Talk:Double copula

2006 comments

I don't understand. Why is, is this usage disputed, disputed, is this usage disputed, disputed? Rintrah 05:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What it is is it's wrong. — AnemoneProjectors (talk) 20:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That fair enough, what it is is is (yeah! I scored triple grammatically!). And, ah, ahem, I say, thank you, I say, ah, thank you, I say, thank you for the advice, advice, advice. Buffalo! Rintrah 11:07, 23 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're just making it up now as you go along... — AnemoneProjectors (talk) 23:02, 23 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't that what I have always been doing? Rintrah 09:43, 24 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Probably — AnemoneProjectors (talk) 13:10, 24 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is a little bit sad that we have to say "disputed" instead of incorrect, just to avoid triggering sermons on the evils of prescriptivism. --Reuben 16:13, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly different topic

I was wondering if there's grammatical term for this:

"be being"[1][2][3]
"do doing" (I can't find any linkable sources at the moment, but I once heard a lady (from the Boston area) say this three times in a 15-minute phone conversation)

Does anyone know about this? Is it disputed grammar? I would assume that it is because some sources call it correct and others list it as a correct and quite distinct verb tense. Help would be appreciated. Thanks. Ufwuct 23:55, 31 January 2007 (UTC)Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page).[reply]

"be being", especially when written "BE + being" represents: any one of the forms of the verb BE (i.e. am, are, is, was, were, (have) been followed by the word being. An example of this is: That child is being very difficult. The grammatical term for the form in this example would be the Present Progressive (or Present Continuous) Tense (or Aspect or Form) of the verb BE.

In over 45 years of being consciously aware of English forms, I have never encountered "do doing" But then I've never been to Boston--gramorak (talk) 16:11, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What about this?

Is something like this a double copula?

"I can see that that English grammar is annoying."

--Falconus^{p t c} 15:32, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I can see now that the above example does not apply, as "that" is not a capula. --Falconus^{p t c} 17:01, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Two different uses of that. It’s referring to a previous instance of English grammar, rather than English grammar in general. —Frungi 05:15, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Copula?

Why is it a double copula rather than simply a double “is”, when “is” (and various forms thereof) seems to be the only copula for which this happens? If this is the case, I propose the article be moved to double is. If not, the article should include examples of other double copulas. —Frungi 23:28, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The article explains about the other forms now. -- Beland (talk) 01:47, 17 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Disputed: Is this a joke?

I have never heard of this in my life. Is this actually a dispute? Does anybody actually think this is legitimate or have anybody ever actually used this ever? I don't see any way any person in their right mind could speak or type like that, except if he stutters (which isn't grammatically in "dispute"). Wharrel (talk) 07:05, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've heard it occasionally since about 1983; some people do it a lot. Lucky you. —Tamfang (talk) 09:07, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What? Who does this? Why does this even warrant an article. Who would ever stand up to defend this as legitimately correct? -Ben- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.241.221.128 (talk) 03:56, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My mom, for one, does it regularly. Must be a regional thing. I don’t know that anyone thinks it’s proper grammar, probably more a bad habit (like the comma splice in this sentence). —Frungi (talk) 04:26, 19 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I first became aware of it 15 years or so ago, and have noticed it more frequently since. I agree that I cannot defend it, but the point is is that if the phenomenom exists (as some of us agree it does) then it's legitimate for an article on grammar to discuss it. I suspect that most of us would agree that the italicised words in my previous sentence are not 'correct' English - though when enough people use an 'incorrect' structure in speech and writing, it eventually becomes accepted as 'correct'. Had I rephrased the offending sentence as: What my point is is that if... the it's technically correct.--gramorak (talk) 16:24, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Enough of this nonsense. A grammatical mistake, however common it may be, cannot possibly pass as a dispute among grammarians. I have removed this, please come back with reliable sources if you want to reinstate it. 114.148.198.45 (talk) 13:32, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is a real phenomenon whether you want to admit it or not. You're right, no one "in their right mind" does it, but that doesn't mean no one does it. 128.211.198.168 (talk) 22:09, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For instance, I believe I heard U.S. President Obama do it in the State of the Union address last week. —Frungi (talk) 00:40, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Obama does this all the freaking time. It drives me crazy. In fact, I don’t think he ever uses expressions such as ‘the fact of the matter is’ or ‘the problem here is’ without the moronic repetition of the ‘is’. — Chameleon 14:02, 13 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's one of his worst sins. The other day, referring to Colin Kaepernick, he said, "My understanding at least is is that he's exercising his constitutional right to make a statement."[4] But he's not all bad. He pronounces "bury" the way I do. "I have come here to bury the last remnants of the Cold War in the Americas." Eric Kvaalen (talk) 17:03, 7 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I added a reference to a scientific study which found most people don't mind it. -- Beland (talk) 01:49, 17 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If you identify as a Grammarian then you should not be editing reference articles about Linguistics

Here's just one of many papers about the double-copula as legitimate English: http://www.casasanto.com/Site/laura/documents/doubleis.pdf

Saying it's ungrammatical is like saying "I'm going to laugh at you" is ungrammatical because I'm not actually going anywhere.

I don't care enough to edit the article, so you're safe there. I agree it's hard to convincingly work a double copula into written English. But if that's what the problem is, is there a reason not to agree that it's ok in casual conversation? I think that's all we disagree about, is whether spoken English has looser expectations than written English.

206.124.141.187 (talk) 04:43, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A meaningless syntactic hiccup is analogous to an idiomatic use of a verb (go) as an auxiliary? I don't think so. —Tamfang (talk) 01:33, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The example is a reference to the linked paper, which compares the evolution of the double copula to that of "going to". "Your hair is going to fall out" would have been considered ungrammatical by Grammarians of the past. 206.124.141.187 (talk) 08:18, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I’m not sure I understand that paper… it seems to mainly point out the flaws in possible excuses for the double copula. And I think you misunderstood the issue—the double copula (the subject of this article) is a grammatical error. The consecutive “is”es in an example given in this article (“What my point is is that…”), and in what I believe to be an example you gave above (“if that’s what the problem is, is there…”), are not double copulas. If you can “convincingly work a double copula into written English” (and why should you want to?), it’s not a double copula. —Frungi (talk) 05:38, 13 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Linguistics papers use an asterisk to indicate ungrammatical examples, question marks to indicate questionable examples, and no mark to indicate grammatical examples, based on experimental data. So for example when the paper says

a. The problem being, is that I’m probably going to test positive. (Massam, p. 349)

b. *The problem is, being that I’m probably going to test positive.

c. *The problem being, being that I’m probably going to test positive.

it means a is grammatical, whereas b and c are not.

You fell for my red-herring distraction technique. :) ("if that's what the problem is, is there...") The real double copula is disguised elsewhere...

206.124.141.187 (talk) 08:10, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So, what’s your point? That paper doesn’t argue the grammaticality of the double copula; it presupposes it. There’s no reason to use a double copula. In the example you cite here, you can remove one of the copulas without changing the meaning of the sentence: The problem is that I’m probably going to test positive. And wait, why would you need to use a distraction if you had a valid point? —Frungi (talk) 23:13, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The point is that the article makes the bold claim that a double copula is "incorrect usage", with no cite. 206.124.141.187 (talk) 05:15, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Citations are not required for statements that are self-evidently correct. 109.153.236.250 (talk) 12:38, 22 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I found it! It's where you wrote "I think that's all we disagree about, is whether spoken English has looser expectations than written English." I think [that that is] all we disagree about, is whether spoken English has looser expectations than written English. Only one of the two bold constructs containing "is" should be present. 100.16.231.141 (talk) 23:29, 13 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Spanish?

I've removed this from the article:

Analysis of grammar in languages such as Spanish, in which pronouns are often dropped, suggests that use of the double copula represents a simple dropping of the 'what' as implied, meaning users are not violating rules of grammar.

I can't imagine any analogous Spanish construction. Translating "The problem is, is that..." literally into Spanish would result in "El problema es, es que...", which is no more grammatical in Spanish than it is English. - furrykef (Talk at me) 04:30, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nonstandard or erroneous?

Is the double copula merely nonstandard usage, or is it an error? I can’t see anyone grammatically defending something like, “What I’m saying is is you’re wrong.” —Frungi (talk) 05:55, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, from a purely descriptivist point of view, there is no such thing as an "error". From a purely prescriptivist point of view, anything "nonstandard" is an "error". Of course, most of us have a point of view that's somewhere in between (although many of us lean heavily, sometimes very heavily, towards one or the other), but the point remains that the distinction is very fuzzy at best. - furrykef (Talk at me) 02:48, 12 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I added some detail on the diversity of opinion on that point. -- Beland (talk) 01:54, 17 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The article claims that this construction is "accepted by many English speakers in everyday speech" but omits to mention that other speakers notice it as a grating and incredibly annoying error. 31.51.2.26 (talk) 04:06, 22 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"all it is is"

If you have a hacked-up program, *all it is* is bugs, surrounded by, you know, something that does something.
-- Peter Weinberger

To me, this one is notable in that it sounds perfectly natural (at least in *spoken* English) to me, as someone who finds double copulae obtuse. I wonder, then, if it is, in fact, actually a double copula.

Stuart Morrow (talk) 14:01, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"all it is is ..." is grammatically fine. "all (that) it is" is a noun phrase, and forms the subject of the second "is". 109.157.12.42 (talk) 00:06, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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