Over at the linguists’ group blog, Language Log, they’re taking up the school-marm’s rule against starting a sentence with a conjunction. But you already know the rule, of course. And who’s to say the school-marms were wrong?
The Bible, as it turns out:
This morning I downloaded the entire KJV and (wrote a script that) counted. Out of 791,524 total words, there appear to be 12,846 instances of sentence-initial and, for a frequency of 16,229 per million. This is more than four times the rate of sentence-initial and in the COCA “spoken” section (4,048 per million), and more than 60 times the pathetic 263 per million of secular academic prose.
We take that to mean initial conjunctions are verbally and plenarily approved by God.
November 9th, 2009 | 2:40 pm
And here I was thinking I was being both ungrammatical and unholy!
But it turns out I was wrong.
So it’s OK!
:)
November 9th, 2009 | 3:31 pm
Some of this has to be because starting sentences with a Vav (“and”) indicates narrative sequence in Hebrew.
November 9th, 2009 | 5:46 pm
In the New Testament, this is due to (Koine, or “Common”) Greek’s tendency to begin sentences with the word “kai” or “and.”
And there you have it.
November 10th, 2009 | 3:52 pm
[...] and the Bible … When grammar is mentioned, Mr Saffire’s long lost grammar column from my youth comes [...]
November 10th, 2009 | 3:53 pm
[...] and the Bible … When grammar is mentioned, Mr Saffire’s long lost grammar column from my youth comes [...]
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