circumlocution

Steven Pinker explains why we use veiled language when everyone knows what is really meant

explaining anti-causatives to non-linguists

A (non-linguist) friend of mine sent me a question yesterday.  He asked why the sentence in (1) is not acceptable for him:

1. We use a methodology we have evolved over the past 15 years.

First of all, even my friend who asked the question knew it was a problem with the verb "evolved".  He said he thought it was because 'evolve' is a "reflexive verb" -- not a bad guess for a non-linguist, and in fact a label that some grammarians may use -- but he also said that he didn't know how that answered his question or what a reflexive verb would be.

So, I asked a few other conveniently near-by people for their judgments.  Of the 3 additional people I consulted, only 1 (that is, 1 out of 5 speakers who gave a judgment) accepted it.

Seeing as the problem centered around 'evolve', I decided to consult the Oxford English Dictionary, to see what usages are attested for the verb.  In fact, the definition listed as 6a says 'evolve' is a transitive verb, meaning: "[...] to develop (an idea, theory, or system). Also intr."  Note that its intransitive usage is labeled as an "also" -- almost an afterthought.  This is strange because it's pretty much the only usage I have for that verb.

ANYWAY, I decided to write back to my non-linguist friend with an appropriately assuming-nothing explanation, and then today I thought I'd post that explanation here.  Enjoy!

Many verbs have as their subject a thing that is actively doing something or experiencing some mental process.  So in "Jack ate vegetables" Jack is actively doing something, and in "Jack likes music" Jack is experiencing some mental process.  These are called active (as opposed to, say, passive) transitive verbs.

Not all active verbs have an object.  In a sentence like "Jack danced" Jack is still actively doing something, and in "Jack thought", Jack is still experiencing some mental process.  These are called active intransitive verbs.

Some verbs do other things with their subjects.  So consider "John broke the vase" -- here 'break' is behaving like a normal active transitive verb (like 'eat').  But now the sentence "The vase broke" might seem strange -- 'break' is not behaving like an active intransitive verb (like 'dance').  Instead, the object of breaking ("the vase") can be put where subjects go in the sentence, but it doesn't mean the vase did any active breaking of things.  There are *a lot* of different names for this kind of verb.  I'll call a verb like 'break' a verb that exhibits an active-anticausative alternation. (If you're interested, you can read more here)  So, 'break' is an active transitive verb in "John broke the vase", and it's an anticausative intransitive verb in "the vase broke".  (Some grammarians may call this a 'reflexive usage' because in many Romance languages, the same word ['se' in French/Spanish and 'si' in Italian] is used to both make reflexive sentences like "John hit himself" and anticausative sentences like "the vase broke".)

There are lots of verbs that have this active-anticausative alternation in English (break, burn, grow, close, open, harden, inflate, melt, sink, etc, etc.).  But not all verbs do this -- consider "John ate vegetables" and "Vegetables ate."  The second sentence doesn't make sense -- even though "The vase broke" does make sense.  Some verbs allow this alternation, and others don't.

Which verbs allow this alternation is, in some senses, random.  It is not something inherently derived from logic or anything -- but it is just something that gets memorized.  (This point is shown by the fact that young children often make mistakes in this regard -- for example, they think "I danced the clown" is fine and means "I made the clown dance".  This is [partially] because there is no logical reason to assume that it should be impossible.)  Some dialects of English allow you to say "The toy boat floated" and "John floated the toy boat".  Personally, in my dialect, only the former sentence -- with the anticausative intransitive usage of 'float' -- is a possible sentence.

This is what's at the core of the "evolve" sentence.  For many speakers (myself included), only the anticausative intransitive 'evolve' is possible (as in "My position on the matter evolved"), and the active transitive usage is *not* acceptable for me (as in "I have evolved my position on the matter", which I find to be a strange sentence).  However, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, there is a definition of 'evolve' that allows an active transitive usage.  Their definition 6a says "transitive [...] to develop (an idea, theory, or system). Also intr."

The way I would explain this is that there are some differences in different dialects of English -- some allow a transitive usage of 'evolve' and others don't.  Based on the sources of the real-world examples given in the OED, I would guess that this usage of 'evolve' may be something possible in British dialects.  In other words, "we use a methodology we have evolved over the past 15 years" is unacceptable to you and me (as speakers of whatever dialect we share) because we cannot say "we have evolved a methodology" -- because 'evolve' is only an anticausative intransitive verb in our dialect.

This is meant in no way to indicate that either dialect is "more right" -- quite the contrary.  All I mean to show is that what we call "English" is actually a collection of different grammatical systems that are similar enough to be called the same language.  The ways in which the dialects differ are arbitrary.  (Consider the fact that in British English you can say "Have you a new car?" whereas in American English you must say "Do you have a new car?".  Why this is can be explained, but it's, again, entirely arbitrary.)

In summary, the verb 'evolve' has different usages depending on what dialect you speak -- and not everyone accepts all logically-possible usages in their dialects.