Saturday, March 05, 2005

Don't know much about the English language


Exhibit 1 showing it was stupidity rather than malevolence that produced my missteps, which have led the world to heap calumny upon me (I know it's hardly the place of my friends to offer excuses), is that I cannot properly read, write, or spell using the English language. This is powerful proof that I am so rock-dumb I cannot possibly be guilty of being "slippery and dishonest," as Ramesh Ponnuru has so rudely suggested.

Ponnuru has already demonstrated that
I cannot read, at least not above a ninth-grade level. As a result, I misunderstood much of what Ponnuru had written in his article charging Larry Tribe with fabricating a good bit of his recent account of his first Supreme Court argument, and in Ponnuru's first post answering my criticisms of his article.

Nor can I write particularly well, as you can see from my various posts attacking Ponnuru. Just to pick the most recent example of my deficient writing, consider the posts I made on two of my other blogs last night. I was concerned that no one else had yet linked to this new blog, and I wanted to stir up some interest in it. So, on one of the other seven web-sites I've created relating to Ponnuru's article on Tribe, I posted
this item: "Just a head's up. Someone has set up a fake blog purporting to be by me, that isn't." I posted a similar item on my regular blog, www.scotusblog.com, here.

The idea was, by pretending this eighth blog I've set up relating to Ponnuru isn't actually written by me (plausible enough, because after I set up seven web-sites to draw out Ponnuru, including six using Ponnuru's name, it hardly would be surprising if someone were to set up an eighth using my name to parody me), I'd spur interest in my new blog and people would look for it, thinking it was some sort of "forbidden fruit" I didn't want them to eat. If I'd said nothing at all, probably no one would ever have found this new blog -- just like, if I'd said nothing at all about Ponnuru's article on Tribe, probably almost no one would ever have read that article.

Anyway, you may have noticed that in just the two short sentences I posted last night I managed to commit two basic errors which would have gotten me in trouble in high school English class (if I'd ever gotten beyond ninth grade, that is).

First, of course, is the improper use of the apostrophe. What do I mean by saying: "head's up"? Am I referring to a "head" which somehow possesses an "up" -- with the apostrophe indicating a possessive of a singular noun? Or is that apostrophe functioning to create a contraction, as a short form for: "Just a head is up"?

Neither. What I should have said, and would have said if I could write proper English, is: "Just a heads up." The definition of "heads up," according to one leading dictionary,
is this: "Used as a warning to watch out for a potential source of danger, as at a construction site." There's no entry for "head's up." That's just wrong. My use of an apostrophe in saying "head's up" was a significant milestone on the road to punctuation anarchy.

The second mistake in my post last night was my improper use of "that" near the end of the second sentence: "Someone has set up a fake blog purporting to me, that isn't." Of course, the two words after the comma in this sentence are a non-restrictive clause, because they supply additional information about the blog I am describing. Therefore, I should have used a "which," not a "that." A "that" is appropriate for a restrictive clause, a clause which limits, or restricts, the scope of the noun to which it is referring. Let this be a lesson to you all: That is the defining, or restrictive pronoun, which the nondefining, or nonrestrictive. These two pronouns should be used with precision.

Further evidence that I am not much of a writer can be found in my misuse of standard English vocabulary, as Ponnuru has already pointed out. For instance, in one of my missives against Ponnuru, I stated that if you believed a particular aspect of Ponnuru's account of the oral argument by Tribe, "you're going to believe inconsolably that Ponnuru is right about all of this and Tribe is wrong" (middle of page 4,
here).

Ponnuru
responded: "I do not think that word means what Goldstein thinks it means." He's right of course. "Inconsolably" is the adverbial form of "inconsolable," which is totally out of place here because it means: "Impossible or difficult to console; despondent: was inconsolable after his pet died." A reader who agreed with Ponnura's account, and hence concluded Tribe was all wrong, would hardly be "inconsolable" about having gotten to the bottom of the matter.

What I likely meant (I can't remember for sure, as I'm a bit confused at this point about my interchange with Ponnuru after having set up eight web-sites on it and devoting 17 single-spaced PDF pages to his "profoundly silly" article) i
s "ineluctably." That's the adverbial form of "ineluctable," which means: "Not to be avoided or escaped; inevitable." That is, what I probably meant to say was that a reader who agrees with this central point of Ponnuru's analysis will inevitably, or ineluctably, end up agreeing entirely with Ponnuru.

Finally, I'm a lousy speller. I cannot even spell the word "rock-dumb" which is my defining trait. Ponnuru used that word to describe me
here. In my response, in summarizing what Ponnuru had said about me, I misspelled it as "rock dumb" (here, pages 2 & 5), as if "rock" where an adjective modifying the word "dumb." Which is isn't, of course -- the whole thing is an adjective, one word, which is why Ponnuru hyphenated it, as you can see from this definition from an online dictionary:

Adjective
rock-dumb

1. A person so dumb that his or her intelligence is not appreciably distinguishable from that of a rock.
2. Having the quality or characteristic of being as dumb as a rock.

My problems with reading, writing, and spelling are not my only difficulties with the English language. I also have a tendency to use awkward, even ridiculous, word constructions. For example, I called Ponnuru's article on Tribe "profoundly silly," which led Ponnuru to respond "that what's silly is the use of that intensifier before 'silly'." Ponnuru may have a point. To call something "profoundly silly" seems as silly as calling something "trivially profound."

I could go on (as you well know), but by now my point should be clear. My inability properly to read, write, spell, and otherwise manage the rudiments of standard English is powerful evidence that my missteps result from being rock-dumb, not from being slipperly, deceitful, or otherwise malevolent.

If anyone has other examples to support this aspect of my analysis, either from my posts regarding Ponnuru or from my other work, please e-mail me at rock-dumb@hotmail.com and I'll consider including such examples in a future post.

Please also e-mail me if you think of any other points that support my thesis that I'm too rock-dumb to be fairly accused of slipperiness or dishonesty.