More correct

I was being corrected by one of my Chinese co-workers the other day (as usual) and she said’ “it is more correct.” I had used one comparative adjective to describe an object and she chose another (bigger vs. older) both are a simple statement of fact and both are correct in said sentence.

Being rather tired of having someone who has the brilliant grammar abilities afforded her by her three month stay in New York I decided to have some fun with her.

I replied

technically speaking things are either correct or not correct, as you said there is no grey area. however i’m there could be many situations where that locution would be useful.

it does seem beyond doubt though that you were right in sticking it to her :slight_smile:

I wouldn’t use it in a formal context, but Tempo Gain’s right.

The thing is, language as it is really used doesn’t seem to work in a mathematical, strictly logical way. So when people go on about things such as supposed redundancies in language they overlook the functions of emphasis and clarification that these often serve.

In formal writing, we have to conform to the prescriptive grammar rules, some of which were drawn up in a rather arbitrary and sometimes contradictory manner by 19th century grammarians. In speech and informal writing, we have more opportunity to use the full creative and expressive capability of the language.

Correctness surely is an absolute state of being, and therefore cannot be qualified. A bit like “unique” or “dead”. Or “pregnant”.

This one is more unique than that one.

Peter Cook is more dead than Graham Chapman.

My wife is more pregnant than your wife.

And so on.

This may not be correct, but I’m sure you enjoyed telling the snotty cow to get stuffed. Has she got a really silly English name by any chance, while ridiculing your Chinese name? I like being told my Chinese name is daft by someone called Mars or Cylinder Head Gasket. :raspberry:

[quote=“hexuan”]Correctness surely is an absolute state of being, and therefore cannot be qualified. A bit like “unique” or “dead”. Or “pregnant”.

This one is more unique than that one.

Peter Cook is more dead than Graham Chapman.

My wife is more pregnant than your wife.

And so on.

This may not be correct, but I’m sure you enjoyed telling the snotty cow to get stuffed. Has she got a really silly English name by any chance, while ridiculing your Chinese name? I like being told my Chinese name is daft by someone called Mars or Cylinder Head Gasket. :raspberry:[/quote]

I think you’re mostly correct, hexuan. :stuck_out_tongue:

You’re right about “correct,” OP, but she probably flipped because you were deliberately trying to make her feel dumb. Nobody likes that.

of course, the part about the chinese co-worker “correcting” the foreigner (again) regarding his native language might also produce the same result. however, most of us have learned to laugh that off or just shake our heads.

There is “more accurate” as there is a gray area in accuracy. However I am not too sure about “more correct”. You also wouldn’t say “more perfect” or “more unique”.

:slight_smile:

It is quite ok to use the term “more correct”. Here are some examples:

I had more correct answers than you.
There is no more correction fluid.

I found these examples in the MOE’s Grammerr Buk. :laughing:

Interesting replies thank you one and all.

Taking a prescriptivist approach, using a comparative form of an absolute adjective would be ungrammatical. A more descriptivist view would allow that many absolute adjectives are used to mean that the nouns being modified are approaching an absolute state, and one has approached the absolute state more closely.

But you were likely right to take the presciptivist road this time.

Of course, you could always start correcting her mistakes…

[quote=“puiwaihin”]Taking a prescriptivist approach, using a comparative form of an absolute adjective would be ungrammatical. A more descriptivist view would allow that many absolute adjectives are used to mean that the nouns being modified are approaching an absolute state, and one has approached the absolute state more closely.

But you were likely right to take the presciptivist road this time.

Of course, you could always start correcting her mistakes…[/quote]

Naw don’t really want to get into that game you know?

I was just tired that day and had had enough of her going to great lengths to try and put me under her thumb. She wasn’t even involved in the conversation she just wandered by and decided my use of the word older was incorrect and had to tell me that bigger was “more correct”.

So I decided to shut her down. It worked she has stopped, for now.

Somedays you just get tired of some asswipe trying to pretending they have learned everything there is to know about grammar in 2 months one summer in N.Y.

Imagine two sentences: one with five grammatical mistakes and one with two. I suppose it’s possible to say that the one with two is “more correct” than the one with five.

There’s nothing wrong with “more correct.” It’s analogous to “truer,” which is a perfectly good English word (as in “Truer words were never spoken”). In the context of formal logic, truth or correctness is binary, but in everyday usage we recognize shades of gray.

Isn’t this how “ain’t” became seen as correct English?

Slippery slopes, my friends. Just a matter of time before “the goodest” becomes the standard.

Isn’t this how “ain’t” became seen as correct English?

Slippery slopes, my friends. Just a matter of time before “the goodest” becomes the standard.[/quote]
:bravo:

Obviously, neither is correct.

Obviously, neither is correct.[/quote]
But one approaches correctness more closely than the other. That is the sense in which the absolute is being used in a relative manner. The phrase expresses an idea more efficiently than “the first sentence approaches correctness more closely than the second sentence.” Not to mention that in some cases there is no one true “correct”, only a notion of correctness.

Words have deeper meanings and connotations. Language use that expresses these sort of nuances are good for English. The only reason you could say it is “bad” is because there is an artificial rule preventing its use. That’s really no reason at all.

But the rule does exist, and applies to more formal registers of speech and writing. But when one person is taking pains to correct another person on an equally technical point to be anal…

Isn’t this how “ain’t” became seen as correct English?

Slippery slopes, my friends. Just a matter of time before “the goodest” becomes the standard.[/quote]
“ain’t” is still not correct English. This is just how “ain’t” has been recognized as a word. Originally, the dicitionary wouldn’t even list it despite it being used by hundreds of thousands of native speakers. Now it lists the word with a notation that it is improper.

AFAIK, no textbook in the English speaking world teaches “ain’t” as a preferred or even correct term. It may be included as a dialectal/low register variant, but not as “correct English”.

There is nothing more inately correct about “I am not”, “he isn’t”, and “they aren’t” than “I ain’t”, “he ain’t”, and “they ain’t”. They function equally well to express the exact same concept. The symbols are all arbitrary. The only difference is one of register. It has not, and likely never will, become “correct English”.

The language we use today is no more correct than the language that was used 500 years ago. Yet, many of the terms we use and the way we use them are far removed from what was used them. The language changes and evolves. It’s not a slippery slope, it’s an evolutionary gradient.

They key is for us to know and teach language appropriate to the register we will be working in or our students will be required to perform within.