Ireland’s _Sunday Business Post_ informs us that the country’s bishops have come out with a startling admission.
From “LanguageLog”:http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3070.
by Henry Farrell on April 11, 2011
Ireland’s _Sunday Business Post_ informs us that the country’s bishops have come out with a startling admission.
From “LanguageLog”:http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3070.
{ 27 comments }
Anderson 04.11.11 at 3:09 pm
I suspect that headline wasn’t an accident.
Henry 04.11.11 at 3:24 pm
It may very well have been an accident. I am at least ten years out of date on Irish slang but xxxx ‘rules’ sounds very American to me – I doubt it would have occurred to the average Irish sub-editors.
Chris Bertram 04.11.11 at 3:27 pm
Even the way intended, it still sounds extraordinary: “not on Fridays or during Lent or during a state visit from the Holy Father.”
Substance McGravitas 04.11.11 at 3:28 pm
There seems to have been “rules ok” for a while.
Nick 04.11.11 at 3:47 pm
Surely it would be: “Bishops agree, sex abuse rules”.
Bloix 04.11.11 at 4:04 pm
“Agree” in UK and Irish usage does not take a preposition. So where an American would say, “the parties agreed to the terms of the contract,” in UK and Irish English “the parties agreed the terms of the contract.” Here, the bishops agreed certain rules, which is standard usage in Ireland although incorrect in the US.
Myles 04.11.11 at 5:34 pm
“Agree†in UK and Irish usage does not take a preposition.
What? Are you serious? How is this even possible? (I’ve never encountered it, myself) Goodness. Any other weird Anglo-Irish grammatical oddities?
Jeff R. 04.11.11 at 6:01 pm
Is this actually a differnece between UK and US English, or a difference between the Headline-ese dialecs of the two?
And would anyone over there ever say that parties have agreed disagree?
Gareth Rees 04.11.11 at 6:03 pm
Myles: it’s not a “weird Anglo-Irish grammatical oddity”, it’s just a sense of the word “agree” that you’re unfamiliar with. In the OED it’s sense 5: “agree, v. … 5. To arrange, concert, or settle (a thing in which various interests are concerned)” with citations back to 1523.
Gareth Rees 04.11.11 at 6:10 pm
Jeff: in sense 5 of “agree” you have to agree some thing (a truce, a security, a marriage, etc). To agree + verb you need one of the other senses (“agree to disagree” is sense 10c).
Myles 04.11.11 at 6:22 pm
In the OED it’s sense 5: “agree, v. … 5. To arrange, concert, or settle (a thing in which various interests are concerned)†with citations back to 1523.
Ah.
Philip 04.11.11 at 6:40 pm
To be pedantic in Brit/Irish usage ‘agree’ doesn’t have to take a preposition. The meaning of the headline would have been clarified by either putting ‘to’ (a preposition) or ‘that’ (a conjunction) before ‘agree’.
Jeff R people would say ‘agree to disagree’, because it’s an infinitive, and you would still agree with someone else.
Marc 04.11.11 at 8:28 pm
I think the actual punctuation should be
Bishops agree: sex abuse rules!
Bloix 04.11.11 at 8:38 pm
Myles, read the comments to the Language Log link that Henry provides. You’ll see that the Americans and Australians think that transitive agree is bizarre and the English and Irish think it’s perfectly normal. As I noted in the comments there, I’m an American lawyer with English clients, and when I first encountered transitive agree about ten years ago, I was baffled. They wanted to agree a settlement? What the hell were they talking about?
Sev 04.11.11 at 8:59 pm
“and self-abuse drools” (to conclude their conclusion)
Myles 04.11.11 at 9:22 pm
They wanted to agree a settlement? What the hell were they talking about?
Two nations divided by a common language, indeed.
tomslee 04.11.11 at 9:43 pm
“They wanted to agree a settlement?”
Better than taking it off of the table.
Stuart 04.11.11 at 10:51 pm
I didn’t really get this either the first few times I saw the image; I just assumed the “funny” was imagining what the rules they would agree to would be – diddle no more than 2 children per month (but up to 4 during lent), that sort of thing.
John Quiggin 04.11.11 at 11:12 pm
As an Australian, I would normally say:
“agree that” for assent to a proposition
“agree on” for a negotiation;
and “agree to” for an acquiescence or conditional promise.
So “the bishops agreed that sex abuse rules”, “the bishops agreed on rules for sex abuse”, “the bishops agreed to abuse sex rules”.
Myles 04.12.11 at 12:18 am
Better than taking it off of the table.
Or tabling it.
muddypaws 04.12.11 at 12:45 am
To say that the bishops agreed to rules, implies that there was approval for the principle of having rules.
To say that the bishops agreed rules, implies that specific rules were actually formulated and that they acquired consensus or approval.
If the headline had said “….bishops agreed to rules….” my response might have been “good, I wonder what the rules will eventually be, if they ever reach agreement .”
If the headline had said “….bishops agreed rules….” my response might have been “good, I wonder what the rules are now that they have been agreed”
Glen Tomkins 04.12.11 at 12:56 am
The obvious error here.
They meant to write: “Bishops agree — sex abuse rocks!”
Tom Hurka 04.12.11 at 3:08 am
Good to know sex abuse is a rule-governed activity.
Substance McGravitas 04.12.11 at 3:15 am
What might the first rule of Sex Abuse Club be?
Emma in Sydney 04.12.11 at 3:59 am
JQ @ 19, as an academic editor, I’d say you are exactly right, that’s how Australian usage works. Your work must be a pleasure to edit, I must say. Unlike some.
Eli Rabett 04.12.11 at 12:29 pm
Allow Eli to add another, and somewhat appropriate to the headliners (ok, that is stretching it a bit) to Hirschman perversity bingo
hypocrisy: the claim that anyone who cares about, for example, climate change, must live in an unheated shack without air conditioning to be taken seriously, and certainly cannot drive a car.
Enda H 04.15.11 at 6:46 pm
More importantly, how did you manage to get a copy of the SBP? :D
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