Archives for September 2009

Prepositions – how to understand them

September 12, 2009 by Roy Johnson

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Prepositions – definition

Prepositions express a relationship between nouns (or pronouns) and some other part of the sentence.

It usually tells us where something is.

Examples

with out in

under over around

Use

A preposition is used with a noun or pronoun.

The child ran around the snowman.

Jack and Jill went up the hill.

However, the same words are adverbs in the following statements:

Let’s take a walk around.

My lucky number came up.

He came over to me.

They are adverbs because they tell us about the verb.

NB! Prepositions often tell us about position, so don’t underestimate them.

Prepositions are mainly used in English to form adverbial and adjectival phrases, as in the following:

Adverbial phrases

‘Marseilles is in France’
[‘in France’ tells us where Marseilles is]

‘Hastings stands on the south coast of England’
[‘on the south coast of England’ tells us where Hastings stands]

‘The grocer marvelled at the arrival of the boxes’
[‘at the arrival’ tells us when the grocer marvelled]

‘She left the hall with a toss of her head’
[‘with a toss of her head’ tells us the manner in which she left]

All the prepositions above are used adverbially to tell us more about the verb in each case.

The following are examples of adjectival phrases. In each case the preposition describes a noun:

Adjectival phrases

‘The first cable across the Atlantic was laid in 1838′
[‘across the Atlantic’ describes the cable]

‘I love the sound of the sea’
[‘of the sea’ describes the sound]

‘I believe that the man in the moon exists’
[‘in the moon’ describes the man]

‘We all enjoyed the cheese on toast that our mother gave us’
[‘on toast’ describes the cheese]

Prepositions are usually used, as in the two sets of examples above, with a noun or a pronoun.

Examples of nouns from the sentences given above are ‘the arrival’, ‘a toss’, ‘ the moon’ and ‘toast’.

Prepositions can also be used as adverbs without an accompanying noun or pronoun.

Come in Turn round Go up

Jump off Look around Go under

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Pronouns – how to understand them

September 12, 2009 by Roy Johnson

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Pronouns – definition

Pronouns stand instead of nouns (to avoid repeating them).

Examples

Personal pronouns stand instead of names:

I me you

he him we

us they them

Relative pronouns act as reference links:

which who that

Use

Pronouns are frequently used in both speech and writing .

By using them we are able to avoid frequent repetition of a name. Compare these statements.

First, the proper noun John is used throughout.

John’s in the Army and John looks good in John’s uniform as John strides along.

Second, the proper noun is used initially and followed by pronouns.

John’s in the Army and he looks good in his uniform as he strides along.

NB! Fasten your safety belt. There’s a lot more on this topic.

There are several different kinds of pronouns. These can be classified as personal, possessive, reflexive, emphatic, demonstrative, interrogative, exclamatory, relative, and pronouns of amount and number.

Personal pronouns derive from the grammatical term ‘person’. This itself is of Latin origin [dramatis personae] meaning characters in a play. This term has been transferred to the characters in a story or dialogue, which may be shown as follows:

Singular Plural

I we

NOMINATIVE you you

he, she, it they

me us

ACCUSATIVE you you

him, her, it them

	Singular	Plural
	I	we
NOMINATIVE	you	you
	he, she, it	they
	me	us
ACCUSATIVE	you	you
	him, her, it	them

Possessive pronouns denote possession as in the following example:

The dress was mine and now its hers.

Possessive pronouns follow the same pattern as the personal pronouns:

Singular Plural

mine
yours
hers, his, its mine
yours
theirs

Singular	Plural
mine yours hers, his, its	mine yours theirs

Reflexive pronouns are often used as objects of verbs. For example:

I found myself rolling down the hillside.

He gave himself a pat on the back.

Reflexive pronouns are also used with prepositions, as in:

I felt the sadness sweeping over me.

She pulled the blanket over her.

Bring your friends with you.

After a preposition, the pronoun looks like a plain personal pronoun; but the context is reflexive. The archaic usage perhaps makes this case more clear, as in:

Now I lay me down to die

Emphatic pronouns are used in such contexts as:

I’d like a glass of wine please, and (you) have one yourself.
(emphasising who must have one)

She herself wanted to join the company.
(emphasising the subject of the sentence)

Demonstrative pronouns are used for pointing things out to the listener. They are:

this, these (nearby)

that, those (at some distance)

such (meaning ‘such as’)

same (meaning ‘the same as’)

These are the best flowers in the shop.
Those are the Alps in the distance.
They have such exciting parties.
I asked for a box and was sent the same.

Interrogative pronouns are used to ask questions. They are:

who? whom?

whose? which? what?

Who was at the party?
Whom did you see at the party?
Whose friend was the woman in the red dress?
Which dish did you most enjoy?
What did you do all evening?

Exclamatory pronouns. The word ‘what’ is often used to exclaim on an issue in the following way:

What a night!
What she could have achieved!

Relative pronouns are as follows:

who whom whose

which that what as

Those who arrive early can begin.
The woman whom I met sent me a postcard.
We met the couple whose house we bought.
Those tins which we brought came in useful.
I always write about topics that interest me.
I always mean what I say.
It was as beautiful a garden as ever I saw.

Pronouns of number are as follows:

one more

few neither enough

One of them was ill.
Neither of the girls had a raincoat.
Few people understand the value of money.
More people may join the club next week.
Enough is as good as a feast.

Pronouns of amount are as follows:

anyone nobody

something everybody

These are used as in the following statements:

Anyone who had a heart would take her.
Everybody gathered round the lake.
Something will have to be done about the food.

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Punctuation – how to use it correctly

September 12, 2009 by Roy Johnson

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Punctuation – definition

Punctuation in English language is used in writing to show the stress, ryhthm, and tone of the spoken word.

It is also used to clarify the meaning of sentences.

Examples

There are four common marks of punctuation:

These represent pauses of increasing length in a sentence.

comma [ , ] semicolon [ ; ]

colon [ : ] full stop [ . ]

Use

The following paragraph uses all the four common marks of punctation.

Punctuation should always be used lightly, even sparingly, and as accurately as possible. You will discover through practice that there are three basic rules: the comma, semicolon, and colon mark increasingly long pauses; full stops are used to separate distinct sentences; and a new paragraph should always
be employed to begin a new topic or point of argument.

NB! ‘Punctuation’ in speech is produced by tone, rhythm, stress, and intonation.

The four most common marks of punctuation are dealt with in detail in their own sections:

commas – semicolons – colons – full stops

The other common marks of punctuation are described below:

brackets – exclamation mark

dash – oblique stroke

hyphen – question mark

Some miscellaneous remarks on punctuation.

Brackets (these) are used to insert a remark (like this, for instance) or a qualification of some sort into a sentence.

Take care! If they are used too frequently they create a choppy, unsettling effect.

Full details in the section on brackets.

The dash (—) is used to indicate a sudden change of thought, an additional comment, or a dramatic qualification.

That was the end of the matter — or so we thought.

Dashes can also be used in pairs to insert a comment or a short list:

Everything — furniture, paintings, and books — survived the fire.

They should not be used as a substitute for brackets, or mixed with them.

The dash is not the same thing as the hyphen (which is shorter) but this distinction is rarely made in the UK.

The exclamation mark (!) indicates surprise, anger, or alarm.

What a mess!
Get out of this house at once!
The ship is sinking! Jump in the lifeboat!

Exclamation marks should be used with restraint. The more frequently they occur, the weaker becomes their effect.

The novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald once remarked that using an exclamation mark was rather like laughing at your own jokes.

The question mark [?] is used to show that a question has been raised.

The question mark is always placed at the end of the sentence.

The following examples are questions:

What are you going to do?
How much is that doggy in the window?
Why is that woman staring at us?

Since the question mark is placed at the end of a sentence, no full stop is required. [If you look closely, you will see that the question mark (like the exclamation mark) contains its own full stop.]

The following are not questions.

He wondered what to do next.
She asked herself the same question.
What will happen to them is a mystery.

The hyphen [ – ] is a short dash used to connect (parts of) words.

These might be prefixes:

re-enter co-operate pre-enrol

They can be compound adjectives:

multi-storey car park extra-marital sex

They can be used when when forming compounds such as

son-in-law couldn’t-care-less

The oblique stroke [ / ] is sometimes used to separate items in a list:

oil/water mix Kent/Surrey boundary

italic/Roman type 1972/73

It should not be used as a substitute for words such as and, plus, and or.

Try to avoid the either/or construction and such lazy (and ugly) compounds as this:

‘it will help to create an entire social/sexual/ideological system’.

The oblique stroke might be useful when taking notes, but it should be avoided in formal writing for the sake of elegance.

Miscellaneous remarks on punctuation.

Many aspects of punctuation are ultimately a matter of personal preference and literary style.

The general tendency in most public writing today is to minimise the amount of punctuation used.

There are also minor differences in practice between the UK and the USA.

The suggestions made above are based generally on conventions in the UK.

Double punctuation [“What’s the matter!?”] is rarely used, except in very informal writing such as personal letters or diaries.

The combination of colon-plus-dash [: — ] is never necessary. Some people use this [it’s called ‘the pointer’] to indicate that a list will follow, but the colon alone should be sufficient.

The importance of punctuation can be illustrated by comparing the two following letters. In both cases, the text is the same. It’s the punctuation which makes all the difference!

Dear John:

I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy — will you let me be yours?

Gloria

Dear John:

I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?

Yours, Gloria

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Received pronunciation – what it means

September 13, 2009 by Roy Johnson

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Received pronunciation – definition

Received Pronunciation [or RP] refers to the accent used by such people as the Royal Family, BBC newsreaders, and members of the upper class.

It refers entirely to accent and not to content.

RP is a speech style which is based on social class and not on geographical region.

Examples

Some characteristic features of pronunciation in RP are as follows:

The long vowel in words such as ‘bath’, ‘path’, ‘ask’

Diphthongs in words such as ‘so’, ‘go’, ‘no’, ‘flow’

Use

Less than six per cent of the population of the UK speaks RP.

Although this speech style still carries notions of prestige, regional varieties of English are acquiring status equal to RP.

NB! Remember, RP is not the same thing as Standard English.

Received pronunciation (RP) is an accent of English which is based on social class rather than on region. Its origins are rooted in notions of prestige and status and impulses of exclusivity.

However, RP was itself once a regional variety of English. It originated in the East Midlands among the merchants who migrated towards London and the source of trade and wealth.

RP is therefore not the native London accent (as many people imagine). It is one which acquired strong connotations of prestige, because of its close connections with wealth and power.

The Cockney accent is the indigenous speech style of the London area. The two styles have existed alongside each other for hundreds of years.

Because many RP speakers happen to work in the capital city, the accent is falsely perceived as being regional and as belonging to London. On the contrary, RP speakers are scattered throughout the country and throughout the world. For instance, it is quite common for upper class people in Scotland to speak RP – without any trace of a Scottish accent.

The expansion of the mass broadcast media (radio and television) has meant that a huge variety of speech styles are heard by listeners and viewers every day. It seems as though this is gradually eroding the idea that RP is somehow superior to all other English accents.

RP is an approximate description of speech style, rather than being an exact specification. This applies to the classification of other accents too. Because speech varies subtly between individuals and between groups and areas, a broad description is all that can be achieved.

RP itself has changed slightly even over the past fifty years or so. This can be observed by watching films made during the nineteen-thirties and forties. The most obvious development has been the vowel sound in words such as ‘Harry’ which has become much more open. This feature is now used in parodies of that period.

Even the Queen, as head of state, speaks with a different accent than she had fifty years ago. In 1952 she would have been heard referring to thet men in the bleck het. Now it would be that man in the black hat. Similarly, she would have spoken of hame rather than home. In the 1950s she would have been lorst, but by the 1970s lost.

Many regional speakers feel embarrassed by their accents. It seems that much social pressure is felt generally because of the long-standing prestige given to RP. Certainly to linguists, RP is only one of many accents, although its special identity as a class accent is interesting.

Attitudes to RP. The new National Curriculum requires school students to be competent in using Standard English. Many teachers (and parents) wrongly take this to refer to accent. What it actually requires pupils to understand is the use of standard grammatical constructions, together with a comprehensive standard vocabulary.

There are a number of possible options available regarding one’s own attitude to speech-style:

be comfortable with a regional accent
be uncomfortable with a regional accent
change a regional accent in favour of RP
adapt speech-style to the social context

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Roger Fry biography

September 21, 2009 by Roy Johnson

artist, critic, designer

Roger Fry was an influential art historian and a key figure in the Bloomsbury Group. He was born in 1866 in Highgate, London, into a wealthy Quaker family. He studied at King’s College, Cambridge, where he took a first in the Natural Science ‘tripos’. Much to his family’s regret, he decided after university to pursue an artistic career rather than continue his scientific studies. In 1891 Fry went to Italy and then Paris, to study painting. He began to lecture on art, and became a critic and author. He made his debut in art criticism in 1893 with a review of George Moore’s book Modern Art for the Cambridge Review. Then in 1894 he began lecturing on Italian art for the Cambridge Extension Movement (classes for working people).

He married the artist Helen Coombe in 1896, but although his career as an artist and critic was a success, his personal life was troubled. His wife suffered from mental illness and had to be committed to an institution, where she stayed until her death in 1937. Fry was left to look after their children Pamela and Julian.

His first book on Giovanni Bellini, was published in 1899. He regularly contributed articles and criticism to the magazines Monthly Review and The Athenaeum, and in 1903 he was involved in the founding of Burlington Magazine, acting as joint editor between 1909-18, and making it into one of the most important art magazines in Britain. From 1905 to 1910, he was the Curator of Paintings for the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

He first met the artists Clive Bell and Vanessa Bell in 1910, when they invited him to lecture at Vanessa’s Friday Club. This was the artistic equivalent of her brother Thoby’s literary soirees held on Thursday evenings. He subsequently became a regular member of the Bloomsbury Group, and Virginia Woolf later wrote his biography. His affair with her sister Vanessa Bell began in 1911 when he accompanied the Bells on a holiday to Turkey. It ended when she transferred her affections to Duncan Grant in 1913.

In 1910, Fry organized the first Post-Impressionist exhibition (and indeed, coined the phrase) for the Grafton Galleries in London, and later published books on Cézanne (1927), and Matisse (1930). In 1913, he organized the Omega Workshops, a collective that encouraged the involvement of young artists in the design and decoration of everyday functional objects. This remained active until 1919.

Fry re-edited and updated a collection of his best articles and writings to produce his best known book, Vision and Design which was published in 1920. As well as Western art, the book examined the use of form and aesthetics in ethnic art from Africa, America and Asia. It was a great success, reinforcing his position as England’s leading critic and it is still recognised as an extremely influential work in the development of modernist theory.

In his ideas, Fry emphasised the importance of ‘form’ over ‘content’: that is, how a work looks, rather than what it is about. He thought that artists should use colour and arrangement of forms rather than the subject to express their ideas and feelings, and that works of art should not be judged by how accurately they represent reality.

In his personal life, it was not until 1924 after several short lived relationships (including affairs with Nina Hamnett, one of the Omega artists; and Josette Coatmellec, which ended tragically with her suicide), that he found happiness with Helen Anrep. Twenty years his junior, she left her husband and became a great support to Fry in his career, and lived with him until his death.

In 1933 Fry was offered the post of Slade Professor at Cambridge and began a series of lectures on the nature of art history that he was never to complete. The text for the lectures was published after his death in 1939 as Last Lectures. Fry died on 9 September 1934 following a fall at his London home. His ashes were placed in the vault of Kings College Chapel, Cambridge, in a casket decorated by Vanessa Bell.

Bloomsbury Group – web links

Hogarth Press first editions
Annotated gallery of original first edition book jacket covers from the Hogarth Press, featuring designs by Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, and others.

The Omega Workshops
A brief history of Roger Fry’s experimental Omega Workshops, which had a lasting influence on interior design in post First World War Britain.

The Bloomsbury Group and War
An essay on the largely pacifist and internationalist stance taken by Bloomsbury Group members towards the First World War.

Tate Gallery Archive Journeys: Bloomsbury
Mini web site featuring photos, paintings, a timeline, sub-sections on the Omega Workshops, Roger Fry, and Duncan Grant, and biographical notes.

Bloomsbury: Books, Art and Design
Exhibition of paintings, designs, and ceramics at Toronto University featuring Hogarth Press, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, Quentin Bell, and Stephen Tomlin.

Blogging Woolf
A rich enthusiast site featuring news of events, exhibitions, new book reviews, relevant links, study resources, and anything related to Bloomsbury and Virginia Woolf

Hyper-Concordance to Virginia Woolf
Search the texts of all Woolf’s major works, and track down phrases, quotes, and even individual words in their original context.

A Mrs Dalloway Walk in London
An annotated description of Clarissa Dalloway’s walk from Westminster to Regent’s Park, with historical updates and a bibliography.

Women’s History Walk in Bloomsbury
Annotated tour of literary and political homes in Bloomsbury, including Gordon Square, University College, Bedford Square, Doughty Street, and Tavistock Square.

Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
News of events, regular bulletins, study materials, publications, and related links. Largely the work of Virginia Woolf specialist Stuart N. Clarke.

BBC Audio Essay – A Eulogy to Words
A charming sound recording of a BBC radio talk broadcast in 1937 – accompanied by a slideshow of photographs of Virginia Woolf.

A Family Photograph Albumn
Leslie Stephens’ collection of family photographs which became known as the Mausoleum Book, collected at Smith College – Massachusetts.

Bloomsbury at Duke University
A collection of book jacket covers, Fry’s Twelve Woodcuts, Strachey’s ‘Elizabeth and Essex’.

More on biography
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Twentieth century literature

Rupert Brooke biography

September 21, 2009 by Roy Johnson

national icon of the young ‘doomed’ poet

Rupert Brooke (1887—1915) was only ever on the fringe of the Bloomsbury Group – but he was well acquainted with its central figures, such as Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey. He was born in Rugby in Warwickshire, where his father taught classics and was a housemaster at the famous public school. He himself attended the school, along with Duncan Grant. The boy soon grew into a man whose handsome figure transfixed admirers of both sexes. He was almost six foot tall, academically clever, and good at sports – representing the school in cricket and rugby. He was also highly creative: he wrote verse throughout his childhood, having gained a love of poetry from reading Browning.

In 1906 he won a scholarship to King’s College at Cambridge University, and whilst there he became a member of the Apostles, a semi-secret debating society whose other members included Bertrand Russell, E.M.Forster, Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf, and John Maynard Keynes. He helped to found the Marlowe Society drama club, acted in plays, and wrote poetry.

In 1910 his father died suddenly, and Brooke was for a short time in Rugby a deputy housemaster. Thereafter he lived on an allowance from his mother. His first intimate relationship is thought to have been with Denham Russell-Smith, the younger brother of one of his close friends at Rugby.

In 1911 Brooke published his first collection of verse, Poems, and his work was featured in the periodical Georgian Poetry, edited by his friend, Sir Edward Marsh. Over the next twenty years, the book sold almost 100 000 copies. He became famous and popular in both literary and political circles.

He was a leader of a group of young ‘Neo-pagans’, who slept outdoors, embraced a religion of nature, and took up vegetarianism. Astonishing though it might seem, at one time Virginia Woolf joined them in Grantchester to swim naked at midnight in Byron’s Pool where Lord Byron used to bathe whilst a student at Cambridge. Other Neo-Pagan hangers-on included Augustus John, then in his heyday of wandering gypsy-Bohemian. Virginia Woolf wrote of this phase in a memoir:

Under his influence the country near Cambridge was full of young men and women walking barefoot, sharing his passion for bathing and fish diet, disdaining book learning, and proclaiming that there was something deep and wonderful in the man who brought the milk and in the woman who watched the cows.

In 1911 Brooke was secretly engaged to Noel Olivier, five years his junior. The affair was for all participants frustrating and subsequently Brooke had an affair with the actress Cathleen Nesbitt. Overworked and emotionally empty, Brooke suffered a nervous breakdown.

In the spring of 1912, Brooke and Ka Cox went to Germany, where in a mood of homesickness he wrote a poem about his home ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester’, which is among his most admired poems.

Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain?… oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?

It is interesting to note that Brooke’s method of poetic composition was to first of all assemble a list of pairs of rhyming words, and then fill in the lines which preceded them. The Old Vicarage is now occupied by the Cambridge physicist Mary Archer and her husband Jeffrey, the ‘novelist’, former politician, and ex-jailbird.

The group of five sonnets called 1914 that Rupert Brooke wrote in December 1914 and finished in January 1915 became, within a few months, some of the most praised and widely read poems of their day. They glorified England and the idea of dying for England.

IF I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

In fact, he never saw active service.

His poetry gained many enthusiasts and he was taken up by Edward Marsh, who brought him to the attention of Winston Churchill, who was at that time First Lord of the Admiralty. Through these connections he was commissioned into the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a temporary Sub-Lieutenant shortly after his 27th birthday and took part in the Royal Naval Division’s Antwerp expedition in October 1914.

He sailed with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on 28 February 1915 but developed sepsis from an infected mosquito bite. He died on 23 April 1915 off the island of Lemnos in the Aegean on his way to a battle at Gallipoli. As the expeditionary force had orders to depart immediately, he was buried at in an olive grove on the island of Skyros, Greece.