Versus

Can’t vs. Cannot

Contractions, Devolution toward Simpler, Versus

I heard someone say “can or can’t” during an MP3-based interview this morning.

And it was only because of the context that I could be sure that the interviewee said “can’t” after the conjunction.

This got me to thinking: The popular use of “can’t” instead of “cannot” in spoken American English is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.

In other words, it is simpler to say the one-syllable “can’t” than the two-syllable form.

But “can’t” can be difficult to hear (to distinguish from “can”).

Recommendation: Be nice to your audience by saying “cannot” instead of “can’t” in interviews, speeches, telephone calls, etc.

To Come vs. To Go

Common English Blunders, Verbs, Versus

A reader named Warren emailed the following message to me recently: “I’m still a bit confused between to go and to come. U said it’s all about movement to or away from where the speaker or hearer is, my question is how do you define who the speaker is? is that the one that is talking? What about the following example: the doctor asked me to stop COMING back. In this case who’s the speaker? the doctor or the one who is talking?”

Warren, those are excellent questions. The best answers come from rewriting your example in three different ways.

1. “The doctor told me to stop COMING back to him.”
Consider an equivalent form but with a different person being told by the doctor what to do:

(a) “The doctor told Ms. Jones to stop coming back to him.”

Statement (a) puts you as the listener/reader in the location of the doctor. From the perspective of the doctor, Ms. Jones is COMING back to him.

2. “The doctor told me to stop GOING back to him.”
Consider an equivalent form but with a different person being told by the doctor what to do:

(b) “The doctor told Ms. Jones to stop going back to him.”

Statement (b) puts you as the listener/reader in a location OTHER THAN the location of the doctor. From the perspective of someone who is NOT at the doctor’s office, Ms. Jones is GOING back to him.

So #1 and #2 are each correct, but you have to decide as the speaker/writer whether you want to put the listener/reader at the location of the doctor (#1) or at your non-doctor’s-office location (#2).

In other words, you have to decide whether you want to focus the “told me”

  • on the act of the doctor (#1)
     
    -OR-
  • on what the doctor is requesting from your perspective/location (#2).

But let’s change your original sentence (#1) slightly:

3. “The doctor told me that I should stop ____ back to him.”
Consider an equivalent form but with a different person being told by the doctor what to do:

(c) “The doctor told Ms. Jones that she should stop ___ back to him.”

Statement (c) is equivalent to “The doctor told Ms. Jones that ‘X’.”, where ‘X’ is a complete sentence on its own.

For example, ‘X’ could be “The sky is blue.” — giving us “The doctor told Ms. Jones that the sky is blue.”.

So what should we put in the “___” in #3?

Sentence #3 becomes “The doctor told me that ‘X’.”, where X = “I should stop ___ back to him.”.

Try replacing “___” in this X with “GOING” and with “COMING” to see which one is correct:

(d) “I should stop GOING back to him.”
(e) “I should stop COMING back to him.”

Given that you (the “I” in (d)) are NOT where he (the “him” in (d)) is, you have to GO back to him.

In other words, you, where you are, cannot COME back to him.

So the correct completion of statement #3 is always “The doctor told me that I should stop GOING back to him.”

“cattle” vs. “cows”

Nouns, Plurals, Versus

I wrote yesterday about the nouns “swine” and “pig”.

Thinking about other animals, this has made me ask even more questions: 1. What exactly does “cattle” mean? 2. How is “cattle” related to “cow”? 3. Is it preferable to refer to bovines as “cattle” or “cows”?

Dictionary.com says that the plural noun “cattle” primarily means bovine animals, esp. domesticated members of the genus Bos.

And Dictionary.com says that the first three meanings of the noun “cow” are (a) the mature female of a bovine animal, esp. of the genus Bos, (b) the female of various other large animals, as the elephant or whale, and (c) Informal. a domestic bovine of either sex and any age.

So it is preferable to use “cattle” to refer to bovines in general and to use “cows” to refer specifically to mature female bovines or to refer to the females (usually mature) of other large animals (usually mammals).