[Grammar] date and place of birth

[bruxinha]

How would you say when and where someone was born?
I've learned that the standard word order in end-position is 'place' before 'time', but heard recently a dialogue in which the speakers said:

"He was born in 1869 in India." or "She was born in 1867 in Poland." (It was a short video included in a school book for learners of English as a foreign language).

Is this word order also acceptable? Would a native speaker prefer place followed by time or, as in the example above, time followed by place?

 

[Tarheel]

Either way you want to say it is fine. Which you put first probably has to do with which is more important to you at the time you say it.

 

[emsr2d2]

I had to think about it a bit but, naturally, I would put place before time.

He was born in England in 1869.
She was born in London in 1973.

However, if the place was more than just a country or a city, I might swap the order.

He was born in 1865, in one of the more downtrodden areas of London.
She was born in 1973, on the east side of New York.

 

[jutfrank]

As you say, the standard word order at end-position is place before time. You'd need a special reason to put time before place, but it's very common to have one.

 

[bruxinha]

As you say, the standard word order at end-position is place before time. You'd need a special reason to put time before place, but it's very common to have one.

Thank you everyone for your explanations!
In this case there was no special reason, I guess. The context was a short talk two kids were giving about Gandhi and Marie Curie, they just had to tell where and when they were born. The sentences were also exactly as I wrote above, there was no special place like emsr2d2 stated. But I wanted to be 100% sure about it - I know my students and if I tell them "place for time", I'm sure they will ask wether I'm wrong or the book is wrong.
Now I can explain a little more from a native speaker point of view that both versions are acceptable.

 

[Tarheel]

Thank you everyone for your explanations! In this case there was no special reason, I guess. The context was a short talk two kids were giving about Gandhi and Marie Curie. They just had to tell where and when they were born. The sentences were also exactly as I wrote above. There was no special place like emsr2d2 stated. But I wanted to be 100% sure about it. I know my students, and if I tell them "place before time", I'm sure they will ask whether I'm wrong or the book is wrong.
Now I can explain a little more from a native speaker point of view that both versions are acceptable.

You can't get it wrong no matter which way you do it.

Watch out for comma splices.

 

[jutfrank]

Since you're a teacher, I'll add a little more to help you understand the very difficult and complex area of the placement of adverbials.

Very simply speaking, the way we order the parts of sentences depends on what we want to place focus on. When there are two elements in a particular sentence, the element bearing the primary focus comes first. Look:

He was born in India in 1869.
He was born in 1869 in India.

It isn't at all easy to see in the sentence pair above that they are focusing on two different things. You could say that the main information (the focus of the sentence) is the bit highlighted in bold.

Here's another sentence pair, which I use as illustration of this in my own classes. A speaker arranges to meet her friend:

Let's meet in Starbucks at five.
Let's meet at five in Starbucks.

Bearing in mind the different focuses, can you imagine two slightly different contexts that might demand each word order?

As I said, the focusing effect of adverb/adverbial placement is very subtle and therefore not always a viable or appropriate thing to teach to intermediate students. This is why we as teachers give very general rules like 'place before time'. One way that you could possibly elicit a basic understanding that place is more likely to be the focus rather than time is with the sentence pair above. I ask my students this: If your friend had left you a voicemail, arranging to meet you for coffee, but the phone signal had faded at the precise moment that she said either the place or the time, which would you rather be left with?

Let's meet in Starbucks .... .
Let's meet at five ... .

 

[Tarheel]

"Let's meet at Starbucks" is, I think, more useful. That way I could go there and at least know I was at the right place. If I knew the time but not the place I wouldn't know where to go. (I suppose I could go to Starbucks hoping it was the right place.)

 

[jutfrank]

"Let's meet at Starbucks" is, I think, more useful. That way I could go there and at least know I was at the right place. If I knew the time but not the place I wouldn't know where to go. (I suppose I could go to Starbucks hoping it was the right place.)

That's exactly the point I was making, yes. Knowing only the time is completely useless in this case.

 

[GoesStation]

Knowing the place is not particularly helpful unless I am prepared to wait there for umpteen hours

It's easy enough to think of a scenario where knowing only the place would be useful. For example, you may usually meet there at 5:00 with an occasional exception. In that case, knowing where you were meeting would give you a good guess as to when.

 

[jutfrank]

I fear people have missed the point I was making.

I shouldn't have said that it was a friend you were meeting. The idea is that you have no previous knowledge of the other person's behaviour and are completely unable to guess what you think they're going to do.

 

[emsr2d2]

And so one piece of information on its own is as useless as the other.

I would say it depends how much time you're prepared to waste. If I received a text (for example), saying "See you at 5 at [place missing]", I wouldn't stand a hope. There are lots of places and I can only be at one of them at 5pm. However, if I received a text saying "See you at Pizza Sebastian" at [time missing]" and I really couldn't get hold of the other person, I could, in theory, go straight to Pizza Sebastian and just wait there - all day, if necessary!

 

[jutfrank]

And so one piece of information on its own is as useless as the other.

There is a huge difference in usefulness. See posts #9 and #10.

 

[jutfrank]

I would say it depends how much time you're prepared to waste. If I received a text (for example), saying "See you at 5 at [place missing]", I wouldn't stand a hope. There are lots of places and I can only be at one of them at 5pm. However, if I received a text saying "See you at Pizza Sebastian" at [time missing]" and I really couldn't get hold of the other person, I could, in theory, go straight to Pizza Sebastian and just wait there - all day, if necessary!

Yes, that's what I meant. As you say, if you only knew the time, you wouldn't stand a hope and there would be nothing you could do. If you only knew the place, given an indefinite amount of time, you would be successful. To put it rather abstractly, you can be in one point in space across time, but not in one point in time across space.

I didn't quite expect that members would be taking such a practical view of this. I was really trying to get at the very general principle of prioritising place before time. The real-world scenario I gave was just my way of doing that. I don't think it seems to have worked very well.