Grammar is not just a pain in the ass; it’s the pole you grab to get your thoughts up on their feet and walking.”
Stephen King On Writing p. 121
I kind of like grammar. I like the structure of it, and I like analyzing it. It’s even interesting when I discover I’ve been doing something incorrectly for years. True, I have an English degree, and I teach English (and frequently I’m the grammar expert on staff), but occasionally there is still a surprise.
Last week, Diana Gabaldon posted a selection of her latest work in progress (My Own Heart’s Blood, book 8 in the Outlander series) which included the sentence, “I saw the seriousness that underlay the laughter…” I had to study that for a while.
Underlay- a noun- is the padding that goes beneath carpet. The form of the word we most frequently use is the adjective ‘underlying.’ So, whence cometh ‘that underlay?’ At first glance, I thought it should be ‘that underlaid the laughter,’ but Diana has corrected my grammar before, so I pondered.
Following the lay, laid, laid vs lie, lay, lain model, I realised the verb is to underlie, and therefore the simple past tense must be “Yesterday he underlay the principle with a moral lesson,” and that “Previously he had underlain the principle with moral lesson, until he didn’t any more.” It still doesn’t sound right, but frequently correct grammar doesn’t.
Good thing someone is keeping an eye on us, and providing an excellent grammatical role model.
More importantly, thank heavens for brilliant editors!
How about you? Have you had any grammatical epiphanies lately?
Shawn L. Bird 
Drive how? July 13, 2011
Tags: adverbs, drive slow, drive slowly, grammar, postaday2011
Language is a mutable thing. I remember being taught that as a kid. I know it’s true. In the past 20 years, I have watched with interest as adverbs have disappeared. When I started teaching English, kids had no trouble identifying adverbs. They were easy to spot, since most of them ended in -ly. We’d find the verb of the sentence and ask how? He walks. How? Joyfully! Quickly! Sadly! Carefully! Morosely!
Now kids struggle to find the adverb because the easy identifier has vanished. When people speak these days, they often use adjectives in the place of adverbs. How does he walk? Quick. Sad. Morose. Careful. Joyful. It is confusing for kids to learn the ‘correct’ option versus the common usage. It does not help that the government does it, too.
Ever seen this sign? DRIVE SLOW!
ARGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!
Every time I see it I re-state it correctly: DRIVE SLOWLY!!!
Seriously, how expensive would it have been to add those two letters and make it a correct sentence? Wasn’t there anyone at the Public Works Yard who knew correct grammar usage?
>>sigh<<
We can’t fight the tide. Language changes. It is the essential nature of living languages that they grow and alter. It’s just really hard on the English teachers.
(and don’t get me started on ‘their’ being used as a gender neutral singular pronoun instead of a plural!)
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