| 词组 | if and when |
| 释义 | if and when This rather innocuous-looking phrase (which is sometimes reversed to when and if) has been the subject of attack from Fowler 1907 on—look at this list: Fowler 1907, 1926, 1965, Partridge 1942, Copperud 1964, 1970, 1980, Flesch 1964, Follett 1966, Bernstein 1965, Shaw 1975, 1987, Phythian 1979, Morris 1975, 1985, Freeman 1983, and Kenneth Darling in American Speech, February 1941. Only Janis 1984 will allow the phrase to have any use, and even he cautions against using it carelessly (to be completely accurate, Fowler 1907 does excuse one use by the British statesman Gladstone). If and when seems to have some small standing in legal parlance, and it is such use that Janis finds justified. (Similar considerations seem to lie behind the Fowlers' excusing of Gladstone.) The amount of critical fire (and especially the diatribe in Fowler 1926) seems disproportionate to the problem. Fowler 1907 and Fowler 1926 have abundant examples of the phrase, drawn primarily from British newspapers. Almost no one since has produced a live instance, so it is hard to tell whether if and when is really a common phrase. The Fowlers collected more examples than the readers for the Merriam-Webster files have collected since then. Is the phrase perhaps less frequent today than in 1907 and 1926? Or is it now primarily an oral expression that does not find its way into print? We cannot be sure. Here are a few of our examples; they do not seem especially dreadful: • If and when you do come to America, I hope to have due notice —Alexander Woollcott, letter, 1 Aug. 1935 • The state is eager to get at the 30-year-old osteopath if and when he takes the witness stand to defend himself —Springfield (Mass.) Union, 25 Oct. 1954 • ... wondering if and when her life would ever get underway —Philip Roth, The Professor of Desire, 1977 Our files do have examples of two constructions not to be found in Fowler. The first of these is use of the phrase at the end of a statement: • "I think the Old Man has it in mind to give Bus the Tactical Air Force for the invasion of the Japanese home islands; if and when...." —James Gould Cozzens, Guard of Honor, 1948 • ... he could not be trusted to save Israel if and when —Ralph J. Gleason, Rolling Stone, 7 Dec. 1972 In the second, if and when (or when and if) is followed by to and an infinitive. This construction shows that the writers (and Gould especially) considered the phrase as a fixed unit, because if in the sense used here is not normally followed by to and the infinitive. It would seem reasonable that this construction could be attacked on the grounds of faulty parallelism. • The disagreement over if and when to teach quantum chemistry —Peter O'D. Offenhartz, Jour, of Chemical Education, December 1967 • ... new attitudes are developing about marriage and when and if to have children —Jane Schwartz Gould, Barnard Alumnae, Winter 1971 We suspect you will seldom have a real need for if and when, but if it slips out, it is a trivial offense. We do not recommend the construction with to and the infinitive, however, since it seems liable to more substantive objection. If you feel the need to use this construction, you might consider replacing the if with whether; this would restore the parallelism and defuse that aspect of the criticism. |
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