A Word, Please: British leaders trip over their language
Sometimes, when politics get too nasty and the national outlook seems too bleak, it’s easy to succumb to despair. So if the months and months of comments about “losers” and “Lucifer in the flesh” and “blood coming out of her wherever” have you down, here’s a little something to cheer you up: Other countries’ politics get nasty, too.
A recent battle in Great Britain should make you smile. Earlier this month, British Green Party leader Caroline Lucas grilled British Prime Minister David Cameron about difficult standardized test questions by demanding Cameron answer those very questions.
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“For the benefit of the House and 10- and 11-year-olds up and down the country,” Lucas began, “will the prime minister explain what the past progressive tense is, differentiate between a subordinating conjunctive and a coordinating conjunctive, and finally will he please set out his definition of a modal verb?”
Cameron’s answer: “The whole point of these changes is to make sure our children are better educated than we are.”
Translation: “I don’t know.”
This delightful exchange came amid a British national brouhaha over ridiculously difficult tests that have prompted mass student walkouts and reportedly have 7-year-olds crying and waking up in the middle of the night from stress.
The week before, Cameron’s own education minister, Nick Gibb, was ambushed with a test question during a radio interview.
“Let me give you this sentence,” BBC radio host Martha Kearney said. “‘I went to the cinema after I’d eaten my dinner.’ Is the word ‘after’ there being used as a subordinating conjunction or as a preposition?”
Gibb’s answer: “It’s a preposition.”
Kearney laughed and told Gibb that, no, in this sentence, it’s a conjunction.
Like Cameron, Gibb tried to weasel out of the situation. He mumbled something about how context can change the function of “after,” which might have been a reasonable response had the question not been predicated on the assumption that 10-year-olds already understand that.
Kearney didn’t let up, so Gibb snapped: “Fine, but this isn’t about me.”
For the record: “After” is a preposition when it introduces a noun or pronoun. “I’ll see you after the movie.” It’s a subordinating conjunction when it introduces a whole clause: “I went to the cinema after I’d eaten my dinner.”
Moving on to the other questions the British officials couldn’t answer: The past progressive tense is seen in sentences like “I was walking,” in which the action is described as ongoing at some point in the past.
Differentiating between a subordinating conjunctive and a coordinating conjunctive would have been hard even for me because I’ve never heard those terms. I presume they meant conjunctions.
The coordinating conjunctions are “and,” “but” and “so.” Their job is to link items of equal grammatical status: “I like peaches, and I also like plums.” Both of those clauses could stand alone as separate sentences, so their grammatical status is equal.
Subordinating conjunctions — a larger group that includes “since,” “though,” “although,” “if,” “when,” “after” and “because” — render a clause unable to stand alone as a sentence. “Although I like peaches, I prefer plums.” The first clause can’t work alone as a sentence because “although” subordinates it.
As for modal verbs, I’ve only heard them called modal auxiliary verbs. Auxiliaries work with other verbs to form compound tenses, the way “have” does in “I have watched a lot of TV today.” Modal auxiliaries, which include “can,” “must,” “may,” “will” and “might,” work with other verbs in the same way, but they add something more, usually commentary on ability (I can watch TV) or possibility (I might watch TV).
I wouldn’t expect government officials to know that, just as I wouldn’t expect young school kids to know it, either. I would only hope that pols would take the high road by admitting their ignorance.
They didn’t.
But, in the process of playing the politician, at least neither made fun of his female detractor’s face.
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JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.