| 词组 | claim |
| 释义 | claim The disapproval of the verb claim used in a meaning close to "assert, contend, maintain" is a hoary American newspaper tradition stretching from William Cullen Bryant's Index Expurgatorius and James Gordon Bennett's Don't List, both dating from before the turn of the century, and Bierce 1909 to Bernstein 1958, 1965, Copperud 1964, 1970, 1980, Bremner 1980, and Kilpatrick 1984. Bryant's Index was probably compiled around 1870, so the tradition has continued for more than a century. There have been defectors: Utter 1916 reports that the New York Evening Post, the paper for which Bryant compiled his Index, approved the use of claim as an alternative to assert. Bryant's Index was reprinted in Ayres 1881 and probably from that source found its way into American usage books early in the 20th century. The subject seems to have become a favorite from Vizetelly 1906 to Strunk & White 1959, 1972, 1979; there were numerous commentators in the 1920s. But comment in usage books outside the newspaper field was more varied and not uniformly disapproving, though most did express disapproval. The subject reached British readers through the attention of the Fowler brothers, who discovered it in their 1907 The King's English. H. W. Fowler revised and expanded his treatment in 1926, and most subsequent British commentators have been mindful of his remarks. Fowler found the use first, a vulgarism, and second, a violation of English idiom. He recognized claim followed by to and an infinitive as legitimate when claim was active and the subject of claim and the infinitive was the same; the passive and all other uses with an infinitive he rejected as false idiom, illustrating his objections with examples that seem perfectly idiomatic today. He also rejected sentences with claim followed by a dependent clause except when claim meant "demand." Again, his rejected examples seem perfectly ordinary today. The unmentioned secret behind the Fowlers' detection of a violation of English idiom in this use is that the use is of American origin. The OED included the sense, without illustrations, on the authority of Fitzedward Hall, an American philologist and controversialist living in England, who contributed to the dictionary. (Hall in an 1880 magazine article twitted William Cullen Bryant for using claim in the proscribed sense in a book of his own travels.) The Supplement to the OED supplies the examples, and they come from mid-19th-century America. The Dictionary of American English quotes Mark Twain: • ... it is claimed that they were accepted gospel twelve or fifteen centuries ago —Innocents Abroad, 1869 (DAE) The Fowler brothers found it in Richard Grant White: • Usage, therefore, is not, as it is often claimed to be, the absolute law of language —Words and Their Uses, 1870 (Fowler 1907) Just how the usage reached Great Britain from the U.S. is uncertain. Perhaps transatlantic passage was not necessary, for the uses cited with distaste in Fowler 1907 are not very far removed from the more recent of the citations given in the OED under one of its unstigmatized senses. Here are a pair of examples from the Fowlers and one from the OED: • The gun which made its first public appearance on Saturday is claimed to be the most serviceable weapon of its kind —Times (Fowler 1907) • The constant failure to live up to what we claim to be our most serious convictions —Daily Telegraph (Fowler 1907) • It is claimed, then, on behalf of Christianity, that there is a Holy Ghost —Joseph Parker, The Paraclete, 1874 (OED) As you will see from the following examples, the Fowlers' examples are not what would now be considered violations of English idiom. Our examples are from both British and American sources. • ... if he really loved her better than himself, as he claimed, he would not stand in her way —Smart Set, March 1907 • Some, like Jacobi, have claimed that faith is its own evidence —W. R. Inge, The Church in the World, 1928 • He had always claimed that he was working for the glory of British Art —Aldous Huxley, The Olive Tree, 1937 • He will claim that he has not only kept the country out of war ... —New Republic, 1 June 1938 • ... has a world-wide membership of 2,500 and is claimed to be the Nation's only nonessential organization —American Guide Series: Michigan, 1941 • The CW20 airplane is claimed to have other new safety features —Harry G. Armstrong, Principles and Practice of Aviation Medicine, 1939 • ... Henry James, an old friend, who claimed perhaps a little too often that he was an artist and nothing else —W. Somerset Maugham, Saturday Rev., 11 Apr. 1953 • Their efforts were not so unsuccessful as is often claimed —Noam Chomsky, Columbia Forum, Winter 1969 • He accuses Britain and the West of consistently siding with the forces of White repression in southern Africa in defence of what they claim to be the "free world" —Times Literary Supp., 27 Aug. 1971 • ... bothering him right on mike about a threatening phone call she had received, claiming him to have been the nasty, horrible caller —R. Meitzer, Rolling Stone, 22 June 1972 • This volume's dust jacket claims that the mighty Argentine fantasist "has come into English in haphazard fashion...." —John Updike, New Yorker, 24 May 1982 In reading your way through all the examples, you will have probably noticed the advantage claim can have over any of the words—contend, assert, maintain, etc.—proposed as superior. It regularly introduces a connotation of doubt or skepticism—the notion that what is claimed may well be disputed. Thus claim is seldom—perhaps never—used where assert, maintain, or say would work better. Claim does its job so well that it seems to have been in standard use almost from the beginning, and it continues in standard use in spite of the opposition of the newspaper stylists and many other commentators. It is, therefore, useful to remember that claim followed by an infinitive phrase or a clause regularly introduces an element of doubt. In its other meanings, claim regularly takes a noun phrase as object. |
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