Disabled access

I know it’s all too easy to knock Health and Safety rules, and the like. I’ve done it before and – yes – that smirky cynicism will be knocked out of me, if ever I get trapped in a blazing building because the Evac chairs have not been properly installed, or the emergency lighting isn’t working.

All the same . . . try this story.

The Classical Faculty building in Cambridge (where I tend at the moment, finishing my Pompeii book, to spend rather more hours of my life than I do at home) has just installed disabled access: (semi-)automatic front doors. This isn’t anyone’s fault. We were obliged to do this to be “compliant” (and, as one of my senior colleagues put it, to be “transparent” and “robust” too, no doubt).

So, until two weeks ago we had perfectly manageable front doors : a double set - one pair of outside doors plus another pair the other side of a small lobby. They were very easy to handle. The outside pair were heavy-ish, opened one way only and were still just about possible to manage if you had a large pile of books in your arms. The inner pair swung both ways and were easy to push or pull from whichever way you approached.

They have now been “up-graded’ to disabled use, and are almost unusable by the rest of us.

Both sets have been fitted with automatic openers, operated with a push button, wheel-chair height. If you choose not to push the buttons, they are unwieldy and certainly far too heavy to open with a pile of books in hand. If you opt for the button method, you have to stand and wait for several seconds while the doors graciously  (ie very slowly) open before you. It’s inconvenient enough with just a few graduate students and elderly academics going to and fro during the vacation. Heaven knows how this system will work when confronted with hundreds of undergraduates, trying to go both ways.

In addition to this, these once relatively elegant doors are now encumbered with machinery and look quite ghastly. And given the complicated system and the couple of nice guys who took about a week to install it, I expect that we could have financed several Masters’ students for the price of all this.

How many disabled people visit our Faculty each year? A handful. Now, I realise that the current policy is that wheel-chair users or others who are “physically challenged” should not have to ASK for help; they should have free access wherever without having to draw attention to their needs. But surely, in most cases, it would be better, more efficient, cheaper and (frankly) more ideologically sound to change hearts and minds -- so that no-one at all would ever see a disabled user hoving into view without stopping to hold the door open, offer a hand or whatever. Shouldn’t we all think it our job to help those who need it, as a matter of course?

These, legislation-driven, installations are a way of making us feel that we’re doing something for the disabled, without actually having to do anything ourselves. A bit like all those emergency notices in Braille in American hotels – fine, if the blind know where to put their hands to find them. But don’t you imagine that, when fire strikes, we able-bodied will have scarpered, leaving the blind to find the notices we so kindly put up for them?

In our case in the Faculty, the disabled can now get into the lobby by merely pushing a couple of buttons. But what then? They can’t get upstairs (because the lift to the first floor is via another entrance). And the library has no push button doors.

So now we’re “compliant” because they can wheel themselves around the lobby and go out again.

Comments

[F]

Most people (particularly Lidwina) commenting have completely misunderstood the point of Mary's article. She is not bemoaning the installation of the doors, or the "special treatment" given to physically less able people. She's asking for us to return to the outlook where offering your seat to a pregnant woman or an elderly person, or opening the door for someone ina wheelchair, wasn't considered to be "drawing attention to their situation" but rather simply a polite gesture. If people gained some good old fashioned manners and held the door open for more people in general, regardless of their physical ability, this stand-off between those physically able and those less able would be far less prevalent.

[Lidwina]

As you could tell by googling my nickname, I suffer from one of these nasty diseases which will put me in a wheelchair one of these days. I can actually get quite annoyed at articles which suggest wheelchair users don't need to go to places other people can visit without a thought.

Contemplating a badly thought out solution like yours: Surely a university full of supposedly intelligent people could come up with a better way?

Dear Mary, get in a wheelchair and try to visit a public loo or library or your town hall. Wait at every stiff door or steep ramp for someone to help you - ha ha. There are whole websites dedicated to photographs of blocked wheelchair access. Very funny for the two-legged, I am sure.

[Tony Francis]

There is an ancient "action in trove" or "trover" whereby the finder of a treasure trove was the owner, unless the real owner could be identified. A typical case found in many law school texts is the 1722 action of Armory v. Delamirie:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armory_v._Delamirie
Note the amusing change in tense of this article: it starts off in present tense, then shifts to past tense.
The wiki article on trover is incorrect.
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trover
Action in trove means "finders keepers, losers weepers", unless the loser can be identified.

A typical case is from Tennessee, 1887, Deaderick v. Oulds in which a number of logs were being floated down a river. One of the logs ended up on a man's land by mistake. He claimed (successfully) ownership of the log in trove. American law of trover is found:
http://www.muenzgeschichte.ch/downloads/laws-usa.pdf

[PL]

The inheritance from Law French is richer than one might think: not only legal terms like plaintiff, culprit, tort, attorney general, court martial, and the "-ee" ending of passives like employee, divorcee, trainee, etc, but everyday expressions like default, recovery, gist (the "gist" of the matter is where the matter "lies"), trove (as in treasure trove), etc.

[Tony Francis]

Dear Lucy: I am chuckling also. Some of the comments were of this ilk: "Aquinas has no place on Wiki"; "Aquinas has no place in a discussion of US law"; "Aquinas has no place in a discussion of the United States"; "All heretics were Catholics so there is no point in discussing whether they were baptized, since they were all baptized"; "Discussing Aquinas has a point, but you chose the wrong things to discuss"; "No discussion of Aquinas should be made without stating that he was a complete failure"; "Theology has no place in a discussion of the death penalty"; "How do we know if Aquinas picked the right scriptural pasages?"; "Using Aquinas' own words expressed a point of view, which isn't allowed on Wiki"; "Aquinas' work is original research, which is not allowed on Wiki";. These are bone head comments, made by men, in an authoritarian manner, by people who have no idea what they are talking about. I have given up on this topic! I will leave it to these know-it-alls to sort out. There is no satisfying them.
Bracton was an ecclesiastic, meaning he probably wrote in Latin. Church courts were recorded in Latin in those days (1210-1268). Common law courts were conducted in Law French:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_French
The Wiki article is incomplete: there were repetitive actions by Parliament outlawing Law French from about 1300 until the mid 1700's which the common law courts ignored. A good source of medieval documents is:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook-law.html#ENGLAND%20LAW
Bracton's book was titled: "De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae" -"On the Laws and Customs of England"- but that page seems to not be available (at least I can't get it to come up on the Fordham site).
Derek Roebuck wrote a nice little book on Common Law which details Law French and the growth of the English langauge. I don't have it right now, but there is a copy at the Wichita State library.

[PL]

Dear Tony Francis,
There are abler pens (keyboards) than mine to comment, but here's what I can say off the top of my inadequately filled head.
"Gutter language" is an exaggeration-- though of course the language of a conquered people, however illustrious it once was, is naturally apt to suffer a loss of prestige. But I know the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle continued to be written (in Anglo-Saxon, sive Old English) for about 60 years after the Conquest. True, there seems to have been no English literature to speak of in post-Conquest England until the 14th-- or at least late 13th-- century. But neither was there much in French-- Norman or otherwise-- I believe.
After the Conquest the English language went underground, if not quite into the gutter, and re-emerged, transformed, only around the beginning of the 100 Years War, when (as you note) English national self-consciousness was beginning to be felt. The usurper Henry IV Bolingbroke was, I'm told, the first post-Conquest monarch to speak English as his mother-tongue-- though he and his successors, down at least to Elizabeth I, could probably all speak French as fluently as the post-Petrine tsars did).
When Old English re-emerged as Middle English its grammatical forms had become simplified and its vocabulary had undergone a massive infusion of French words. But it was still essentially the same language: its basic structure, most of its homely vocabulary, and its "genius" or spirit-- that indefinable thing-- were intact. At least such is the view of most who can claim real learning in the matter; and I think anyone who has gone even the short way I have in OE I (as far as working my way through the whole of Beowulf) can see why it makes sense to regard it, not as a foreign language, like German or Dutch (though it superficially resembles them more than modern English), but as an early form of the language we speak today.
In its heyday, from the 7th to 10th century, OE was probably the richest, most sophisticated vernacular in Western Europe. Unfortunately, most of the vast literature we know to have been written in it has been lost. What we have, including Beowulf, is just fragments.
But as I say, there are many better able to tell you about this than I (perhaps not on Wiki ?). I can recommend the extensive history of English (very thorough, especially for the the early periods) printed at the beginning of Merriam Webster's 2nd International, Unabridged (not the debased 3rd International, which doesn't know or care about such things).
Did Bracton write only in Latin, or what?

[Michael Bulley]

To Paulo: I've only just seen your question to me about the subjunctive, so I'm afraid this reply is late.

I think it's reasonable to say that Modern English has a subjunctive, even if it's often well hidden. I'd say its forms from Old English are still here. So, if you take the old verb binden, the present indicative starts binde, bindest, bindeth whereas the present subjuctive starts binde, binde, binde. Even though most of the terminations no longer exist in modern English, the distinction between present indicative and subjunctive in the 3rd person singular remains. In the "be" variety of "be" in Old English, the indic is beo, bist, bith... and the subj beo, beo, beo...., this giving the modern subjunctive "I be", "you be", "he/she be" etc.

So "I insist she depart" contains a present subjunctive. I'd go out on a limb and say modern English also has a past subjunctive, though, except for the verb "to be", it looks just like the simple past in all persons. So, although you could use the present subj in "It was important that Richard Branson run his trains on time", I think you could also have "ran" for "run" with the same sense, and there "ran" would be subj.

It is important not to mix up grammatical terminology with the use of grammatical forms (present tenses are frequently used to refer to times other than the present, for example). So your example of "God save the Queen" may well have an optative sense, but English, like Latin, has no optative form. In English and Latin, that idea is expressed by the subjunctive. The sense is optative, the form subjunctive.

Hope this helps.

[Lucy]

... Um, Tony, looking over the most recent blog entry and comments, you had a go at those evil 'roving editors and their annoying habits, 'especially saying things with great authority, even though they don't know what they are saying'.

(A dig, but a friendly dig ... please take in the spirit it's meant)

[Lucy]

Tony,
Alfred the Great promoted the learning of English by all young 'angelcynn' (English) men, so that they could study religious texts and thus avert the threat of the Danes (God's punishment on the English for failing to be pious, as he thought). You could say English as a national language (and indeed the concept of 'angelcynn' or English-ness) came into being then, before the Norman conquest, and before the 100 years war. Certainly, I don't see why (or how!) Chaucer is a'first' English writer - even in a medieval (as opposed to Old English) context, you've got plenty before him - Laymon's Brut, for a start(c.1215).

English is quite a subtle and resilient language, but I don't think its grammar has ever really been analysed independently of the Latin tradition, which leads to the interesting situation PL describes.

[Tony Francis]

Dear PL: It is written that Anglo-Saxon English was considered a gutter language, something only the lowest members of society used after the Norman Conquest. The Kings after William I spoke only Norman French. Apparently, Henry II understood a few phrases in English, and spoke none. It was the 100 Years War that gave rise to English Nationalism, and birth to English as a legitimate langauge. There was a general eschewing of everything French during that time. This is why Chaucer, Wycliff, the story of Robin Hood, etc. are the first "English" writers/stories, and date from this time. Care to comment on this?
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_years_war

[Lucy]

PL - yes. And Paulo, I'm a student of English, and I'm not confused, because to me the term is more familiar than the optative. All this really goes back to SW Foska's point that understanding is more important than arbitrary classifications - so, if the classification system works for me, I'll use it. If it doesn't for you, use something else. Just be aware of what system you're referring to - what's the problem?

[PL]

Of course I meant "Schnell zu gehen".

[PL]

Dear Paulo-- the word "subjunctive" doesn't describe the thing very well; it's almost as bad as the word "participle" for a word that "participates" in the nature of both a verb and an adjective. But we mustn't let the clumsiness of grammatical terminology affect how we construct our sentences (Cf the irrelevance to objections against the traditional avoidance of split infinitives by good writers of the observation that English infinitives cannot be split, since the introductory "to" is a particle and not part of the verb), I suppose grammarians (speaking mainly about Latin) said "subjunctive" because that form of the verb was always used in an-- actual or implied-- "subjoined" clause.
Descriptively there is nothing wrong with regarding the "be" of "I know not what it be" as an infinitive introduced by an implied but omitted "may". I prefer calling it a "subjunctive" because, whatever the supposed innate genius of English may be, those who fashioned the language into the forms in which we have been usung it for the past 1500-odd years were nearly all trained in Latin grammar and thought about the structures of English in terms of Latin grammar (isn't that, for example, why we can quite normally say things like "I know him to be a good man", which are structurally Latin rather than native Germanic?). Latin grammar is a deep and pervasive part of our English linguistic heritage, and I hate to see it thrown away because linguistic science considers it an impurity.
In my Latin grammar "optative" is classified as one of the functions of the subjunctive.
But-- to go back to an example I cited earlier--- the "were" in "as it were" is pure subjunctive of uncertainty, and was traditionally used to translate Latin "quasi" (qua si esset: not to be confused with Italian "quasi", which usually just means "almost").
But I believe the reason the construction we clumsily call a "split infinitive" is very rare in English writing before the 19th century-- and thereafter mostly avoided by careful writers-- has less to do with imitating Latin (or French) construction than with the natural rhythms of English as a Germanic language. Shakespeare was no pedantic classicist, but it's hard to imagine him writing "To be or not to be . . ."; or Tennyson writing "To strive, to seek, to find, and to not yield". Anthony Burgess noted the parallel with German: "To go quickly" is "Schnell zu gangen", not "Zu schnell ganngen".
By all means let's preserve the Germanic soul of our language, but not at the expense of the shaping it has undergone over more than a millennium of association with other tongues, particularly Latin and French.

[Tony Francis]

Appalachian English is heard all through the south. My father's family (which was from Alabama, via Scotland, circa 1700) would often revert back to "hill talk" when mocking someone or just clowning around. Really, it was just a variant of Elizabethan English. Still, it was viewed by them as being backwards and ignorant. My mother would even talk like this on occassion, although where she picked it up remains to be demonstrated- maybe from my father's family. There is a variant of black American language called Ebonics, although it has been something of a joke:
http://www.en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Ebonics
After Desert Storm, I was in an Army hospital, and they were scurrying about trying to find someone who could speak Korean. A black kid from Louisiana, who was a big clown, announced: "I can't help you with Korean, but if you need someone to translate Ebonics, give me a call." I used to tell him of black idiomatic expressions I remembered from childhood, which were new to him. He would say, "Dotter Francis be teaching me archeological Ebonics."

Dear Michael Bulley

Where does this word "subjunctive" come from,and how does it apply to English? It works for Latin grammar, and for Greek, but, I suggest to apply it to English is not only a solecism, but confusing. I agree that using "be" instead of "should be" etc. avoids the "heaviness" or pleonasm, but the result is something rather more like the optative than the subjunctive. I need also to bring in the category of "conditional", which in English largely replaces the need to talk about "subjunctive" - "I'd forget about that if I were you" - this is optative and then conditional - why talk about "subjunctive"? It's very confusing to students of English. French, of course, really does have separate categories of "subjunctive and "conditional", but in English, if there ever was such a distinction, it is long dead, except in apparently hallowed grammar books.

"Hallowed be thy Name" - straightforward optative. "God save the Queen" - not Imperative, surely, but optative. Please leave the category "subjunctive" to Latin or French, where there is some systematic linguistic reason for taking it into account.

On your own head be it should you dispute this.

Paulo

[Michael Bulley]

The subjunctive, when it can be distinguished from the indicative, can be just right, without the heaviness of adding "should" or "may". There's a sonnet by William Browne, the text of a fine setting for baritone and piano by Mary Plumstead, in which the poet refers to his heart and says "if mine want aid" (= if mine should want aid). And, if it doesn't sound too boastful, I was satisfied to have thought up "though Quintilia grieve" for a translation I did of Catullus 96 (= though Q may grieve).

I never checked, but it was said a few years ago that the supermarket Sainsbury's had a certain range of wines, the expensive bottles in which had a label saying "It is recommended that this wine be...", whereas the cheaper ones had "It is recommended that this wine is...". The subjunctive only for the well-off.

[Tony Francis]

http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh30-2.html
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_English

[Lucy]

Yes, 'would of' is fine in terms of conveying meaning. I'm really interested in dialects and variations -thanks PL for the comments re. Black English; I like that idea about it being 'more permanent' - that's a really good example of how a non-standard (annoying term; don't know a less po-faced way of putting it) English is actually more expressive than its standard counterpart. If you want to be purely grammar-book correct, however, XLJ, 'would of' is not correct English grammar in any way, shape or form. But I think SW Foska's joke has it right. :-)

Nicholas, can you explain what you mean about the present infinitive? Maybe with an example? I still don't see how Miller isn't using 'it be' as a substitute for 'it is' (Though I'm aware he made some linguistic decisions for euphonic/poetic reasons rather than to adhere to strict linguistic-historical accuracy).

This has all gone wandering off Mary's original article, but please can we keep posting?

[PL]

Ain't that a whole nother question, XJY?

[SW Foska]

"would of" is fine as long as the other person understands. The point is not whether it conforms to what some tosser wrote in a book, but whether it means what it's supposed to mean to the recipient. I'm not sure it's a contraction though.
Old joke: American in Oxford to a don: "Say, dude! Where's the library at?"
Don: "It is not customary to end a sentence with a preposition."
American (after some thought): "OK, dude. How about this - Where's the library at, asshole?"

[Nicholas Wibberley]

Everything around us may be observed in many quite different ways. These differences arise neither from what is being observed, since all involved observe the same, nor from significant differences between observers since we are all the same species. The key is that differences of perspective are similar to the notion of observing one tree, a lot of trees, or the wood. I suggest that we are, most of us, not only conscious of our ability to switch between perspectives but confused when we find ourselves amongst those who lack not only such a facility, but any perspective sense at all.

The subjunctive usage is the tiniest thread in a vast tapestry. Lucy’s comment is illuminating because it is a mirror comment; ‘it be’ is not in fact used by Miller as an alternative to ‘it is’, it is rather the present infinitive which is now more frequently used in place of the subjunctive. And, yes, indeed, the subjunctive was extensively used in England in the Middle Ages and flourishing at the time of the Mayflower, and Miller’s use of it evokes the period. Anyone interested in the language of the Middle Ages might read The Paston Letters, OUP (ISBN-13: 978-0192836403). Aside from the readability of that collection, the letters illustrate, as does Shakespeare, how the subjunctive once flourished.

However, all this begins somewhere quite else; the subject is like one of those rotating illuminated mirror spheres in 1950’s dance halls, spheres with a circumference made up of countless tiny mirrors all having an identical relationship to the sphere as a whole.

It is my perception that increased population density has had, and is having, profound effects on almost every aspect of human life and I am engaged in a discursion on this matter. My difficulty in the ordinary way is that, whereas sometimes I feel I might have things to say, I have not the least idea to whom to address them. In this case I am considering something in the manner of the Lucretian hexameter, hoping that by wrapping myself in an all but incomprehensible artistic exercise, I may succeed in smuggling something of value through the Customs of the politically correct.

[Xjy]

"Would of" etc is correct grammar but incorrect orthography. I'm right in thinking that contracted forms are perfectly OK grammatically speaking, aren't I?

[PL]

Lucy-- The East Midlands "of/ have" confusion you mention is common all over America: "I should of known", "I might of been a contender".
Come to think of it, "be" as present indicative is still very much alive in (American) "Black English", where it is said to convey a slightly different sense from "am/is/are", which is also used. I think it suggests a more permanent sort of "being"; and when coupled with a gerund, a repeated action; so that "He be coming over every evening" is the same as standard English "He comes over every evening". But the the Black English speaker will also say, as in standard English, "He's coming over this evening".
This may be a clipped (or rump) form, as you suggest, derived in this case from something like "He's wont to be coming over every evening" (not that I've ever heard "wont" from the lips of a living speaker).
I didn't think you were belittling, only confused.

[doggerel]

The subjunctive:
it interests me that PL (who appears to be an American) has noticed that the subjunctive is used in constructions of necessity, requirement, command.
It had already occurred to me from Nicholas's first musings on this subject, that the subjunctive is a remnant of the effete ruling classes; it is mainly privileged people who speak using the subjunctive in England today. (Whether because highly educated, or because in positions of military or legal power).
Also, use of the subjunctive creates a distance between the speaker/writer and the subject, (whether it be the subject of discussion, or the person being addressed). Use of the subjunctive creates the effect of "I am actually way above you, some distance off, but I have the right to pontificate".
So what interests me about PL is the survival of the subjunctive in USA, and in French, where Revolutions have taken place (quoi que se soit), and the oppressor's yoke has been thrown off.
Does anyone have an explanation for this classless phenomenon?

[Lucy]

... trying to think of an example of what I meant. In East Midlands dialect, the phrases like 'would have', 'should have', 'could have' are slurred, and sound like 'would've' or 'would of'. Because, of course 'of' is a familiar word in the language, small children often think that 'would of' is a proper construction, and will write 'I would of gone out to play, but I was kept in'. In this case, it's incorrect grammar that is reinforced by prior familiarity with a commonly used word, but it might have been the same with 'it be' (present tense is more commonly used than the subjunctive) and 'it is necessary that it be'.