A short article (haha, puns)

This is a replica of a sign that was tacked to the counter of a Take-Away shop near Ferny Creek. Please excuse the fact that the photo I have provided is not the original; I have opted for a recreation to save myself the awkward situation of attempting to nonchalantly whip out my Samsung Galaxy to capture the mistakes in this well-intention sign, unscathed.

The error in this prose is not overly berating or offensive and is relatively inconsequential. It seems that the author has utilised the wrong article (technically, it's the wrong quantifier, but more on that later) preceding the subsequent nouns of "complaints, compliments or suggestions". Count nouns such as these can form plurals, as they have in this example, but when they are in their singular forms they take the indefinite article 'a' ('an' is used when the subsequent nouns begins with a phonetic vowel). This article implies that its noun is not identifiable to the listener/reader and this can be attributed to the fact that the speaker/author is making a general statement, making referencing to something for the first time or the exact identity of the thing is superfluous and/or hypothetical. In this example, the author has failed to replace the indefinite article 'a' with 'any' in order to ensure correct syntactical correspondence and consistency between the "article" and the plural count nouns.

However, 'any' is not actually the plural indefinite article, in fact one does not actually exist in the English language. Fear not, while 'any' is not technically an article, it can certainly act as one (as in this context.). 'Any', is actually a type of determinant which denotes an imprecise quantity. In English there are quantifiers of large quantities, quantifiers of small quantities and neutral quantifiers. "Any", as well as "some" is of the latter type. In this context, the neutral quantifier 'any' acts as the plural indefinite article, thus rendering the count nouns "compliments", "complaints" and "suggestions".

This kind of tiny mistake is not semantically detrimental to the text, nor does it interfere with its coherence. However, it is one that will render the author as some degree of ignorant (for lack of a better, less pejorative word :( ) in the eyes of the beholder, because it is simply incorrect use of the English Language, and not an error that a native speaker is likely to make. There is no perpetuable grey area or possible debate that could stem from that. This purported inkling of ignorance, or unfamiliarity with the language, facilitates the generation of assumptions on the author's linguistic skills and begs the question of whether or not are they someone who has learnt English as a second language.

For an indivudual who's mother tongue is English, knowing how and when to correctly utilise such tiny but crucially vital fragments of syntax is relatively instinctual. From the moment when children begin to acquire language, such skills start to become autonomous and habitual as a result of constantly being immersed in the language. Not to mention, the inherent, irrepressible human need to communicate wants, desires, urgencies.. what have you, to other people necessitates such quick and efficient language acquisition  A child learning to speak does not obtain their language skills from pouring over text books and memorising complex syntactical structures and tenses.

Unfortunately, it is not the same for those who, like me, are attempting to learn a second language. Painstaking grammatical fragments such as definite and indefinite articles are often the cause for immense frustration, at least they certainly are for me, anyway. 

Luckily, for my local Take-Away shop, I'm a decent human being, and not the type who's tightly wound, upity, supremacist notions of prescriptivism, language correctness and perpetual rigid conformity to The Standard interfere with how I perceive and consequently treat other people. 

Writing this made me hungry

We were given an extract from our textbook called "Chocolat" to analyse in class.

Though this text is presented to the reader as a written piece of prose, there are many features which correlate strongly with a spoken mode of English. There is a lack of subordination and thus syntactical sophistication. Most clauses are linked via coordinating conjunctions such as “and”. In several instances, where a complex sentence could potentially be formed by utilising a subordinating conjunction, the reader has instead punctuated with a full stop; thus forming smaller simple sentences instead. For example; “straining to hear any signs of activity from the floor above. There are none”. This style is distinctive of spoken language, where discourse is not pre-mediated, lacks layers of editorial intervention and is often spontaneous. This prose has a lessened formality which can be attributed to its flippant subject matter, large nominal and adverbial groups, and to the fact that this text appears to be an individual's inner monologue (though it later becomes a semi-dialogue). From this perspective, it is a matter of logic; even for the supremely prescriptive, it would be superfluously unnecessary to maintain a frozen degree of formality in one's own mind.

The syntactical parallelism of the utterances which constitute lines 13, 17 and 19 and their unwavering repetitiveness renders the “Try me, test me, taste me” as a quasi-mantra underlying the prose like a beat. The speaker even describes it as a “ song”. Informal language is often ameliorated to be described as a 'people's poetry'. This euphemism is inspired by the creative linguistic choices people often make particularly in spoken language such as this text. The prose is laden with flamboyant and highly imaginative figurative language and adverbial and nominal groups. These elements enable the text to omit a poetic vibe.

The image in the bottle right hand corner coupled with the text provides an element of realism. The reader becomes so entangled in the speaker's adjective-rich, euphemistic and emotive language that it is almost humorous to realise that they have been describing a chocolate cake as though it was the cream-laden reincarnation of some deity.

The syntactical divergence of lines 13, 17 and 19 render them more striking and outspoken to the audience. The recurrence of these 3 imperative clauses functions to further assert their importance within the text and their ongoing affect on the individual, both in their structure and particular verb use. Generally speaking, due to the omission of the singular (or plural) 2^nd person pronoun and subsequent present verb conjugation; imperative sentences connote a greater sense of urgency than declaratives or exclamatives as they resemble a command or instruction. It is apparent that these clauses personify the cake as an object capable of persuasion, at least in the mind of the individual. This notion is obviously an element of fiction incorporated into the next which subsequently connotes a sense of playfulness to the overall text.

From lines 13 to 20, the prose resembles spoken conversation as there is some turn taking between the speaker and the persuasive voice, that we have assumed as belonging to the cake. Lines 13, 17 and 19 embody a fictional construct (a talking cake) born from a chocolate-lust driven mind and that is ultimately an element of the same internal monologue as the rest of the prose. Line 20 concludes the prose with a rhetorical question which cuts off the final syllable of line 19 (as indicated by the hyphen). The urgency and eagerness of the speaker as implied by the interruption in conjunction with their inability to perceive any consequences for their actions (“no one would be any the wiser”) encourages the reader to ascertain that at this point the speaker is on the precipice of succumbing to the cake's beckoning. This lingering notion of finality contributes to the coherence of the hybrid poetic/narrative nature of the text.

Taking orders from a plaque

This is a plaque that I bought my mum for Christmas.

This text is constituted by a series of imperative clauses. Imperative sentence types have distinctive syntactical structure and are utilised much less frequently than declaratives or even interrogatives. They are characterised by an omission of a subject pronoun preceding the verb, therefore it is essential that the subject of the verb is either aforementioned or understood by the context (via eye contact or other paralinguistic features of spoken language). Generally speaking, the conjugation of the imperative verb is that of the present tense 2^nd person singular. Therefore, in this written context, the reader is able to ascertain that they are the subject. The omission of the subject pronoun and subsequent verb – a part of speech which functions to denote an action of some variant - creates a sense of urgency within the clause. In actuality one needs not to look much further than the etymology of the word ‘imperative’ itself to obtain this notion. (think of the word imperial, meaning of or relating to an empire). Aesthetically speaking, the vertical arrangement of the text enhances the list-like and commanding nature connoted by the utilisation of the imperatives, but the actual jargon constituting these clauses counteracts this somewhat. It would be bizarre to have a military lieutenant screaming at you to “LIVE LIKE HEAVEN ON EARTH” as they would when running a drill. In this situation, the context and register seeks to lessen the harshness of these imperatives from obligatory commands to the good natured advice of a loving friend or family member.

The first verb of each of the imperatives has been formatted to be considerably larger than the subsequent clauses below them and this functions to connote to the audience that these initial verbs themselves form the crux of the text.

“Dance as if no one is watching” and “sing as if no one can hear” are imperative verbs each followed by a subordinate or dependent clause which commence with the subordinating conjunction “as if”. In the first, second, third, sixth, seventh and eight lines, the preposition “like” functions as a subordinating conjunction by establishing the relationship between the dependent clause and the verb. Technically speaking, or rather, prescriptively speaking, it would be considered more syntactically sophisticated to utilise “as though” or “as if” instead of “like”. “Till”, utilised in the ninth line is also a subordinating conjunction. The ninth line is an example of a phrase that could be regarded as somewhat idiomatic and should definitely be taken non-literally.

This text achieves cohesiveness through the perpetual pleasantness of the jargon constituting the imperatives. As well as through the syntactical parallelism existing in the monosyllabic nature of the initial verbs in each line followed by an elaboratry subordinate clause.

The tenth line is somewhat of an oddity within this text is it differs from the rest of the imperatives in its syllabics and also in the lack of a subsequent dependent clause. Its syntactical divergence from the previous nine lines of the text enables it to stand out and aids in facilitating a notion of finality to the text.