-----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Gilmore Sent: Monday, July 30, 2012 2:30 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Friday: What you've been waiting for! Build an 80 column punched card reader!
> Knuth recounts an anecdote, in his book 'Quiddities', of listening to learn > whether a speaker at a scientific meeting would use the word 'data' in the > singular or the plural. Its use in the singular was disqualifying. Knuth > listened no more. >Now it is certainly possible to disagree with Knuth, to judge that usage amply >justifies, even sanctifies, the use of 'data' in the singular. Knuth was >nevertheless a towering figure, one of the greatest logicians, philosophers, >and, yes, linguists of the 20th century; and his judgments were consequential. >There were and are circumstances in which ignoring the judgments of such figures would be foolhardy. It is possible to stigmatize them as élitist, but doing so does not make them inconsequential. I do know that "data" is the nominative and accusative plural form of the singular Latin noun "datum", and should require a plural form of any associated verb IN CORRECT LATIN, but I have heard "data is" my whole life when listening to conversational English (not Latin), find "data are" to sound strange, and have learned to accept both forms in other people's speech. I have also learned to ignore, as horrifying as it is to my ears, the British use of a plural verb with a singular subject, such as "Her Majesty's Government are inclined to..." or "the Australian swimming team are slightly ahead in the Olympic finals." I can understand their perfectionistic concern for their language, but I cannot understand their bloody inconsistency when they require "data are" and also "government are." Perhaps it all boils down to whether one feels that the subject (data, government, team, etc.) is singular or plural. I can comfortably imagine that "data" could be singular if one is thinking of all the data as a whole data set rather than all the millions of little individual datums. My concept of "water" subsumes the entire Atlantic Ocean as well as a single molecule of H2O. When I hear or read a subject-verb inconsistency, I experience a brief blip in the continuously parsing and proofreading microcircuity in my brain, I remember where the speaker or writer learned his English, and I move on in my mind to reconnect with the topic being discussed. If the eminent American (and not British) Knuth had continued listening after disqualifying a speaker, he might have learned a lot more about everything, including modesty and patience. Just as you recommended that one should learn when to use and when not to use one's own native dialect, I would suggest that one should also know when to require and when not to require a speaker to speak perfectly according to one's own parochial set of perceived grammar rules. There were and are circumstances in which ignoring the rest of a speech at a scientific meeting, after one's sense of grammatically required constructs is first outraged, might not be wise or inconsequential. I can imagine someone's shouting "Everybody get out! The building are on fire!" in a scientific meeting and all the elitists remain seated while the subliterate escape with their lives. Bill Fairchild Programmer Rocket Software 408 Chamberlain Park Lane . Franklin, TN 37069-2526 . USA t: +1.617.614.4503 . e: [email protected] . w: www.rocketsoftware.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
