in a position (as it usually is) that makes it seem that it is a thesis that is going to be defended (presumably by pointing out that Mill believes one thing and Rousseau the contrary). If there is a thesis to be defended in such an essay, it should be something along the lines of "Mill believes blah blah blah, on such-and-such grounds," and the defense should be textual. Since the assertion of mere difference is itself pointless, it only adds insult to injury when the modifier is inserted, as if to drive home the (false) pragmatic point that this is a proposition worth asserting and defending or to give the (false) appearance that the claim is in fact controversial and thus substantive (since it is presumably harder to differ greatly than to differ simpliciter).
For me, the use of "differ greatly" and even just "greatly X" or "X greatly" has come to be annoying even when there is no corresponding pragmatic failure. In my curmudgeonry, I maintain that we should not use the adjective "greatly" at all. I doubt it is ever necessary. I may express the magnitude of the difference between 2 and 1003, for example, by saying that there is a big difference between the two, or that they differ by 1001. I may express the fact that my pants are a lot, rather than a little, smaller by saying that they shrunk a lot. No "greatly" required. Don't use it.
You will say, as I have admitted, that I am being a curmudgeon. You will also point out that it is a perfectly normal English word that lots of people use, that sentences containing it may have truth conditions I have acknowledged to be in order. Fine. You will conclude that I should just accept it, even if I try to avoid using it myself. On the last point, I beg to differ. Greatly.
P.S. While writing this post, I began to experience the odd phenomenon of no longer feeling sure that "differ" was a word of the English language. Perhaps you will be familiar with the feeling; to experience it, try repeating a word to yourself over and over, paying particular attention to its phonetic qualities. Eventually it will start to sound "weird." Anyway, the point is that, to reassure myself, as I do sometimes when this happens to me, I looked it up at dictionary.com. And what did I see in the very first entry? The following sample sentence.
The two writers differ greatly in their perceptions of the world.
posted by gregates at 1:44 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home