Comprehending Comprehension

We all utter accidental - or deliberate - solecisms (qv in blog of next date, above) in our spontaneous conversation. We may even commit them in letters, or, for a joke or for special effect, in text intended for publication. But on the whole it is reasonable to expect that in what we might call 'informative literature', what an author publishes should be written as 'correctly' as he or she can manage. Especially if he or she happens to have a degree in English.

I have just read an interesting and probably well researched book on the life of the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn, written over thirty years ago, but without much imagination, by such an author. The facts may well be accurately given, but the style is a trifle dull. But the author's training for an English degree should have ensured that he could not write ". . . the music [now in a library in Budapest]. . . comprises of La Marchesa di Nespoli . . . *"

"The music is comprised of . . . " would be grammatically correct but not suitable in the context; "The music comprises . . . " would also be correct. But "comprises of " is wrong".

Note also that 'comprise' (correctly used) is not the same as 'include', but is closer to the sense of 'consists of **''. It is this latter correct usage that probably accounts for the unacceptable phrase 'comprises of '.

Linguistically correct but geographically awry is the statement that in the 1790s Haydn "went with a boating party down the Thames from Westminster Bridge to Richmond, where they had a picnic on an island". But that is the kind of mistake that anyone (including this pedant) might make absent-mindedly.

Pedantry should not become just an excuse to pick holes in other people's speech or writing. If it is to shake off its bad name, it should be concerned with explaining certain characteristics of language as they have been in the past and as they are now, and why certain modes of expression are, in certain contexts, more appropriate than others. But you can't do this unless you make distinctions between various ways of expressing ideas, and this means quoting some inappropriate usages and explaining why they could be better re-phrased.

* The title of a musical, composition by Haydn.
** The term 'comprise' is derived (via French) from Latin comprehendere, signifying 'to grasp all together'.
Compare English words 'apprehend', 'prehensile'. The Latin 'com-' means 'with' or 'together'. Our term
'composer' consists of L 'com-' with L element pos- from the verb ponere meaning to place or put. So
Haydn was a person who put sounds together.

Comprehending Comprehension