The David Foster Wallace grammar challenge

 Posted by on 16 December 2009  Modern Life
Dec 162009
 

Amy and I have posted a few times about David Foster Wallace, because we each read Infinite Jest during the “Infinite Summer” just past. I loved it. Amy, I think, believes it might have broken her brain, and it’s been tough for her to pick up a book since.

One of the things I loved about the book was its use of language (I’m not alone, I’m sure). DFW knows his way around the written word, that’s for sure.

Do you?

Try the David Foster Wallace grammar challenge. Ten questions, each with a glaring (to him) error. It’s tougher than it looks. I got a couple right, whiffed on a couple more, and couldn’t spot anything wrong with the bulk of them.

For example, what’s wrong with this sentence: “I only spent six weeks in Napa.” Can you spot it? It’s subtle, and I didn’t get it. But it sounds obvious to my ear once I read the answers, which you can find here, along with explanations.

Good luck!

Grant Hamilton

  • http://www.absurdintellectual.com Amy Breen

    I didn’t do so well. Wallace would have given me a verbal beat-down if I handed in a paper to him.

  • MPot

    This was neat, but in some cases it seems that either English grammar presupposes certain philosophical positions (something Wittgenstein and others took as given) or Wallace does/did. Take #5 for example. Is it true that we can understand things only in our minds? Some say yes, some say no. It’s hardly a settled issue. So on what basis should it be lorded over our expression? Why should one of a multitude of positions on the matter shape the way we are allowed to communicate?

    Also, the rule regarding split infinitives was shoehorned into English in an attempt to make it resemble Latin, then believed to be the perfect language. It wasn’t, isn’t, and many of its rules make no sense in English. In Latin one can’t split an infinitive; it isn’t possible. Yet in English we are forbidden to split infinitives just to follow Latin’s example? Nonsense.

    The if/whether mistake drives me crazy. I get that one all the time.

    So should I read Infinite Jest or not? I still haven’t picked it up.

    • http://www.absurdintellectual.com/ Grant Hamilton

      You should read Infinite Jest, unequivocally. It’s not for everyone, but if you’re making an argument about English grammar that cites Wittgenstein, you can handle the book.

      As to language and grammar, the fundamental schism, I would propose, is the one between descriptivism and prescriptivism. Personally, I lean a little bit more towards prescriptivism, but you do have to make allowances for changing usage, no matter how much some of those changes Grate. On. My. Every. Nerve.

      At any rate, any language is both an imperfect reflection of what’s really going on in our minds, and a prison that prevents us from communicating that perfectly to anyone else.

  • MPot

    Hmm. Well, you’ve never steered me wrong with novels before, so I’ll look for it in my next quest to John King’s bookstore in Detroit (a five storey warehouse packed with used and rare books. Awe-inspiring). Bibliophile though I may be, I’m still cheap. :)

    I think the descriptivism/prescriptivism debate died in academic circles around the early 1950s. The questions I see asked now involve the balance of description and prescription, proper grounds for prescription, and how one’s answers to those questions apply to a language’s off-shoots — the creoles, pidgins, and dialects that inevitably arise.

    The matter is definitely settled in the minds of most undergraduates, cocksure in their ignorance, who will respond to any attempt to improve their writing with smug vows against the “closed minds” of their professors.

    Some professors I know will no longer accept emails that are not written following the conventions of English grammar, punctuation, and spelling (with leeway for typos and some of the more controversial aspects of grammar, obviously). It’s a good effort that might have results if it were used more consistently across the campus. But I’d be more inclined to take it seriously were it not for the hypocrisy of many faculty, whose written work and emails are riddled with linguistic abominations.