ETTA Melrose (April 20) is gleeful in supposing she has found an error in my grammar, and her attack is doubly painful in that my teaching of formal grammar was not done by the enforced memorising of dry lists but by constant correction and by example that was as flawless as I could make it.
I deny that ''none'' must be followed by a singular verb. On page 208 of his classic Usage and Abusage: A guide to good English, 1965 edition, Eric Partridge states in Section iii: ''When none = no persons, the verb is plural, as in 'None have been so greedy of employments . . . as they who have least deserved their stations''. The quotation is from Dryden, Alexander Pope's literary hero. Partridge adds: ''The corresponding singular pronoun is no one.''
I also offer verse 3 of the 25th metrical Psalm, viz,
Let none that wait on thee
be put to shame at all:(which is matched in the second version of that psalm). Again, take Psalm 34, verse 22, as follows:
none perish that him trust.
The wordings in the Book of Psalms itself are structurally identical.
Finally, Partridge adds that R B Hamilton of Nottingham wrote in 1947: ''The superstition was I think invented by some eighteenth-century sciolist, who, misled by appearances and regardless of history and logic, decided that 'none' was a contraction of 'no-one' and decreed that it should be followed by a singular verb''. He adds: ''The truth is the opposite,'' and ''To say 'None of the newspapers has appeared' is no better than to say 'No newspapers has appeared' ''.
So much for Etta Melrose's deluded accusation. (I will wink at the barbarism in her concluding paragraph.)
Alasdair Levack,
9 and 41 Gartymore, Helmsdale,
Sutherland.
April 20.
I HEARTILY concur with Louis Dunn's view that ''language falls apart if we do not know its proper form'' (April 17). One of the problems for modern grammarians however, is that - if one accepts that language is a living organism, which, of course, it is - the pace of its evolution has been accelerated in modern times by the all-pervading influence of audio-visual media.
For example, American films and television programmes seem to have imprinted on our minds the baleful use of ''like'' as a conjunction so thoroughly that it has become accepted practice even in so-called ''quality'' papers.
Libertarians such as Denis O'Sullivan (April 17) would argue that ''like'' as a conjunction is acceptable simply because of its wide usage. Presumably he would find nothing to criticise, either, in this sentence by a Times economist: ''A depression and financial meltdown in Japan seems increasingly likely'' - overlooking the fact that two subjects (''depression'' and ''meltdown'') require a plural verb (ie, ''seem'' instead of ''seems'').
While it is true that the vast majority of ideas may be communicated without strict adherence to grammatical or syntactical rules (the Times sentence above is an example of that truth), where ideas or concepts are very complex (for example in philosophical treatises), exact use of language is imperative. I believe, too, that good grammar and syntax enhance the aesthetics of language.
Finally, I was a little disconcerted to read in Louis Dunn's letter: ''Teachers who do not know the difference between 'I have eaten chips' and 'I ate chips' have not a chance of teaching a Slavonic language where aspects are crucial, or indeed, any language with the notion of perfect and imperfect''.
This would appear to suggest - or his sentence is very misleading - that he sees ''I have eaten chips'' and ''I ate chips'' as, respectively, examples of perfect and imperfect. They are not. The first is an example of perfect, in English grammar termed ''present perfect''; the second however is not imperfect, but aorist, or ''past single'' in English grammar. The equivalent imperfect (or ''past continuous'') would be: ''He was eating chips''.
Alexander Coldwell,
Cottage of Ardea,
by Ballachulish, Argyll. April 20.
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