What is the difference between a preposition and a word used as if it were a preposition?

Recently two commenters on an online article got into a disagreement about whether “more [adj.] than him” or “more [adj.] than he” is correct to the exclusion of the other. I weighed in with “Both Egg Regis and Squid Viscous [not their real pseudonyms] are mistaken; than can be either a conj. (‘more [adj.] than he’) or a prep. (‘more [adj] than him’).”

To me this is intuitive, but who cares about my intuition? But fear not--Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed., agrees with me. Here is MW’s usage note for ²than (prep.) Material in square brackets appears in the first hard-copy printing (FHCP) (2003) and not in the online dictionary (OD) as of June 16, 2011; material in curly brackets appears in the OD and not in the FHCP, and yes, I already know that I need to get a life. Anyhow, here’s that usage note.

After [about] 200 years of innocent if occasional use, the preposition than was called into question by 18th century grammarians. Some 200 years of elaborate [and sometimes tortuous] reasoning have led to these present-day inconsistent conclusions: than whom is standard but clumsy [<Beelzebub...than whom, Satan except, none higher sat — John Milton>] <T. S. Eliot, than whom nobody could have been more insularly English — Anthony Burgess>; than me may be acceptable in speech <a man no mightier than thyself or me — {Shakespeare} [Shak.]> <why should a man be better than me because he's richer than me — William Faulkner, in a talk to students>; than followed by a third-person objective pronoun (her, him, them) is {usually} [usu.] frowned upon. Surveyed opinion tends to agree with these conclusions. Our evidence shows that than {is used as a conjunction more commonly than as a} [is more common than the] preposition, that than whom is chiefly limited to writing, and that me is more common after the preposition than the third-person objective pronouns. {In short,} [You have the same choice Shakespeare had;] you can use than either as a conjunction or as a preposition.

Hear hear!

But that’s not the point of this post. The point is the very strange treatment of this question in The Oxford English Dictionary. (As I’ve mentioned in the past, I refer to the OED without italics, based on The Chicago Manual of Style, which I also refer to without italics: “Names of scriptures and other highly revered works are capitalized but not usually italicized” [CMS, 16th ed., 8.102].) The OED doesn’t recognize than as a preposition, but this is its definition 1b of than (conj.).

With a personal or relative pronoun in the objective case instead of the nominative (as if than were a preposition). This is app. the invariable construction in the case of than whom, which is universally accepted instead of than who. With the personal pronouns it is now considered incorrect.

This strikes me as very odd. “As if than were a preposition”? From a lexicographer’s point of view, what is the difference between a preposition and a word used as if it were a preposition?

That’s the question that all this hoohah was leading up to. And here are a few loose ends.

Why did the exemplary quotation from Milton disappear from the online version of MW’s usage note? The answer is suggested by the OED, which also employs that quotation when discussing than when it’s used as if it were a preposition.

1667 Milton Paradise Lost ii. 299 Bëëlzebub...then whom, Satan except, none higher sat.

From Middle English through the seventeenth century, than was sometimes spelled then. I’m guessing that MW deleted the quotation because using the correct (viz., Milton's) spelling would have just confused the issue. And I like the look of the two consecutive diaereses, but that's beside the point, and I don't do digressions.

It’s worth mentioning, in my possibly worthless opinion, that the OED also lists an obsolete pronoun than.

After a prep.: That; as in for þan for that (reason), therefore; for al þan, for all that (FOR prep. 23b); not (na) for than, notwithstanding that. See also for þan.

I find this stuff interesting, but there's another oddity, probably a computer glitch. "See also for þan" is a link, but it goes to the entry for than as an obsolete pronoun--the entry in which the link itself appears.

A word that should make our eyebrow hairs go boioioing

Like "veritable tsunami" and "much ink has been spilled," "raise a red flag" annoys the broccoli out of me. I hope to popularize "make your eyebrow hairs go boioioing" as an alternative cliché.

This article is downright tolerable, except for one thing:

So it didn't necessarily come as a surprise when I read that researchers have now proved that listening to your favorite melodies and harmonies can trigger the brain to release large amounts of dopamine.

"Proved"? Indeed not, and in fact the linked-to study doesn't claim to have proved anything; the closest it comes is "indicate." When another study comes along indicating that music doesn't stimulate the release of dopamine, that also won't be definitive proof.

In our work as manuscript editors, our eyebrow hairs should go boioioing when we come across claims of proof. We will usually not be competent to evaluate how good a study is, but we should question talk of proof. Many of the scholars whose work we play with will appreciate it and tone down the language.

Tolerability

A former colleague of mine, Harold Henderson (whose permission to name him I'm going to get after I post this), used to answer "I'm tolerable" when people asked how he was. To which I used to reply "yeah, right, if you think so." I miss Harold, and conceivably one of the reasons for posting this--a reason I dare not speculate on even to myself--is that it gives me an excuse to contact him to get his permission to mention him here.

Lately--which means over the last few years, but since I'm old I have a long perspective, and anything a few years ago is recent to me--and where was I? Right. I remember now. Lately, I've been noticing that some people say "I'm awesome" or "I'm good" or the like when you ask how they are. Which used to sound weird to me. I mean, we're not asking their opinions of themselves or asking them to do a self-esteem exercise. It no longer sounds weird to me because I've heard it so often. (Actually, it still does. I'm still getting used to "into" meaning "interested in," which I first noticed around forty years ago.) But anyhow, nowadays "tolerable" seems like a suitable answer to the question, especially if, like me, you have terrific self-esteem but don't want to brag about your sheer (as opposed to opaque) awesomeness.

Point is, from now on I'm going to say that I'm tolerable when people ask how I am. If I remember. Thank you, Harold Henderson.

Venting my feelings

One of these days, if I get around to it, I may do a real post. In the meantime, may I vent my feelings? Thank you.

I hate "veritable tsunami." I hate "much ink has been spilled."

I don't feel any better now, but thank you for indulging me anyway.

Sokal revisited

(Those who are visiting from Facebook should know that the previous post, the one on AhfPæk, is the one I was talking about on Facebook.)

Back in 1996, in an early part of my dotage, I loved the Lingua Franca article in which Alan Sokal exposed his own hoax; I got many a laugh from it. Now Michael Bérubé provides an interesting mixed review of that article. I think it's worth a read.

This blog has no opinion on Alan Sokal, Michael Bérubé, Social Text, science studies, science, Andrew Ross, E. O. Wilson, sociobiology, Steve Fuller (whom I don't think highly of--that's a statement of fact about me, not an opinion about him), intelligent design, or the objective reality, nonobjective reality, objective nonreality, and/or nonobjective nonreality of gravity.

The blog is unable to miss Lingua Franca, not having existed when LF was around.

AhfPæk

Before I get into the main topic, let me tell you about my favorite source of white noise (it will tie in later). It's SBS Radio, an Australian network that broadcasts in some sixty-six languages (not counting English). I listen to languages that I have no clue in. It's pleasant background sound, and occasionally there's some very good music (and also some boring music). If you don't want to pay attention to it, you probably shouldn't listen to any languages that are closely related to languages you know. "Did they just say that four amoebae are playing hockey? It sounded just like 'four amoebae are playing hockey' in that cognate language I studied for a year in junior high." I listen to a bunch of the languages (nothing Romance or Germanic; too many words similar to English); sometimes I tend to gravitate to Amharic and Cook Island Maori. It's incredibly cool to me that Maori and Cook Island Maori are on SBS's list as two separate languages. The Cantonese broadcast is annoying. It includes a long feature in which a man and a woman are talking and laughing, with a recorded instrumental badoomp-clang every once in a while. Sounds like a lot of annoying American anglophone radio.

Anyhow, be that as it may.

It used to strike me as odd that some of us Midwesterners refer to Pakistan as "Pahkistahn"; odder still that they talk about "Pahkistahn" in the same breath as "Æfghænistæn." This never struck me as incorrect, just unusual; now it strikes me as both nonincorrect and nonunusual (languages change), but still odd.

Odder than the pronunciation is the reaction of some Republicans to it (President Obama appears to be the main popularizer of it), and odd and downright incorrect is the reaction of some Democrats to the Republican reaction. For example, here's Steve Benen of Washington Monthly, back in 2008, quoting some conservatives bellyaching about Obama's pronunciation:

The National Review's Mark Stein, for example, said that Obama prefers the "exotic pronunciation." He added, "[O]ne thing I like about Sarah Palin is the way she says 'Eye-raq'."

This came after the National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez posted an email that argued, "[N]o one in flyover country says Pock-i-stahn. It's annoying."

This is truly a stupid thing to make into a campaign issue. Here's Benen's response to this nonsense:

The inanity of what the right decides to whine about never ceases to amaze me. That Obama's pronunciation is accurate is irrelevant. Mispronunciation apparently makes some conservatives feel better about themselves, and raises doubts about candidates who care to get this right. "Elites" care about country names; real Americans don't.

So "Pækistæn" is incorrect? How so? If something is commonplace enough for people to complain that it's wrong, then it's idiomatic in some speech community; if you're going to be cheeky enough to claim that idiom is incorrect, you have a serious burden of proof. How do we know that "Pækistæn" is incorrect? The usual answer is that that's not how Pakistanis pronounce it.

This isn't a convincing argument. The problem is that we're speaking English. In my listening to SBS (I told you I'd come back to it), I've heard non-English radio reports in which the announcer refers to something that sounds to my non-IPA ears like "Ámrika." But English- and Spanish-speaking Americans accent the vowel between the em and the ar; French-speaking Americans have a long but unaccented vowel there. (Can't comment on Portuguese or indigenous languages.) In "Ámrika," that vowel completely disappears. Would anyone be brazen enough to say that those who say "Ámrika" in their native language are mispronouncing their own native language? No? But that's not how Americans pronounce it. If "Pækistæn" is incorrect English because that isn't the Pakistani pronunciation, then "Ámrika" should be incorrect in other languages because that's not how Americans pronounce it in their languages (as far as I know).

By the way, Steve Benen, the opponent of what he takes to be mispronunciation, misspelled the name of the National Review's Mark Steyn in the excerpt quoted above. I don't consider this a big deal in itself; this isn't one of those "nyah nyah nyah, I found a typo" blogs. But if you're going to complain about other people's errors, you should try to get stuff right.

More ridiculous, but this is a matter of opinion, and this blog avoids opinion, is Benen's use of "argued" when he said Lopez "argued, '[N]o one in flyover country says Pock-i-stahn. It's annoying.'"

It should go without saying that this blog has no opinion on President Obama, Steve Benen, Mark Steyn, Kathryn Jean Lopez, Pakistan, or Afghanistan.

This is downright hilarious

At least I think so. It's definitely worth a listen. My favorite part is when they call it a new version.

Poorly stated

President Obama:

I think it's tempting not to negotiate with hostage takers, unless the hostage gets harmed.

Let's assume he meant "is going to get harmed." Anyhow, doesn't the qualifier mean that one should always negotiate with hostage takers?

This blog has no opinion on President Obama, on those he calls hostage takers, on the taking of hostages, or on whether one should negotiate with hostage takers. (In private life, I may have such opinions.)

A prescient people

This originally appeared on another blog long ago. Thank you to the proprietor of the other blog for not giving me grief about reposting it here.

The opening words of Alan Wolfe, "The Great Jewish-American Synthesis," Chronicle of Higher Education, June 3, 2005:

Ever since the first Jew arrived on American shores 350 years ago, one question has persistently been asked but never definitively answered. Should Jews accommodate themselves to the culture of the United States...?

Maybe they used the Bible code. Wolfe fails to address this possibility.

Fantasies

Last weekend, I went to a musical venuviality called the Stained Glass Coffeehouse. They should be ashamed of themselves for serving coffee in insufficiently clean vessels, but at least they're providing full disclosure. Not my problem, since I don't drink coffee. (Personal revelation! personal revelation!, this is turning into a downright blog!)

But that's not why I'm writing this, and the stained glasses aren't why I went there. I went there because Claudia Schmidt was performing. She pointed out, correctly, that what doesn't kill you only makes you wish you were dead, but that's not why I'm writing this either. Schmidt has a fantasy about some screaming pundit at some point in the screamage saying "I don’t know" and walking out. That isn't my fantasy (yikes!, this really is becoming a genuine blog). Mine is that someday when some pundits are screaming at or discussing with one another, one of them will say, "Well, you've raised a good point. I may need to rethink some of this."

Yeah, right, whatever.

And one more thing. In the first paragraph, I wrote "They should be ashamed of themselves for serving coffee in insufficiently clean vessels, but at least they're providing full disclosure." So before the comma, I'm telling them they should be ashamed of themselves; after the comma, I'm praising them for being shameless. I acknowledge this now in order to forestall the derisory comments.