词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Hypercorrection

Broadcast on COAST TO COAST: March 11, 2004

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- getting hyper about correctness.

RS: English once had a system where nouns took different forms depending on whether they were the subject or the object of a sentence. Jack¹ Lynch, an assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, says we've lost most of that.

AA: But this system survives in pronouns -- words like "I" and 鈥渕e鈥?and "she" and "her." And, as Professor Lynch explains, these can be confusing, and lead to common errors known as hypercorrections.

LYNCH: "Hypercorrection is not simply being fussy² or a nitpicker or a pedant³. The 'hyper' part, from Greek, means 'too much.' It means working so hard to avoid one potential problem that you end up falling into another one."

RS: "Can you give us an example?"

LYNCH: "Sure. We're taught as children, and beginning language learners are told, you don't say 'me and you went to the movies.' It should be 'you and I.' And a lot of people, therefore, internalize the rule that 'you and I' is somehow more proper, and they end up using it in places where they shouldn't -- such as 'he gave it to you and I' when it should be 'he gave it to you and me.'"

RS: "But we're not hearing that in common, spoken American English."

AA: "What you're hearing is someone would say, let's say, 'He took Rosanne and I to the movies -- '"

LYNCH: "Exactly."

AA: " -- where it should be 'he took Rosanne and me to the movies.' How did this happen? Why are people doing this?"

LYNCH: "It tends to come from areas where people are aware that there's something a little tricky⁴ in the language. Now it doesn't often happen if the preposition -- words like 'to' and 'for' and 'with' -- comes before one of these tricky pronouns. You would never say 'he gave it to she and I.' 'To she' just sounds wrong to us immediately. But 'to you' is right because 'you' has the same form whether it's the subject or the object."

RS: "So that's a piece of cake there."

LYNCH: "There are other areas where we make these mistakes; the word 'whom,' for instance."

RS: "And 'who.'"

LYNCH: "Yes, 'who' and 'whom.' Many people know there's this word 'whom' out there and they have a sense it's associated with 'proper' usage. But they end up using it wrong, such as 'whom should I say is calling?' It should, in fact, be 'who should I say is calling?' because 'who is calling' -- it functions as a subject."

RS: "So this is a subject/object thing again."

LYNCH: "Yes. You wouldn't say 'him is calling.' You would say 'he is calling.'"

RS: "So what's an easy way to remember this?"

LYNCH: "Well, whenever you're considering using 'who' or 'whom,' try converting it into 'he' and 'him.' If your ear tells you that you want a 'he' there, you probably want 'who.' If your ear tells you [that] you want a 'him' there, you probably want 'whom.' And the 'm' at the end is a good way to keep them straight."

RS: "Now what about speakers of English as a foreign language, that's another group entirely⁵."

LYNCH: "Sure, and they'll make many of these same kinds of errors, especially with these forms where the language has been changing over a long time, and even native speakers can get confused in them. If you're not really confident in the rules, stick with what you do understand, rather than trying out the things that you don't quite get. Honest errors always sound better than hypercorrections, which run the risk of sounding pompous⁶."

RS: "We talked about pronouns. We've talked about who/whom. Are there any other features that ...

AA: "There's one more. How about 'feeling badly.'"

LYNCH: "Yes, 'feeling badly' is a common problem. Again, we're taught growing up, or we're taught as we're first learning language, that we have to use adverbs with verbs. We don't say 'he did it good,' we say 'he did it well.' We don't say 'he ran quick.' We say 'he ran quickly.' But there is a whole class of verbs, verbs of being, which can include verbs related to sense, that do properly take the adjective. So 'I'm feeling badly' is in fact a hypercorrection."

RS: "So 'I'm feeling badly' is you're not really feeling some thing well."

LYNCH: "Exactly. 'Feeling badly,' what that would mean is something like I'm not doing it correctly, or I'm not touching⁷ something very sensitively, something like that. But if you mean feel in the sense of feeling good or bad in yourself, then it should be 'I feel bad' or 'I feel good.'"

AA: Language continually changes. Rutgers Professor Lynch says today's hypercorrection will probably become another generation's correct usage.

RS: And speaking of another generation, Jack Lynch looks back in time in his new book. It's called "Samuel Johnson's Dictionary: Selections from the 1755 Work that Defined the English Language."

AA: And that's Wordmaster. Send e-mail to [email protected]. And we've got all our segments at voanews.com/wordmaster. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

1 jack   

n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克

参考例句：

• I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
• He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。

2 fussy   

adj.为琐事担忧的，过分装饰的，爱挑剔的

参考例句：

• He is fussy about the way his food's cooked.他过分计较食物的烹调。
• The little girl dislikes her fussy parents.小女孩讨厌她那过分操心的父母。

3 pedant   

n.迂儒；卖弄学问的人

参考例句：

• He's a bit of a pedant.这人有点迂。
• A man of talent is one thing,and a pedant another.有才能的人和卖弄学问的人是不一样的。

4 tricky   

adj.狡猾的，奸诈的；(工作等)棘手的，微妙的

参考例句：

• I'm in a rather tricky position.Can you help me out?我的处境很棘手，你能帮我吗？
• He avoided this tricky question and talked in generalities.他回避了这个非常微妙的问题，只做了个笼统的表述。

5 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

6 pompous   

adj.傲慢的，自大的；夸大的；豪华的

参考例句：

• He was somewhat pompous and had a high opinion of his own capabilities.他有点自大，自视甚高。
• He is a good man underneath his pompous appearance. 他的外表虽傲慢，其实是个好人。

7 touching   

adj.动人的，使人感伤的

参考例句：

• It was a touching sight.这是一幅动人的景象。
• His letter was touching.他的信很感人。