| 词组 | so |
| 释义 | so I The use of so as an intensifier has been subject to criticism in usage books since at least Mac-Cracken & Sandison 1917. Here is a succinct version of the usual warning: • Avoid, in writing, the use of so as an intensifier: "so good"; "so warm"; "so delightful." —Strunk & White 1959 But some commentators (notably Bryant 1962) have observed that the usage of intensive so, considered in its full range, is not quite as simple as these examples suggest. So is regularly used as an indefinite adverb of degree with the degree indicated by a following clause: • ... and so frightened Mark Twain that he died — James Thurber, letter, 2 May 1946 • It had gone so simply and easily that he thought it might be worthless —Ernest Hemingway, "An African Betrayal," Sports Illustrated, 5 May 1986 When there is no following clause, so becomes more of an intensifier. Nevertheless, it may sometimes be rooted in material that went before in the context: • However, after all, it seems to me contrary to reason to suppose that Napoleon is going to do so crazy a thing —Henry Adams, letter, 13 Mar. 1859 • I cannot be so patient with the White House — David A. Stockman, Newsweek, 28 Apr. 1986 • I don't know why it got on my nerves so —Peter Taylor, The Old Forest and Other Stories, 1985 And in another intensive use—never criticized—so indicates a definite degree that is implied rather than specified: • Many thanks for sending me so truly welcome a piece of news —Lewis Carroll, letter, 17 June 1893 • The cephalopod eye is an example of a remarkable evolutionary parallel because it is so like the eye of a vertebrate and there is no evidence of a common ancestor —Sarah Fraser Robbins, Massachusetts Audubon, June 1968 • ... the kind of sterile over-ingenuity which afflicts so many academic efforts —Times Literary Supp., 2 Oct. 1969 This use is frequently found in negative contexts: • ... the word ballet was not so well known then —G. B. L. Wilson, Dance News, May 1982 • ... he has not been so successful —Herbert Brown, American Literature, May 1944 • What we are not so keen on is getting the truth — Anthony Quinton, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 15 July 1984 The criticized use of the intensive so occurs when it means "to a large and indefinite extent or degree" and functions much like very, exceedingly, or extremely. In general, the written contexts in which this so appears are informal; since the use is common in speech, it naturally gravitates to contexts that are close to speech. A few commentators call it a.feminine use, and we do, of course, have evidence of its use by women: • ... how am I to read these books? What is the right way to get about it? They are so many and so various. My appetite is so fitful and so capricious —Virginia Woolf, "How Should One Read a Book?" 1926, in Yale Review Anthology, 1942 Robin Lakoff, in Language and Woman's Place (1975), agrees that this intensive so is more common in women's language than men's, "though certainly men can use it." Indeed, they can and do: • ... on the ground under the shelf were little orange and magnolia trees. It looked so pretty —Mark Twain, letter, 1 June 1857 • ... she chose a little red one from high on the vine, wiped it on her dress, and bit off half of it. It was so good, and then the bright sunshine made her sneeze —Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days, 1985 • Mother will be so happy to know of the use to which you put Kenny's words —Archibald MacLeish, letter, 28 Apr. 1919 • Mother, I was so glad to get a letter from Jeff this morning, enclosing one from George dated June 1 st. It was so good to see his handwriting once more — Walt Whitman, letter, 10 June 1864 • I'm so excited about the trip, and the prospect of being able to buy a Ford phaeton of my very own — John O'Hara, letter, 4 June 1934 • ... I'm dreadfully sorry to hear about all the pains and colds and everything, it is so discouraging —E. B. White, letter, 4 Feb. 1942 • I appreciate your sending the sporting magazines and the Book Reviews ever so much —Ernest Hemingway, letter, 20 Mar. 1925 • This is me, Winston Churchill, speaking himself to you, and I am so glad to be able to thank you in this remarkable way —quoted in Time, 1 Apr. 1946 We can see that men writers are not afraid of the usage, at least in their letters, where they can be themselves. Clearly the intensive so is well established (the OED traces it back to Old English), and in spite of the adjurations of the commentators it is not avoided in speech or in informal writing. In its less noticeable varieties it can even appear in more formally edited prose. You may, however, want to avoid its baldest form—where it modifies an otherwise unadorned adjective ("The scenery was so beautiful!")—in your most serious writing. II Except for the repeated complaint in schoolbooks and college handbooks that so is overused as a connective, opinion about conjunctional so is divided. Some critics tell us that so that should be used instead of so in both clauses of result and clauses of purpose; others think so is all right to introduce clauses of result but so that should be used for clauses of purpose; and still others find so all right in both uses but so that more formal. One thing shown clearly by the evidence is that so predominates in speech, especially, it appears, in uneducated speech. Fries 1941 found so to be six times more frequent in his corpus of uneducated speech than in his educated one; this may be related to the "sohabit" referred to by Bryant 1962—the habit of using so indiscriminately as a connective in narrative, as children are supposed to be fond of doing. In spite of what the usage books say about so that being the more appropriate in formal prose, however, we do not find much difference in level of formality between so and so that in our most recently collected evidence. You can judge their relative formality in the following examples (in which you will also note that the clause introduced by so may be a separate sentence). First, clauses of result: • Rarely here is one more than a few miles from a great brackish tideland stream ... , so that what is specifically Southern becomes commingled with the waterborne, the maritime —William Styron, This Quiet Dust and Other Writings, 1980 • It was a convention of each periodical that the work was directed by a projector... whose imaginary personality was adopted by each contributor. So Boswell's essays were written by The Hypochon-driack —John Butt, English Literature in the Mid-Eighteenth Century, edited & completed by Geoffrey Carnall, 1979 • One of the actors fumbled every line and kept saying "Balls," so that fifteen speeches ended with this word —James Thurber, letter, Summer 1950 • "Realistic" politicians have prided themselves on understanding that "the people" are concerned only with ... bread-and-butter issues—taxes, inflation, and the like. So they have been frequently surprised —Elizabeth Drew, New Yorker, 3 May 1982 And clauses of purpose: • ... some overtures to be made to what were described as more moderate elements within the Iranian Government, and it was related to establishing a relationship so that we would have some influence in the future —Edwin Meese 3d, quoted in The Tower Commission Report, 1987 • ... about to lose his fight to save his "Garden of Eden" from city officials who want to bulldoze it so low-income housing can be constructed —New Yorker, 8 July 1985 • Just be sure you've got the guts. So that if you have to steal or take a sap to someone's head for a meal, you'll be able to —E. L. Doctorow, Loon Lake, 1979 • ... and half the citizens don't know or care where they were born just so they can get somewhere fast —Robert Penn Warren, Jefferson Davis Gets His Citizenship Back, 1980 It may not be amiss to point out that conjunctive so can also introduce clauses other than clauses of purpose and result: • I shall write to Mary as soon as I have time, so I hope she won't be impatient —Henry Adams, letter, 18 Jan. 1859 • Robert Lowell has said he will recommend me for the Guggenheim, so if it is not too late to add a name, I would appreciate —Flannery O'Connor, letter, 14 Nov. 1948 • The American League East is a demanding division, I said, but with their pitching the O's could not lose many games in a row And so the season has started, and Baltimore, at this writing, is at four and twelve, and dead last —Roger Angell, New Yorker, 1 May 1984 • ... could get baskets full of horror stories about teaching. So who would they surprise? —Ken Donel-son, English Jour., November 1982 If you have outgrown the "so-habit," there does not seem to be much reason for you to fret over the choice between so and so that. We do not have the perspective yet to know whether so is moving up the scale of formality, or whether so that is becoming less formal and sliding down toward so. In either case, we see little difference between so and so that in level of formality at present. |
| 随便看 |
英语用法大全包含2888条英语用法指南，基本涵盖了全部常用英文词汇及语法点的翻译及用法，是英语学习的有利工具。