[英英] The New Fowler's Modern English Usage (3rd ed)

        Fowler's Modern English Usage - Fowler, Henry Watson.mobi         MOBI File        2266871        ftp        ftp        rw-r--r--        Nov 06 2013       
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February 16, 1997

Running Afoul of Fowler

BOOKEND / By PATRICIA T. O'CONNER

Grammar, Henry Fowler wrote in 1926 in his ''Dictionary of Modern English Usage,'' is ''a poor despised branch of learning.'' Seventy years later, it is hard to argue that grammar -- at least Fowler's kind of grammar -- fares any better. His work has long been written off by academic linguists, who are more concerned with how language is used than with how it should be used. In the latest assault, Fowler is all but expunged from his own book.
Oxford University Press, which brought out the original ''Dictionary of Modern English Usage'' and a gentle updating by Sir Ernest Gowers in 1965, recently published ''The New Fowler's Modern English Usage: Third Edition,'' edited by the eminent lexicographer and linguist Robert W. Burchfield. The new version bears little resemblance to the original, but has no scruples about appropriating its reputation as ''the acknowledged authority on English usage'' (to quote the jacket). When Fowler's opinions appear at all, they're cited (often dismissively) in the third person and in quotation marks. Oxford says it has decided to keep the second edition in print indefinitely, so anyone shopping for a ''Fowler'' should compare the two closely and not assume that newer is better.

It was probably inevitable that an updating of Fowler by a linguist would leave the old book in shreds. Linguists today are largely descriptive in their approach to grammar, observing the passing scene rather than commenting on its rightness. This third edition of the most famous usage manual of our century is designed to identify popular English, not good English. If most people think an expression is acceptable, it is. And if most people avoid something, correctly or not, we should avoid it too. It's a valid point of view, but one that seems antithetical to the very idea of a usage manual, where rightness has a legitimate place.

Mr. Burchfield comes clean early on. ''Fowler's name remains on the title page, even though his book has been largely rewritten,'' he says in the preface. ''It is not, of course, as antiquated as Aelfric's Grammar nor yet as those of Ben Jonson or Robert Lowth. But it is a fossil all the same.'' (Yes, Fowler's name is on the title page, but his contribution is diminished; he is inaccurately described as the editor of the original, not its author.)

The third edition dispenses with such whimsical omnibus headings as ''Pairs and Snares,'' dealing with easily confused words like ''judicial'' and ''judicious,'' and ''Out of the Frying Pan,'' Fowler's term for trading one blunder for another. ''They have endeared the book to Fowler's devotees, but no longer have their interest or appeal,'' Mr. Burchfield writes dryly. His method is different too. Fowler (1858-1933) relied heavily on the newspapers of his day for examples of incorrectness. Mr. Burchfield, a former chief editor of the Oxford English dictionaries and editor of ''A Supplement to the O.E.D.,'' employs an electronic data base of ''English uses and constructions of the 1980's and 1990's,'' largely taken from novels. The student of usage has the benefit of examples from Tom Clancy, Iris Murdoch and Toni Morrison, not to mention less bookish sources like ''Hagar the Horrible,'' LL Cool J and even a recipe for chiles rellenos from The San Diego Union.

It's one thing to quarrel with Fowler's methods, but quite another to recoil from the very idea of a usage manual. Mr. Burchfield flinches from declaring a particular usage right or wrong, but Fowler is frankly judgmental, almost moralistic, and doesn't hesitate to call a usage ''rot,'' ''nonsense,'' ''illiterate'' or ''slovenly.'' The less ''schoolmasterly'' Mr. Burchfield, to use an expression he often applies to Fowler, prefers terms like ''debatable,'' ''nonstandard,'' ''informal'' and ''not often used.'' Only seldom does he resort to ''not correct'' or ''erroneous'' (usually in reference to spelling or pronunciation).

The treatment of ''all right'' and ''alright'' in the two editions demonstrates their larger differences. The words are always separate, says Fowler, and there's no such word as ''alright.'' For Mr. Burchfield, a preference for one over the other reveals one's ''background, upbringing, education, etc., perhaps as much as any word in the language.'' His discussion of this ''sociological divide'' is interesting, but of doubtful value to a reader in search of guidance. We must read between the lines to figure out that ''all right'' must be safer, since it shows up in the more highbrow examples he gives.

The same timidity emerges in Mr. Burchfield's treatment of the old prohibition against splitting an infinitive. Fowler lists it among ''fetishes'' and ''superstitions'' that lead to awkward writing, and he facetiously mocks ''the don't-split-your-infinitivist.'' Mr. Burchfield too calls the old rule a ''superstition,'' but he still recommends following it whenever possible because a good many writers show ''a noticeable reluctance,'' no matter how irrational, to split infinitives. This democratic approach sometimes forces him to throw up his hands. Where no clear preference emerges from his data on ''orient'' versus ''orientate,'' for example, he says, ''In the face of the evidence, what is one to do?''

His squeamishness only increases when politics rears its head. About ''feminine designations'' he writes: ''The whole question of gender distinctions in occupational and related names is sensitive, verging on explosive. All possible 'solutions' introduce uglinesses or new inconsistencies or leave false expectations in their wake. Ours is an uneasy age linguistically.'' True enough, but not much help. (Many readers, though, will be puzzled by his entry on the suffix -ess, where his long list of ''more or less unchallenged'' words includes adventuress, ambassadress, conductress, huntress, instructress, ogress and traitress.)

Still, there are things to admire in this new version. The second edition (in which Gowers thanked a younger Mr. Burchfield for ''expert guidance'') swept away many creaky Fowlerisms, and the third edition clears out still more. Gone is Fowler's entry on the difference between an Erastian and a Jansenist. Gone too are his furious objections to ''Pleistocene'' and ''Miocene,'' which he calls ''monstrosities'' that ''defile the language'' (their Greek elements, he fumes, are combined in an un-Greek way). And gone are oddities like Fowler's attack on ''electrocution'' (a ''barbarism'' that should be ''electrocussion''). To Fowler's list of ''vogue words,'' Mr. Burchfield rightly adds 90's staples like ''couch potato'' and ''spin doctor.'' There are new entries on ''political correctness,'' ''sexist language,'' ''black English'' and ''meaningless fillers'' (this last one quotes a teen-ager: ''Well, y'know I thought, like, well, y'know. Cool. Not!''). His explanation of words ending in -able and -ible is better organized and easier to read than Fowler's, and his entry on ''shall and will'' is much more sensible. Yet quaint antiquities have survived -- musty entries like ''periwig,'' ''wampum,'' ''pother'' and ''spats'' (short for ''spatterdashes'') -- and puzzles have crept in. An American has to wonder, for instance, why a book that's supposed to be useful to readers in the United States as well as Britain has an entry labeled ''pee'' that discusses only the word's relevance to British decimal currency.

But a usage manual is more than definitions and spellings and rules and recommendations. It is, or ought to be, concerned with good writing and how to achieve it. Throughout his book, Fowler sticks up for ''honest traffic in words'' and defends the dignity and beauty of plain English. He is always willing to put reason ahead of the rules, and an expression that wins ''in the scales of grammar'' may ultimately lose on the grounds of euphony and common sense. Mr. Burchfield has little of that flexibility; rarely does he allow his own judgment to override what is ''widely used'' or has the right ''distributional patterns.'' Almost apologetically, he sometimes inserts ''my own preference'' or ''my personal preference'' -- usually in parentheses.

Few readers will turn to Mr. Burchfield for pleasure, as many have turned to Fowler, although the third edition has its moments. There's almost a whiff of Fowler himself in Mr. Burchfield's comment on ''hybrid formations'': ''Our language is governed not by an absolute monarch, nor by an academy, far less by a European Court of Human Rights, but by a stern reception committee, the users of the language themselves.'' But an occasional felicity can't make up for the many Fowlerish delights missing in this new edition. We don't hear Fowler's cranky voice calling an unattached possessive ''a sort of shadow of a shade.'' Or saying, of a once-fashionable word, ''Your vogue is past, your freshness faded; you are antiquated, vieux jeu, passe, demode; your nose is out of joint.'' Or lamenting ''those who go wordfowling with a blunderbuss''; or ''the putting of things in a roundabout way''; or words like ''somewhat,'' which ''has for the inferior journalist what he ought not, but would be likely, to describe as 'a somewhat amazing fascination.' ''

Most of all, we miss Fowler's unashamed love of the language. Mr. Burchfield, for all his vast data base of evidence, doesn't inspire a passion for beautiful writing. Fowler himself was not a great writer, but he knew great writing when he saw it. To illustrate his extended essay on rhythm in prose -- omitted in the new edition -- he offers this treasure: ''And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept: and as he went, thus he said: O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!''

Fowler would have been the first to admit he needed updating, and he would have said so colorfully and at length. Revise him, certainly, but as Gowers said in 1965, ''Rewrite him and he ceases to be Fowler.''

Patricia T. O'Conner is an editor at the Book Review and the author of a grammar book, ''Woe Is I.''

androabo

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Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage, 2th Edition 2009 => 100% completed :

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Someone can upload to FTP...

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44nonymous

You will need to review the Fowler's dictionaries.
The Amazon's "A Dictionary of Modern English Usage" have many errors.
Всего записей: 40 | Зарегистр. 05-01-2013 | Отправлено: 02:45 01-02-2014

androabo
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44nonymous

OCR errors.
Всего записей: 40 | Зарегистр. 05-01-2013 | Отправлено: 17:38 01-02-2014
44nonymous

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androabo

Are you sure?. I bought myself the Kindle .mobi ebooks from Amazon.  
The books are digital copies, and the editor had the original text source, so there should not be any OCR.

I've done the icons for Oxford Fowler & Oxford Garner books. Not very nice, but OK.