Grammatical Rule (that I was going to post last night before Stuff stopped me)

[azurelunatic]

The most sentient noun in the sentence should be the subject of the sentence.

By this rule, the phrasing "This shirt makes me look professional" would be Right Out, as the speaker should assume that s/he is more self-aware than the shirt, unless, of course, the speaker is Spiderman referring to the symbiont, although that's still probably erring in the favour of the garment.

However, "I am made professional by the shirt" would be correct.

Politeness rules would dictate that in the case that two humans are being spoken of, and one is the speaker, the other human should be given higher honours. However, when being insulting, one might put the object of the insult as the object of the sentence.

"The Doom!Cheese was eaten by Shawn" indicates both something scary about cafeteria food, and something derogatory about Shawn.

Comments

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

What then is meant by the sentence:

"I think it's looking at me!"

[azurelunatic]

The speaker considers zeirself the most sentient, but is fearful that the thing might be more sentient than zie.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Hmm.. but doesn't your example violate the "avoid the passive voice" rule?

[azurelunatic]

I cheerily ignore that rule.

I mostly ignore it for purposes of effect.

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

Actually, that grammar rule would make me crazy. Because it leads to the artistic and non-artistic bending of a number of other rules deeply engrained in my writing cortex.

[azurelunatic]

I came up with this idea while wondering why some of the phrases in the conversation that sithjawa and I were having sounded so silly, so almost-correct, and so very much like they'd been translated from another language, or written in English by a non-native speaker, and what grammatical rule could have spawned it.

I may at some point incorporate the silly rule into a piece of writing, for the speech of an alien or group of aliens. I was inspired by Feynman's commentary on Japanese-language standards of politeness. Culture influences language so very much, in the way it's put together.