Are these faults of collocation? I wish he had given specific references to check the usages in context. An accepted collocation may be violated in a figurative usage. Still to eradicate solace seems fairly absurd. No defence can be found for it. Further anything that oozes does so profusely, not aplenty.
He has also sought my ‘learned comments’ on: discuss about, cope up with, a lot more easier; and the use of the indefinite article before unique, youth, etc.
Discuss about (and the rest) are among the sturdy indefensibles of Indian English. No amount of inveighing against them can have any effect on IE speakers who have got these forms. They are not limited to reports filed by correspondents from mofussil areas. Even national newspapers of the highest standing and well-known TV channels aren’t free from them. Just this morning I found discuss about in a news flash on the Times Now channel.
As teachers of English what do we do? Do we accept these (and such other forms) as part of standard Indian English or continue to point out that they are mistakes and teach the correct forms? In the absence of specific guidance the learner naturally slips into these wrong usages. The noun discussion takes a preposition. We had a discussion on oil prices. That is because the two nouns: discussion and oil prices have to be connected. But it is not so in the case of a verb. Discuss is a transitive verb and takes a direct object, with no intervening preposition.
The spelling of a word may lead to an incorrect use of the indefinite article in such cases as MP, unique. It is not realised that MP, in speech, begins with a vowel sound (em) and that unique begins with a consonant sound (the first sound is as in youth).
These may look like minute points of detail. But the child goes through many years of schooling. There is ample time to go through all this and much more. Only there should be the will to do the job properly and steps taken to help the teacher do the job properly. It is too much to expect a child to learn a foreign language properly in a situation where the child has no access to the language being learnt as spoken by native speakers. The English Reader cannot provide the full range of structures in the language being learnt. It is only grammar that can do so with its rules and exceptions. Indeed it is a compendium of the language and presents facts about the language which even the most extensive reading may not make available. I am not suggesting that teaching grammar will solve all problems (of the type we are examining here). What I am suggesting is that in the absence of a systematic teaching of grammar no better mastery of the language can be expected than what we find today.
2. Commenting on nullipara (EFU 11-10-2007) Mr Puttaraju writes: ‘The sentence But she remained a nullipara for a decade looks absurd as the word is to be used to mean and refer to a woman who has never borne a viable child in her life.’
Mr Puttaraju goes on to give some more related words: primipara (has given birth to one child), secundipara (two children), tertipara (three children), etc. Primigravida means ‘a woman pregnant for the first time,’
Mr Puttaraju is careful to point out that these are terms used by doctors. It follows that a layman would be ill-advised to use them in ordinary speech and writing.
3. Hyphens, it seems, are well on the way out. The new (2007) now lists many words without a hyphen which, till yesterday, were being hyphenated. Among these are leapfrog, bumblebee, crybaby, pigeonhole and upmarket.
Another interesting development is this: many words are now spelt as two separate words without a hyphen. Among these are: pot belly, test tube, fig leaf, fire drill, ice cream. I thank Devaraj Rao for having brought this to my notice.
The hyphen was always, in most cases, an intermediate stage, a halfway house. The hyphenated word would end up either as a single word or remain separated without a dash. Very few retained their intruding symbol of separation. The words cited above - fig leaf, fire drill, etc. - which were hyphenated in the COD (1990) had already lost their hyphens by 1998. They appear as two separate words in the New Oxford Dictionary of English (NODOE). Anyway it is good news that more and more words are losing their hyphen.
4. Prof Sajjan is not quite happy with my comments on the phrase in committee (EFU Aug. 30, 2007). ‘I can’t disabuse my mind of the use of the definite article in this context’ he says. ‘My Indian way of thinking suggested that we say ‘at a committee meeting’; hence ‘the matter did come up for discussion at the last committee meeting’.
As the ALD points out ‘This was discussed in committee, i.e. by the committee’. There is a subtle difference between the two phrases. ‘By the committee’ has reference to a particular committee. The meeting is specific and particular. But ‘in committee’ is generic. The meaning is, roughly, ‘a discussion as would be held (and have the authority of being looked at) by a committee.’ Cf. The matter was discussed in committee, not a coffee bar.
The writer can be contacted at ksyadurajan@yahoo.com
