|
We continue dissecting the grammar curiosities and
crudities that I presented in this column the other week. This time
we’ll take up the following two sentences that I came across in
two separate TV network-Internet news feeds recently:
“A report from Iglesia ni
Cristo-run radio dzEC said Tuesday that the victim had already
submitted an affidavit to the Office of the Ombudsman for the
Visayas detailing how the doctors and nurses ridiculed him in
connection to his surgery.”
“The television report said the
owner of the truck, Del Monte Movers, is now attending the needs of
the victims.”
I presume that many readers had
readily figured out what’s wrong with these two sentences. For
those who hadn’t, however, the problem with each of the sentences
is the misuse of a common phrasal verb or verb phrase. The first
awkwardly uses the odd phrase “in connection to” instead of the
grammatically correct phrasal verb “in connection with,” and the
other just as awkwardly uses the odd phrase “attending the
needs” instead of the correct phrasal-verb construction
“attending to the needs.”
Those two sentences should then
properly read—perhaps it’s much better to say be idiomatically
said—as follows:
“A report from Iglesia ni
Cristo-run radio dzEC said Tuesday that the victim had already
submitted an affidavit to the Office of the Ombudsman for the
Visayas detailing how the doctors and nurses ridiculed him in
connection with his surgery.”
“The television report said the
owner of the truck, Del Monte Movers, is now attending to the needs
of the victims.”
Of course, it’s perfectly
understandable for nonnative English learners to ask: Why be so icky
picky with phrasal verbs? After all, for instance, doesn’t “in
connection to his surgery” and “attending the needs of the
victims” mean the same and serve as well as “in connection with
his surgery” and “attending to the needs of the victims,”
respectively?
The answer is a categorical
“no.” They don’t mean the same and they don’t serve as well.
The difference in the shade of meaning between a phrasal verb and
just any verb-phrase construction is what distinguishes the truly
proficient English speaker from a middling or bad one. Perhaps a
kinder way to say that is this: we must take it on good authority
that phrasal verbs are what educated English speakers normally use
for the particular actions or notions they want to talk about.
Phrasal verbs are actually
phrases that consist of a verb form that ends in a preposition, as
in the case of “in connection with” and “attending to.”
Since they are meant to be taken in their literal sense, phrasal
verbs are actually semantically simpler than prepositional idioms
like “clam up” and “come through,” which have nonliteral
meanings. The problem, however, is that the specific preposition in
a phrasal verb isn’t intuitive and doesn’t always follow a
clear, definite logic. This is what makes it not so easy for
nonnative English speakers to learn phrasal verbs, and I’m afraid
this is true for not a few practicing mass media practitioners these
days.
So what do we do under these
circumstances? Do we just give up on phrasal verbs altogether and
simply wing it with them when we write or talk, as some news
reporters and TV anchors do?
I don’t think it’s such a
good idea. This is why I made an effort to explain phrasal verbs and
prepositions in general in my book, English Plain and Simple:
No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today’s Global Language, whose second
updated edition went off the press this week. It came out
simultaneously with my new book, The 10 Most Annoying English
Grammar Errors, which dissects in detail such vexing problems as the
mangled phrasal verbs that we have just taken up. (Browse both books
at www.manilatimes/josecarillobooks.)
With these books, if I may so
myself, better English is now truly within anybody’s reach.
j8carillo@yahoo.com
|
