Sex words...

[fajrdrako]

On one of my mailing lists today, someone said:

In the current edition of the New York Review of Books there is an article which makes the following observation/claim: that in English the vulgar or socially unacceptable verbs for the sex act are transitive whereas the polite ones are intransitive.

Is that true? (Pondering.)

Comments

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

Um... what do transitive and intransitive mean?

The problem with being a native English speaker is not getting taught most grammar terms because you can usually pick up the rules by osmosis...

According to my dictionary the difference is whether there is a direct object, but I don't see how "to fuck" is different to "to copulate" by that. Though I'm probably missing something fundamental.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

what do transitive and intransitive mean?

Transitive verbs take an object - someone does something to something. "Jack fucked Ianto."

Intransitive verbs don't take an object - "Jack and Ianto were having sex." Sex is the object. Jack and Ianto are the subject, being the ones doing the having.

But the usage theory I am quibbling over falls to pieces if you say "Jack and Ianto were fucking," which is the same verb, but intransitive.

So I think that "to fuck" and "to copulate" are essentially the same and the writer of the original article is wrong.

However, having not read the article, I may be misunderstanding his point.

[omnivorously.livejournal.com]

I think the point is that 'fuck' *can* be used transitively, and perhaps may be used transitively more often than not.

Though there's the usage 'to sex up' ...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

LOL! So many complications.

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

I think that "to fuck" and "to copulate" are essentially the same and the writer of the original article is wrong.

Pretty much what I was thinking. And kudos for starting a discussion that's all about words for sex!

Let's see now:
fuck
screw
shag
bone
hump
tup (ooh, farmyard term)
plow (still farmyard)
frack (I'm pretty sure that's what it means)
frell (ditto)
swive (that's a good one)
pleasure
bed
lay
poke
cop
boff
boink
bonk
bang (I've got stuck on 'b')
knob
mump
prig
roger

Hmm. Think I've run out of rude ones for now.

more words

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

kudos for starting a discussion that's all about words for sex!

Fun, isn't it!

tup (ooh, farmyard term)

Good one - fine history, too. Shakespeare!

frack (I'm pretty sure that's what it means)

It certainly does! That's a neologism, and a good one.

swive (that's a good one)

Always makes me think of John Barth, who seemed to use it every second page. No, scratch that. Every page.

Lots of b's!

"Mump" is new to me.

Let's see if I can think of any more.

If we want to add non-consensual words there's rape, ravish (which can be ambiguous), violate.

There's the sort of neutral/ambiguous/euphemistic 'take'. Ditto 'do', often with the object 'it', as in "Let's do it.".

Re: more words

[filkferengi]

Now I'm hearing Cole Porter. Not that I'm complaining, mind; far from it. ;)

Re: more words

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

There are worse things to have stuck in your head than Cole Porter songs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AATByulhDqk

Mind you, it's best when John Barrowman is doing the singing.

Re: more words

[filkferengi]

Your logic is irrefutable. [Now go forth & write the Jack/Spock fic! ;)]

Re: more words

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Hee. Yes indeed.

Re: more words

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

I can't believe I missed "ravish" *grumbles* After reading all those bodice-rippers as an impressionable teen too.

[omnivorously.livejournal.com]

I learned about English grammar because I learned about Latin grammar, because they just applied Latin grammar terms to English grammar, which doesn't make a huge amount of sense, actually.

And everyone picks up the rules of their native language* by osmosis no matter what language they speak.


*or one set of rules for the language, anyway. I don't personally subscribe to the school of thought which says that there is one way to be grammatically correct and any deviation is wrong. It's just, one set of grammar belongs to elite.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Everybody uses grammar, but there are different colloquial usages. I have always found the permutations fascinating. The value of knowing grammar is that it all makes more sense then.

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should have said English is a language where native speakers are expected to pick it up by osmosis rather than be taught. I'm pretty certain that in other places people get taught the rules of their language - I've definitely been told by people that Spanish children are taught the more complicated Spanish grammar in school, for instance.

I wish we had been taught more of the rules, even if they don't fit that well applied to English. It would probably have made understanding German grammar a bit easier if the teacher hadn't had to try and teach us what all the terms meant in English language first.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should have said English is a language where native speakers are expected to pick it up by osmosis rather than be taught.

That depends on the country and the decade. We were certainly taught grammar in grade school - it was taken for granted it should be on the curriculum and it was no more done by osmosis than maths or physics. If we didn't learn it in English class, and we did, we learned it in French class, which was compulsory from grade 2.

Grammar is a very useful thing to know, and if they don't teach it in schools now, they should.

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

I started primary school in... 1983? And secondary in 1990.

What I remember being taught is punctuation. Metaphors vs. similes. Nouns are naming words, verbs are doing words, adjectives are describing words. Maybe the difference between present and past tense. Anything beyond that? No clue - I might be able to use it, but I won't know what it is.

I definitely know that when I was taking German (we don't study any other languages in Britain until secondary school btw) there was a lot of grammatical terms we all suddenly had to know to understand what was going on, and that most of them had never come up in being taught English language.

[omnivorously.livejournal.com]

Um, I think in lots of American schools, students *are* taught about English grammar, though my impression is that it isn't emphasized nearly as much as it was in earlier times. You may not have been formally taught grammar, but I was, though I wasn't taught very much and - to clarify what I said above - knowing the basics of Latin grammar helped me a good deal. Mostly what I got out of my English grammar lessons, beyond what I already knew because of the Latin, was understanding how clauses work in written English and knowing where to put commas, semi-colons, etc. to separate teh clauses.

I know someone who moved from Croatia to the US at a young age, and she says that she speaks Croatian like a 2nd grader, because the grammar of spoken Croatian is difficult enough that it must be formally taught. But I think that's an exception.

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

my impression is that it isn't emphasized nearly as much as it was in earlier times

I can only speak for my British experience but I'd say that is accurate. I don't remember being formally taught much beyond punctuation, noun, verb, adjective. My sister teaches French and German and I know it is a struggle for language teachers because they always have to teach people English grammar virtually from scratch to be able to teach them how it works in the other languages.

While I may be able to write clauses, or in various tenses or just generally use English grammar, I would be incapable of breaking it down in grammatical terms and explaining what it was I was doing because I was never taught those terms. As I pointed out above, I had to look up the difference between a verb being transitive and intransitive. Can I use transitive and intransitive verbs? Absolutely. But that is instinct, not something I've been taught.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I have the impression that other cultures haven't removed quite so much of the grammar teaching as we have here.

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

Impolite:
fuck you
screw you
shag you
jump you
bone you

Polite:
fornicate with you
copulate with you
have intercourse with you
have sex with you
make love to you
engage in carnal acts with you

I think this may partly be due to the transitive verbs implying passivity in the receiver, whereas intransitivity treats the two parties more as equals.

OTOH, "blow you" may have some contrary connotations.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

But on the other hand, those words don't all have to be transtitive: "let's fuck" and "let's screw" are not transitive (or perhaps have the implied object of "each other"). "Fuck" can go either way, and "fuck with you" isn't much more genteel than "fuck you" and is probably less desirable.

On the other hand, I agree with the passivity/equality connotations, which I think is at the root of the matter; I just think that, linguistically, he's not quite right.

[abrakadabrah.livejournal.com]

But who says fuck with you? That's not correct. As for let us fuck, well, that's still transitive. You'd have a better argument going for let's make love.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

But who says fuck with you?

I hear it a lot, usually in the negative. "Don't fuck with me" of "Don't let them fuck with you." No, it doesn't have the same meaning, but it's linguistically the same word.

"Let's fuck" is transitive? How do you mean? Because it could be taken as "Let's fuck each other?" How about "They are fucking"? Is see it as transitive and intransitive uses of the same word.

With "make love", "make" is the transitive verb, "love" is the object. So of course it's transitive. Same with "have sex" and other versions of that usage - it's transitive, but the subject and object are not the two people who are having sex, but the actors, with the act as the object.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

Transitive = a verb that takes both a subject and an object
Intransitive = a verb that has only a subject, although it may be followed by a phrase beginning with a preposition ("to", "with")

It's the difference between f-- and s-- and
"sleep with" or "go to bed with" or "have sex with".

On the other hand, as janne_d points out, "copulate" is clearly a counter-example disproving the generalization.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I think there are several counter-examples to disprove the generalization - so I don't think it's a valid point. My main counterexample is that "fuck" can be transitive or intransitive, depending on usage. I.e., "They were fucking" as contrasted to "A was fucking B." 'Shagging', 'humping', 'bonking', and 'pleasuring' also can be intransitive or transitive, as the speaker wishes. So many words for the same thing - give me two minutes and I can come up with more.

I would argue that logically and linguistically, the main difference is that the 'polite' words are usually euphemisms which involve circumlocutions rather than simple statements - they therefore need nouns and prepositions added in to make sense.

My other thought was that (in referring to animals) 'mounted' and 'serviced' are not impolite and are certainly transitive.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

I'm having serious problems conceiving of a verb referring to the sex act that COULD be intransitive. I mean... somebody is having something done to them, or something is being done, after all.

Even "X had sex with Y" is transitive - OK, so "sex" is the direct object here, butn even so...

What verbs were they thinking of?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Suggestions are 'fornicate', 'copulate' and 'mate'. 'Fuck' can be either transitive or intransitive, which destroys his theory right there. I haven't seen the article but I am led to believe that it didn't actually specify what words the author was talking about; that may be polite usage, but doesn't hold up to scholarship. I don't know what he was thinking of, but offhand I think he's wrong.

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

I can't think of a transitive polite one, actually. The weak form of the assertion -- that polite forms are intransitive, but the reverse not necessarily so -- seems true to me.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I can't think of a transitive polite one, actually.

How about "pleasure"? You you see it in the romance novels, as in "he pleasured her till dawn". It's maybe a specialized usage and a euphemism as well, but it's both transitive and polite.

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

Ah, you are right. Thank you.:-)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I must manage to read the article that sparked this subject!

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it is true, but it makes sense. "to" is rather aggressive, and therefore? vulgar. "With" is more consensual.

I don't think I agree with sollersuk. "Have" (or had) is certainly transitive, but if used alone to denote sex, rather vulgar. "Have sex" is intransitive and takes a prepositional phrase.

And the difference is per the first sentence.

[thucyken.livejournal.com]

Of course transitive verbs are impolite! They're objectifying!

*ducks*

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

And that may be the bottom line...!