[Grammar] Took the/a wrong bus

[konungursvia]

I followed your suggestion and looked to some other authorities. Google gives us far more pages using "the wrong" as an exact quote, about ten times more than the alternative. I also noticed that by the fifth example of "a wrong bus" there were non-native type errors in the page synopsis.

Another source: our original poster as also asked the good people at WordReference and their experts come up with many of our thoughts. They end up supporting my opinion as well. So, I don't think I was confused: Took the/a wrong bus - WordReference Forums

Anyhow, my wife says it is bed-time, and it is getting late in Toronto. A good night to all.

[Monticello]

Hello once again konungursvia,

Originally Posted by konungursvia

I followed your suggestion and looked to some other authorities. Google gives us far more pages using "the wrong" as an exact quote, about ten times more than the alternative. I also noticed that by the fifth example of "a wrong bus" there were non-native type errors in the page synopsis.

Google is a search engine, not an impartial authority on language usage; the quick "study" you cite above in the immediately preceding paragraph is hardly impartial. Thus, the opinion you have expressed in your previous post remains intact as your opinion -- :

Originally Posted by konungursvia

Well the use of the indefinite article in such cases almost always sounds erroneous. To sound idiomatic, we use the definite article, in almost all cases, even though this practice may not really match the material logic of the situation.

-- and in no way can be said to have become fact. (As a self-professed academic, does this really need to be pointed out to you?)

Originally Posted by konungursvia

Another source: our original poster as also asked the good people at WordReference and their experts come up with many of our thoughts. They end up supporting my opinion as well. So, I don't think I was confused: Took the/a wrong bus - WordReference Forums

Once again, your practice of taking things out of context continues: In my previous post, my point about your confusion had to do with the fact that you had mismatched Snappy's questions with the responses I provided.

ROUND TWO

Let's try this a second time: Snappy posed three sets of questions within multiple posts to this thread. For that specific reference to your specific confusion, go back and review this thread in that context!

Now, in your most recent post to this thread, you have taken my previous statement about your specific confusion (in regard to your mixing and matching answers/responses from this thread) out of context: The fact that a number of people from another forum support your opinion (or not) has no bearing whatsoever on my previous statement about a specific confusion you have shown here: (It is tedious, but, given your past dissembling posts to this thread, I do need to repeat the specific confusion once again): namely, your mismatching answers/responses from this thread!

This practice of taking things out of context and then using the new context to support an argument might be viewed by some as irksome, if not slippery. Don't you think so?

[Monticello]

>>>

Originally Posted by konungursvia

Since it came up, the word I used was also correct, though dated:

idiotism
Definition:
(1) The type of speech that is peculiar to a particular place, group, or class.
(2) A group of words that has a meaning different than that suggested by the individual words. For example, saying "I see the light" when you mean to say "I understand."
Etymology: The word derives via French from the Late Latin idiotismus, common or vulgar manner of speaking, which ultimately derives from the Greek idiotismos, "the fashion of a common person" or "a vulgar phrase."
Note: In the 16th and 17th centuries the words idiom and idiotism were synonymous in the above senses. Since then, idiom has superseded idiotism. Note on this note: We are now a year and some change short of a full decade into the 21st century.
Oxford English Dictionary: The word's first citation for sense 1 — which is its first citation in any sense — is from 1588:
"Some patcheries bungled up in an uplandish Ideotisme."
(J. Harvey Disc. Probleme 65 )

synonym: idiom

Source: Online dictionary of language terminology definition of idiotism

In any case, I believe we have both given our best help to the original poster, and can call it a day. I certainly hope so. This was getting too warm for my taste. Bonne nuit!

[konungursvia]

Well it's not a boxing match, so no, there won't be a round two. And I'm not a "self-professed academic" but a real one. My doctorate is from the University of Toronto. And at no time have I been confused, nor have I taken anything out of context in my view. Nor would I characterize my attempts to help clarify a difficult topic for our guest as slippery or in any way dishonest, as your personal attacks upon me continue to imply. And I don't post things, and then repeatedly edit them, but say what I intend on each occasion.

This is like the war of 1812 all over again, isn't it? The Americans attack us poor Upper Canadians from New England with vigour, and become frustrated by their repeated losses.

Wel, it shouldn't be, in my humble opinion. I just think we need to keep things as simple as possible. There are things you or I could write as native speakers that border on the unusual, which we should advise our students not to write.

A wrong bus, a wrong idea and the like are such a class of expression. It's not about the various shades of meaning of the word "wrong" either -- that has little to do with it. It's about the fact that we can only use the indefinite article in such collocations when we don't know which of our many buses or ideas was wrong. And not having discovered which was incorrect, we are hardly in a position to articulate it. Thus, we hardly ever say it in that way. As other experts in English have stated, they have either not heard it, or consider it to be outright wrong. And Chomsky, a stone's throw from your location, at MIT, has correctly observed that no special authority is required to identify an incorrect locution -- any native speaker can do so. If you would like the exact citation, I can arrange to have it sent to you.

On the other hand, when we do know exactly where a previously unknown error lay, we then use the definite article: "[I now realize] I took the wrong bus from Paddington station..." We can scarcely verbalize an error before knowing it has occurred. This is why our native speakers from the UK, Ireland, and the US, on WordReference and here, have expressed their dissatisfaction with the construction Snappy is asking about.

Nuff said.

[Monticello]

Good morning konungursvia,

Originally Posted by konungursvia

Well it's not a boxing match, so no, there won't be a round two.

Of course it's not a boxing match! I hope that my humor still has not escaped you, as your "War of 1812 all over again" simile is taken in the spirit that I'm sure it was intended -- the same good humor.

Originally Posted by konungursvia

A wrong bus, a wrong idea and the like are such a class of expression. It's not about the various shades of meaning of the word "wrong" either -- that has little to do with it.

Ah! But it is! The context of the various shades of meaning of the word wrong definitely has something to do with part of the discussion of this thread! And that will be evident when one reads (with an open mind) Snappy's question (with three example sentences) posed in post #8 of this thread:

Originally Posted by Snappy

Isn't it possible to use "a wrong ..." in the following cases, where "wrong" means "bad" rather than "unsuitable"?

I had a wrong impression of her. (bad impression)
I made a wrong decision. (bad decision)
That is a wrong idea. (bad idea)

Clearly, here Snappy is asking about the usage of the word wrong in regard to its meaning, and not in regard to its specific usage within the idiom, "a/the wrong bus!" So please -- here and now -- let's recognize a question here with its own corresponding unique context and set of answers that differs from the context and answers that have addressed those questions regarding the idiom, "a/the wrong bus".

Originally Posted by konungursvia

It's about the fact that we can only use the indefinite article in such collocations when we don't know which of our many buses or ideas was wrong. And not having discovered which was incorrect, we are hardly in a position to articulate it.

Is it really? How about this scenario? There are 10 buses ready to board, each bus having a unique bus route#. A passenger mistakenly boards bus #93 instead of #39. Thus, all buses other than bus #39 are "wrong" buses. The passenger must, of course, discover that s/he has boarded an incorrect bus route in order to use the phrase a/the wrong bus. But this discovery of the incorrect bus route by the passenger has absolutely no bearing on whether s/he chooses to refer to it as either a wrong bus or the wrong bus.

No. The difference here is simply one of being specific -- the wrong bus, i.e., bus #93 -- or not -- a wrong bus, i.e., one from among any of the other nine buses at the station at that time.

Originally Posted by konungursvia

As other experts in English have stated, they have either not heard it, or consider it to be outright wrong.

This statement is a logical fallacy. (In the preceding link, please see specifically Fallacy of Authority for further explanation.)

Originally Posted by konungursvia

And Chomsky, a stone's throw from your location, at MIT, has correctly observed that no special authority is required to identify an incorrect locution -- any native speaker can do so. If you would like the exact citation, I can arrange to have it sent to you.

Quite right!

And thus, this native speaker -- Yours truly -- has just successfully demonstrated above that, depending on the intent of the speaker, neither a wrong bus or the wrong bus is incorrect. Though one may not sound familiar to you, logic, and not any collocation, does prevail here.

Originally Posted by konungursvia

Nuff said.

"Hope springs eternal ..."

P.S. I really don't like leaving a post littered with any typos. (And inevitably, I usually do.) Though I cannot guarantee that that I won't edit the above after posting, I'll try my best.

[Tdol]

Originally Posted by Monticello

No. The difference here is simply one of being specific -- the wrong bus, i.e., bus #93 -- or not -- a wrong bus, i.e., one from among any of the other nine buses at the station at that time.

Could the choice of being specific or not be influenced by whether it's perceived to be readily reversible or not?

I am asking this because if I take a wrong turning, I can still reach my destination if I rejig my route, but once I've got on the wrong bus, I cannot without either walking back or getting on another bus to return to where I started. I could use a/the wrong decision, and have a sneaking suspicion that I might be more likely to use the indefinite article where I had some hope that the person might rethink.

[Tdol]

PS Could we go easy on terms like infantile and slippery? Thanks

[Soup]

Snappy Revised

Originally Posted by Snappy

Native speakers of English say, "I took the wrong bus." (Not "a wrong bus.") In the following context, is it possible to say, "I took a wrong bus."?

"I took a wrong bus. The cushion was bad, and it was not punctual at all."

Yes, it's possible, Snappy; nevertheless, it's on the semantically-awkward side. Here's why.

Of the two sentences you provided, the second one refers to a particular bus: the bus that's not on time, the bus that has uncomfortable seat cushions, yet the clause that comes before it, the first clause, refers to no bus in particular, "a bus", which makes the semantics awkward here (?):

Sam: You're late.
Pat: I took a wrong bus. The cushion (?on a bus) was bad, and it (i.e., ?a bus) was not punctual at all.

Try,

Sam: You're late.
Pat: I took the wrong bus. The cushion (on the bus) was bad, and it (i.e., the bus) was not punctual at all.

Note that, 'a wrong bus' could work in that context, if, that is, we interpret "it" to mean the bus I just mentioned, 'that bus':

Sam: You're late.
Pat: I took a wrong bus. The cushion (on that bus, the one I just mentioned) was bad, and it (i.e., that bus, the one I just mentioned) was not punctual at all.

But that meaning is forced; it's not the first interpretation speakers would get. Which is why speakers would deem it possible, but not all that natural sounding.

In short, given your example sentences, most speakers would choose to use the phrase 'the bus' because the noun 'bus' is defined in the second clause.

Note, 'a wrong bus' is fine without the second defining clause:

Sam: You're late.
Pat: Yeah, I know. I took a wrong bus.

Hope that helps.

[Soup]

Originally Posted by Tdol

PS Could we go easy on terms like infantile and slippery? Thanks

Is that a pun on throwing the baby out with the bath water?

[BobK]

Originally Posted by Tdol

PS Could we go easy on terms like infantile and slippery? Thanks

And indeed the term "idiotism" - bearing in mind that the user is probably a fluent French speaker.

b