| 词组 | also |
| 释义 | also This word raises two related problems for usage commentators, and we will take them one at a time. First we have the matter of also used as a loose connective roughly equivalent to and. Some of the commentators call this also a conjunction, but in the language of traditional grammar it is a conjunctive adverb. The palm for discovering this problem goes to the brothers Fowler (Fowler 1907), who showed Richard Grant White using the conjunctive also: • 'Special' is a much overworked word, it being used to mean great in degree, also peculiar in kind — Words and their Uses, 1870 The Fowlers added two more examples, both from The (London) Times. Since 1907 this construction has picked up considerable unfavorable notice, especially in handbooks, right into the 1980s. Criticism is strongest when the elements joined by also are words or phrases (as in the example from White), but some commentators extend it to the joining of clauses. The curious thing is that no one but the Fowlers has an attributed example to bring forward. The question becomes, then, who uses this construction, and where? The coverage in college handbooks suggests it turns up in student papers, and it apparently occurs in speech—Reader's Digest 1983 finds it acceptable in speech and most of the handbooks disapprove it only in writing. Margaret M. Bryant says in English in the Law Courts (1930) that it is common in speech. Her examples show it to have been common also in 19th-century American wills. Here is an example, much abridged: • I give, devise, and bequeath to my beloved wife ... my homestead ... with the buildings thereon ... ; also all my farming tools and utensils ... ; also one thousand dollars. This use continues common in wills, and judges are still having to decide what also means in disputed cases. Wills are rather a special kind of writing, however. More apt for your guidance are literature and contemporary general published prose, and our files yield examples of conjunctive also in both categories: • ... these are the only eels I have heard of here;— also, I have a faint recollection of a little fish some five inches long, with silvery sides and a greenish back —Henry David Thoreau, Waiden, 1854 • Accompanying it were two accessories, also bits of pottery —Herman Melville, The Confidence Man, 1857 • ... tends to obscure the new affiliations of psychology with the sciences of biology, sociology, and anthropology; also its claim to be considered as a natural science itself —Thomas Munro, The Arts and Their Interrelations, 1949 • ... and they occasionally go to galleries together; also Mitterand fancies old books, and occasionally they browse together in bookshops —John New-house, New Yorker, 30 Dec. 1985 Our examples are not numerous, however, and concordances of major authors often omit also, so it is hard to be sure just how common this use is in published writing. The handbooks' approach to the conjunctive also is to recommend conversion to and or and also. (The commentators who prescribe and also are presumably not the same ones Nickles 1974 notes as condemning and also as a redundant phrase.) And also is common in all kinds of writing: • By October of 1983, the CNN Headline News Service ... was going out to six hundred and seventy-five cable systems, ... and also to a hundred and forty-three commercial television stations — Thomas Whiteside, New Yorker, 3 June 1985 • ... a lifelong favorite of Borges and also frequently alluded to —Ambrose Gordon, Jr., Jour, of Modern Literature, 1st issue, 1970 • Like Izzy, Moe was a natural comedian, and also like Izzy, he was corpulent —Herbert Asbury, in The Aspirin Age 1919-1941, ed. Isabel Leighton, 1949 • "...slices of liver and also of kidney —Annual Rev. of Biochemistry, 1946 As mentioned earlier, Reader's Digest 1983 finds the conjunctive also acceptable in speech and informal writing, but would avoid it in formal writing. The rest tend to disapprove it in writing, period, although Fowler 1926 will allow it when the writer needs to emphasize that what follows is an afterthought. The relative dearth of evidence for its use strongly suggests that we have here much ado over very little. Also is a much less frequently used word than and; apparently most people make do with and in writing as their additive conjunction. The second problem involves beginning a sentence with also. Follett 1966, Janis 1984, Harper 1985, Bander 1978, and Perrin & Ebbitt 1972 suggest avoiding also at the beginning of a sentence. Bernstein 1971 allows some sentences to begin with also; his example turns out to be an inverted sentence of a kind also approved by Follett, Perrin & Ebbitt, and Janis. This type of inverted sentence does exist: • Also created was a Governor's Commission for Efficiency and Improvement in Government —Current Biography, December 1964 • Also old are the words from Old English and Middle English —W. F. Bolton, A Short History of Literary English, 1967 But the evidence in our files shows it to be of relatively infrequent occurrence. Most of the sentences beginning with also in our files are of the straightforward type the commentators seem to disapprove: • Also, at the mouth of the Nile, fish in the Mediterranean used to feed on organisms conveyed by the silt —William Styron, This Quiet Dust and Other Writings, 1982 • Also, certain even-numbered groups of protons and neutrons are particularly stable —Current Biography, June 1964 • Also, it was in itself, as I have said, a period of depressed spirits —Sacheverell Sitwell, All Summer in a Day, 1926 • Also, he was not in the Congresses which debated the danger of war —Jonathan Daniels, in The Aspirin Age 1919-1941, ed. Isabel Leighton, 1949 • Also, Latin seems to have been used for cultural purposes much more exclusively than in western countries —Gilbert Highet, The Classical Tradition, 1949 • Also, during the summer, so-called interim disciplinary rules were promulgated —Sylvan Fox, N.Y. Times, 9 Jan. 1969 The objections to this use of also are not usually stated clearly; it is simply described as "weak." Bernstein 1971, one of the few books to elaborate on the topic, sees it as essentially just an aspect of the problematic conjunctive use of also. Beginning a sentence, it suggests that what follows is an afterthought and thus that the writer is disorganized and self-indulgent. Despite occasional references by other critics to functional classes like conjunction, adverb, conjunctive adverb, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that this is entirely a matter of style, and has nothing to do with grammar. The objection seems about as soundly based as the widely believed notion that you should never begin a sentence with and. Our evidence agrees with the statement in Perrin & Ebbitt that also usually stands within the sentence. But some writers of high repute do use it as an opener, and you can too, when you think it appropriate. |
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