962. We explore why phrases like "time flies" and "fast approaching" reveal deeper perspectives on time — is it us moving or the event? Plus, you may think you know how to use commas, but just like people, they can be more complex than they appear at first glance.
962. We explore why phrases like "time flies" and "fast approaching" reveal deeper perspectives on time — is it us moving or the event? Plus, you may think you know how to use commas, but just like people, they can be more complex than they appear at first glance.
The "time" segment was written by by Sarah Duffy, a senior lecturer in English language and linguistics in the Department of Humanities at Northumbria University, Newcastle. It originally appeared on The Conversation and appears here through a Creative Commons License.
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by Sarah Duffy
New Year has arrived, or have we arrived at New Year? While both statements convey the same idea, they're viewed from two different perspectives on time.
On the one hand, we may think of events as things that are on the move, heading towards us. “Holidays are coming” is a classic example of the “moving time” perspective. Time is seen as an unstoppable train, hurtling towards us from the future and into the past.
On the other hand, we might imagine ourselves as being on the move through time, as in: “We’ve arrived at the moment of truth” — [this is called] the “moving ego” perspective. Here, time is seen as a path for us to move along, into the future.
While these perspectives differ, they both see the past lying behind us, the present as the place where we are, and the future as ahead of us. But does our perspective on time simply boil down to a matter of preference or are other factors also at play?
Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and stick around because after we reflect on the language of time in this segment by Sarah Duffy, we'll talk about why commas are like people on the subway.
Although many languages across the globe picture the future as in front of us and the past as behind us, there are some notable exceptions. The Yupno community of Papua New Guinea, for instance, point downhill towards the mouth of the river when talking about the past, and up the mountain to the source of the river when discussing the future. An expression like “a few years ago” (omoropmo bilak) roughly translates as “down there other side year.”
In other languages, people’s perspectives on time differ radically from the way they speak about time. That is, there are “disassociations” between the two. A case in point is Darija — a Moroccan dialect of modern Arabic — where both the future and the past can be seen as something that lies ahead of us.
In one study, speakers of Darija completed a number of time related tasks, such as matching objects to boxes representing the future and the past. Here, individuals were more likely to position the future as behind the speaker and the past as in front of them – opposite to the arrangement found in the Arabic language.
One suggested reason for this is that compared to many Europeans and Americans, Moroccans tend to be more past focused. They place more value on tradition, as well as more importance on older generations. In this way, people who focus on the past devote more attention to it — as though past events were objects that they could see with their eyes.
In other words, differences in perspectives on time can be rooted in what we focus on. But does our focus always remain the same or does it change from time to time?
Temporal milestones, such as landmark birthdays, the changing seasons, as well as new beginnings can affect people’s mindsets — particularly their perspectives on time.
For many, New Year provides an opportunity to start afresh, to reset the clock, or to make resolutions for the future. Google searches for gym visits, as well as commitments to pursue goals — such as learning something new or helping others – all increase at the start of the year.
In this way, the arrival of New Year can interrupt our attention from our day-to-day activities. The effect is that people are more likely to psychologically distance their “current” self from their “past” self — as they take a big picture view of their lives and aspire towards their new, more positive self image.
Another culprit that affects people’s perspectives on time is how they feel about an event in question. When asked to imagine a negative event in the future, like an examination, people are more likely to think of it as approaching them. By contrast, positive events in the future, like weddings, are seen as things that we actively move towards.
Of course, there are also personality related differences in attitudes towards events in time. The anticipation of lengthy social gatherings — such as birthday parties or reunions – may sound more appealing to extroverts than introverts. In the words of the introverted author Sophia Dembling:
If parties were roller coasters, extroverts would be the riders with their arms in the air, and introverts would be the ones hanging on with a white-knuckled grip.
All in all, this paints a quite a complex picture of time. Differences in perspectives emerge on every level, from language and culture, to temporal milestones and personal attitudes. And in this way, how you see in the New Year might actually reveal more about your frame of mind than you had realised.
So whether you’ve arrived at New Year or New Year has arrived, whether it’s in front of you or behind, whether you doffed your hat to it quietly from the comforts of your own home or from a crowded room — whatever your view, one thing’s for sure, it happens regardless.
That segment was by Sarah Duffy, a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics in the Department of Humanities at Northumbria University, Newcastle. It originally appeared on The Conversation and appears here through a Creative Commons License.
by Mignon Fogarty
Commas are a workhorse punctuation mark. They’re like the people you ride with on the subway every day, the delivery guy who comes to your office, and the parents of your children’s classmates — you see them so often that you think you know them just from sheer exposure. Rarely does a paragraph go by in which you don’t encounter a comma. But like those familiar strangers, commas are complex. You might get a sense of them from casual observation, but to truly know them, you have to dig deeper.
So let’s get to know the comma a little better.
Sometimes your subway buddy wears a suit with leather Oxfords, and sometimes he wears jeans with Converse high-tops. His different activities call for different styles. It's the same way with the comma.
If you’re writing a nonfiction book, you need a tight-laced style: the Oxford comma. It’s orderly. It’s clear. Whoever told you the "and" takes the place of the comma was wrong.
The Oxford comma (the style recommended by Oxford University Press and Chicago Manual of Style) is the last comma in a series, the comma before the final "and" or "or":
He wore a suit, a tie, and Oxfords.
He felt hot, sweaty, and tired.
If you’re writing something lighter — a press release or newspaper articles — you can get away with a more relaxed style and omit the Oxford comma. The Associated Press recommends against the Oxford comma in simple sentences, unless leaving it out will cause confusion.
He wore jeans, a T-shirt and high-tops.
He felt relaxed, cool and eager.
Neither of those simple sentences needs an Oxford comma for the meaning to be clear.
When might the Oxford comma be needed for clarity? Well, consider the difference between these two examples:
We invited the jugglers, JFK, and Stalin.
We invited the jugglers, JFK and Stalin.
Without the Oxford comma, it reads like JFK and Stalin were the jugglers. And I'd take odds they weren't.
Now, let’s let JFK and Stalin, those wild and zany jugglers, lead us to appositives, which are the reason the second JFK-Stalin sentence is misleading without an Oxford comma.
Appositives are nouns or noun phrases that name the nouns or noun phrases they follow, and appositives follow a comma if deleting the appositive wouldn’t change the big-picture meaning of the sentence. Here are two examples:
She had a crush on the guy from the subway, Xavier.
"Xavier" is the appositive that tells us the name of the guy from the subway. We can also flip it around:
She had a crush on Xavier, the guy from the subway.
Now "the guy from the subway" is the appositive that tells us who Xavier is.
When a list includes a mix of descriptions (like "jugglers") and names (like "JFK and Stalin"), it can look like the last two items are appositives instead of independent items in the list:
We invited two dead political figures, JFK and Stalin. (That was clearly an appositive.)
We invited the jugglers, JFK and Stalin. (That's meant to be a list without an Oxford comma, but it could also be misinterpreted as an appositive just as when it followed the phrase "two dead political figures.")
In the sentence "We invited two dead political figures, JFK and Stalin," the meaning of the sentence doesn’t change if we leave off "JFK and Stalin." We have less information, but what’s happening isn’t different. That’s why there’s a comma before "JFK and Stalin" — in grammar terms, the two guys are nonessential.
If leaving out the appositive would change the meaning of the sentence, it isn’t separated from the rest of the sentence by commas. Consider these examples:
Xavier’s subway buddy, Shawna, always sits to his right.
In this sentence, Shawna is Xavier’s only subway buddy, so her name is extra information and is isolated by commas. If we take out the commas, we change the meaning:
Xavier’s subway buddy Shawna always sits to his right. (with no commas)
In this sentence, Xavier has many subway buddies, and we’re being told that it is just one of those buddies, Shawna, who sits to his right. If we leave out "Shawna" and write "Xavier’s subway buddy always sits to his right," we'd presume that Xavier has only one subway buddy, and we don’t know the name. Leaving out "Shawna" would change the meaning of the sentence, which makes it essential, and means that it is not isolated by commas. (These essential elements are also called “restrictive” because they restrict the meaning of the sentence.)
Isolating nonessential elements is one of the big jobs of a comma; it extends far beyond appositives. Think of the comma as that unapproachable person on the subway who gives you a “you don’t need to know that” look when you ask a friendly question. Commas around a phrase are a clue that you don't need to know the information; it can be lifted out of the sentence without changing the meaning. Consider these examples:
People, who talk on the subway, annoy Isabelle.
In this sentence, Isabelle finds all people annoying. It’s just extra information that their talking on the subway is one of the things that gets under her skin.
People who talk on the subway annoy Isabelle. (with no commas)
In that sentence, Isabelle is less of a misanthrope. She’s only annoyed by people who talk on the subway, not all people.
Commas have many other uses, but today you've started to get to know them a little better. Remember that the Oxford comma is a style choice and sometimes you need it to avoid confusion. And commas often surround elements that are merely extra information and not essential for the meaning of the sentence.
That segment was written by me and a version of it originally appeared in Office Pro Magazine.
Finally, I have a familect story:
"Hi, this is Julie. I'm calling from the northern Chicago suburbs, and I have a familect story for you. My husband and I came up with the phrase 'fox chores.' So this came because we really like watching documentaries, especially nature ones. When my daughter was an infant. We were watching a David Edinburgh documentary, which featured a pair, a mated pair, of white foxes who live in the city, and it turns out that foxes are one of the few animals where both parents take care of the young. So while the mom would take care of the babies in the day, the dad would go out looking for food and then materials and bring it all back to the family, and inadvertently we realized we were living like foxes where I would stay with my daughter, and my husband would go grocery shopping anything and bring everything back that the baby and I needed back home. And even now that she's older, if one of us has to do something and the other has to take care of our daughter so she doesn't get underfoot, that is referred to as a 'fox chore.' Thanks for the show. Love it and, and hope to hear from you soon. Thank you."
Thank you, Julie! I love that you share the childcare chores. Very foxy.
If you want to share the story of your familect, your family dialect, a word your family and only your family uses, call the voicemail line at 83 -321-4-GIRL. It’s in the show notes, and be sure to tell me the story behind your familect because that’s always the best part.
And this is probably the last time I'll mention it for a while, but if you got a gift card for the holidays, it's not too late to start the year with THE GRAMMAR DAILY. It's like a tip-a-day calendar you keep forever. It has 365 pages with tips, cartoons, puzzles, and quizzes to entertain you for the whole year. The weeks are numbered 1, 2, 3 and so on, so you can start anytime, but I do like to start things like that the first week of the year. It just feels more orderly. That's THE GRAMMAR DAILY.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to audio engineer, Nathan Semes; marketing associate, Davina Tomlin; ad operations specialist, Morgan Christianson; director of podcasts, Brannan Goetschius; marketing assistant, Kamryn Lacey; and digital operations specialist, Holly Hutchings, who says the best concert she's ever been to was Green Day in Oakland, which is their hometown.
And I’m Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. That's all. Thanks for listening.