{"id":840,"date":"2025-05-21T11:19:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T11:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepointenglish.com\/?p=840"},"modified":"2025-05-21T11:19:13","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T11:19:13","slug":"what-means-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepointenglish.com\/?p=840","title":{"rendered":"What means this?<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When is an error not strictly so?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Laurie James Bines<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This question, in some form or another, gets asked in my classroom at least once a term. It\u2019s a classic error that should be quickly corrected, but secretly, it is also one of my favourite things to hear as a teacher, for two reasons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. While it is<\/strong> unorthodox<\/em> (I try to be very careful with the word wrong<\/em>, even if most would use it here), \u201cWhat means this\u201d<\/em> demonstrates application of modular logic; the student has observed, consciously or not, that the interrogative<\/em> construction in English places the verb<\/em> before<\/strong> the subject<\/em>. They are constructing fresh language! Sure, what they don\u2019t know (or have nervously forgotten while speaking a foreign tongue at full speed) is that we only do this with a very exclusive (and poorly-defined) subset of verbs, but this is a knowledge<\/strong> problem<\/strong> – easily solved. At the end of the day, I believe that a student with good logic and poor knowledge has much greater prospects than another with the inverse attributes.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
    1. \u201cWhat means this?\u201d<\/em> is also the title, and recurring motif, of my favourite poem, by Tudor-era genius Thomas Wyatt.This is precisely why I avoid the word \u2018wrong\u2019<\/em>. How can I reconcile these two contradictory truths: that this is both terrible<\/em> and<\/strong> brilliant<\/em> English? <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      Indeed, a great many of English\u2019s most typical mistakes from foreign speakers can actually be characterised as something having gone out of fashion<\/em>, rather than an alien anomaly; it\u2019s not that the thing isn\u2019t correct<\/em>, but that it was correct once<\/em>. What\u2019s the Occam\u2019s Razor<\/em> explanation for this particular case? \u201cWhat means this?\u201d <\/em>Could it be that the auxiliary verbs<\/em> were once a broader group that previously included now-regular verbs like \u2018Mean\u2019<\/em>? Or perhaps it was a completely irrelevant classification and we simply used to place the first verb in a clause before the subject to create interrogatives, regardless of form? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Does it really matter? After all, whatever archaic auxiliarity-logic that we observe at play in \u201cWhat means this?\u201d<\/em> survives intact in analogous phrases such as \u201cHow dare you?\u201d<\/em> – a technically-identical construction that no modern English speaker would ever have an issue with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There is concrete precedent for all kinds of classic \u201cmistakes\u201d, if you look back far enough:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      DOUBLE (or even TRIPLE) NEGATIVES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \u201cThou hast spoken no word all this while, <\/em>nor<\/em><\/strong> understood <\/em>none<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>neither<\/em><\/strong>, sir.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      -William Shakespeare, Love\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      SUBJECT OBJECT VERB<\/strong> CONSTRUCTIONS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \u201cBy mountains where King Arthur dreams, By Penmaen Mawr defiant, <\/em>Llareggub Hill a molehill seems<\/em><\/strong>, A pygmy to a giant.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      -Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      UNORTHODOX ADVERBIAL SYNTAX<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \u201cThat coat <\/em>nothing becomes you<\/em><\/strong>, Cromwell.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      -Hilary Mantel, Bring Up The Bodies<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      All of this serves not to reveal a particular truth, but to pose a question: as language learners ourselves, when we inevitably make a mistake – say something wrong<\/em> – is it of greater comfort<\/strong>, or utility<\/strong>, to us, to be told that the nature of our error was not<\/em> that it was incorrect<\/em>, but simply that what we said was unfashionable, or unorthodox<\/em>, that we were, perhaps, a couple of centuries late in saying it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      When is an error not strictly so? by Laurie James Bines This question, in some form or another, gets asked in my classroom at least once a term. It\u2019s a classic error that should be quickly corrected, but secretly, it is also one of my favourite things to hear as a teacher, for two reasons: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":841,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepointenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepointenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepointenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepointenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepointenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=840"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepointenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":842,"href":"https:\/\/thepointenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions\/842"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepointenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepointenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepointenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepointenglish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}