| 词组 | relation |
| 释义 | relation 1. Relation, relative. It is not exactly clear why these words are to be found in so many usage books when almost the only useful things to be said about them are that they are synonymous in the sense "a person to whom one is related" and that they are frequently plural in that sense. But in the books they are, and have been, from Vizetelly 1906, Utter 1916, MacCracken & Sandison 1917, and Fowler 1926, right down to Harper 1985, Chambers 1985, Shaw 1987, and Longman 1988. The commentators have tended to disagree in minor ways about which is preferable. Evans 1957 and Bernstein 1962 believe relation to be rustic or bucolic; Simon 1980, however, thinks relation is U (for "upper-crust"); Fowler 1926, 1965 says relation is more common, but Copperud 1970, 1980 and Shaw say relative is more common. Perhaps we should all join Chambers 1985 and "justifiably conclude that such distinctions as [the critics] do discern are matters of personal whim...." One thing we can say with certainty is that both relation and relative are in common current use: • I grew up in a house where the only regular guests were my relations. On a certain day, enormous families of relatives would visit us —Richard Rodriguez, in The Bedford Reader, ed. X. J. Kennedy & Dorothy M. Kennedy, 1985 2. Relation is usually used with of m the sense of "relative" and sometimes in other senses: • ... a polar explorer and a relation of Butler's first wife —Current Biography, September 1964 • ... she stood in the relation of a chaperone and sponsor to Elfine —Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm, 1932 But to is more common with most senses and with most of the idiomatic expressions: • While his relations to women were self-serving — Anatole Broyard, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 9 May 1982 • He has expressed his views on Africa and its relation to the rest of the world —Current Biography, March 1966 • ... bears no relation to what I'm saying —Stephen Vizinczey, letter to the editor, Times Literary Supp., 5 June 1969 • Stanza two presents her mind and body in relation to her soul —John T. Shawcross, Hartford Studies in Literature, vol. 2, no. 1, 1969 • ... their comfortable and complacent lives bear little relation to the ideology they proclaim —Times Literary Supp., 7 Mar. 1968 In other senses, with and between (occasionally among) are used: • ... their relation with their slaves rested on injustice and violence —Eugene D. Genovese, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 20 July 1986 • Relations between the United States and Spain — Current Biography, November 1965 • ... the cultivation of relations among people for the improvement of society —Dale B. Harris, in Automation, Education, and Human Values, ed. W. W. Brickman & S. Lehrer, 1966 3. Bernstein 1965, Harper 1985, and Shaw 1987 discuss negative constructions with relation. They contend that if, for example, you want to say that your friend Murgatroyd is not related to the famous Murgatroyd, you should say that he or she is "no relation of the well-known Murgatroyd" rather than "no relation to the well-known M." This issue does not seem to come up very often; in fact, the only example our files have seen of the criticized construction in recent years is from a 1968 Winners & Sinners in which a writer for the New York Times is corrected for having written "He was no relation to Senator McCarthy " Apparently this construction occurs more often in speech than in writing. Of may be insisted on in such a context because it is used in positive statements for this sense of relation, as illustrated in section 2 above. But no relation to is idiomatic with other senses of relation, and is not misleading with this one. |
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