By Segun Omolayo
This columnist was involved in two conversations recently. One was with a former university deputy registrar. He had just shared a written address he considered spotless.
He retorted dismissively when shown some misusages, one of which was advocate for, saying: “I don’t see anything wrong in it.” His scowl registered the meta-communication that the columnist was just being a busybody.
In the other conversation, a former permanent secretary who is a writing enthusiast insisted that as a matter of cultural correctness and respect for constituted authority, every occurrence of the word governor must be capitalised.
We have dealt with the usage of transitive verbs like advocate, demand, deny and the like in a past edition, and we will at some point also discuss capitalisation.
So, these will not be the focus in this edition. It suffices for now to note that capitalisation is not about political or social ranking.
Most importantly, the two encounters have more than anything else underscored the need to drill down, still, the matter of correct and incorrect usage. And here we go with this edition’s special selection.
Verbs following verbs
Many hardly pay attention to the proper handling of verbs when one follows another in a sentence. The usual problem is about the tense of the one that occurs in the latter position. See the specimen misusage below for what we mean:
Those who observed him on Tuesday during the lecture saw him spoke with enormous self-satisfaction.
In this construction, the second verb should be the bare infinitive. A bare infinitive verb is one that does not come with to, which infinitives normally carry.
Read Also: Sundry Misusages XXXVIII: Compound adjectives . . . plus more
With specific reference to the sentence at issue, the bare infinitive speak is the second verb required, not spoke. For clarity, we stretch out the correct usage, thus:
Those who observed him on Tuesday during the lecture saw him speak with enormous self-satisfaction.
“Pop” Errors adds: ‘As it is with saw and speak in this construction, so it is with “several verbs of perception, including see, watch, hear, feel and sense” which “take a direct object and a bare infinitive where the bare infinitive indicates an action taken by the main verb’s object.”
The main verb in the statement is saw and its object is him which performs the action of speaking. The present participle speaking can replace the bare infinitive speak, but “the difference is that the former implies that the entirety of the event was perceived, while the latter implies that part of the progress of the event was perceived” (English.stackexchange.com). And, with the bare infinitive, the verbs do not have to agree in number and tense (www.nus.edu.sg/prose/grammar.htm).
In other words, it does not matter if the statement were to be: “He saw him talk,” where talk neither agrees with the tense of saw nor the number of its object him.’
Wake
The wake in consideration here is the one recklessly misused in obituary announcements and funeral arrangements. Commonly, you see wrong usages such as wake keep or wake keeping, as in the sentence below:
Some people noted that the carnival was a joyful equivalent of a wake keeping, as that is what happens when old men die.
In connection with funerals, wake keeping is incorrect and therefore unacceptable. It does not matter that you see such a wrong usage in newspapers every day, even in obituary announcements placed by governments and blue-chip organizations. The correct usage is wake. In the sense of this sentence in consideration, ‘wake is “an occasion before or after a funeral when people gather to remember the dead person, traditionally held the night before the funeral to watch over the body before it is buried.”
The origin of the “pop” error wake keeping is still unknown; our conjecture is that it might have started as a transferred usage of the practice of keeping vigil by Christians.
We think it is high time we stopped inventing and perpetrating errors’ (“Pop” Errors). “Pop” Errors enjoins: “Let charity begin here” by adopting the correction below:
Some people noted that the carnival was a joyful equivalent of a wake, as that is what happens when old men die.
Wane
Isn’t it incredible that anyone would misuse the simple verb wane? You had better snap your surprise, as even simpler and more commonplace terms and expressions are often misused.
Only an understanding of the nature and meaning of the verb wane will enable you avoid the kind of lexical outrage exhibited in the following statement:
Continuous conflict about personal expenses was waning the interest of some members.
‘This is a bizarre use of the intransitive verb wane as a transitive verb. Remember, an intransitive verb is a verb that does not have an object in a sentence, while a transitive verb takes an object.
And hear the meaning of wane: “to become gradually weaker or less important.” From the meaning, it is clear that nothing can wane interest, but interest can wane, that is, become gradually weaker’ (“Pop” Errors). The book suggests a number of reconstructions, vjz:
“Continuous conflict about personal expenses was weakening the interest of some members.”
OR
“Continuous conflict about personal expenses was causing the interest of some members to wane” (In this reconstruction, the verb wane has been used as the intransitive verb that it is.)
OR
“Because of continuous conflict about personal expenses, the interest of some members was waning” (The usage here is also in the intransitive sense.)
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