Author: Kirk

“Link” vs. “Linkage”

Common English Blunders, Nouns, Verbs, Versus

I heard a landscape designer on an HGTV program refer to “creating a linkage” between a home and a potting shed.

Problem:
These two nouns are not synonyms.

Explanation:
The landscape designer was referring simply to installing a paved path between the home and the shed. In other words, the path would connect the shed with the home.

When I heard the designer call the path itself a “linkage”, I wondered whether this was the appropriate noun and looked up “linkage” and “link” in a dictionary.

The noun “link” essentially means anything that connects two people, places, or things.

The noun “linkage” essentially means one of the following:

  • the act of linking — as in “The CIA’s linkage of the two spies took three years.”;
  • a system of links — as in “There is a complex linkage between the fertilizer that one puts on a lawn and the chemicals in the water that can be extracted from an underground aquifer.”

I believe that some people use “linkage” when the noun “link” is appropriate because they want to sound more educated — and perhaps charge more for their services!

Solution:
Use “link” when referring to a connection between two people, places, or things. Use “linkage” when referring to the act of creating links or when referring to a system of links.

“I seen him.”

Common English Blunders, Verbs

I frequently hear sentences constructed in this way.

Problem:
A verb’s past participle appears on its own where the verb’s past-tense form should be placed.

Explanation:
This problem is the complement to what I posted yesterday.

In other words, there seems to be a tendency among some American English speakers to mix the past participle with the past tense.

The past participle of the verb “see” is “seen”, and “seen” requires an auxiliary verb — in the present or past tense — to form a perfect tense.

Otherwise, the past tense should be used in place of “seen”.

This gives us three solutions, depending on the intent of the speaker.

Solutions:
“I saw him.”
OR
“I have seen him.”
OR
“I had seen him.”

“He has ran five miles.”

Common English Blunders, Verbs

I frequently hear sentences constructed in this way.

Problem:
A past-tense verb appears where the verb’s past participle is required.

Explanation:
The auxiliary verb “has” must be combined with a past participle to form a perfect tense.

Here are some examples:

  • He has eaten the piece of pie.
  • He has shaved five minutes off his marathon time.
  • He has cut his finger.

The first example uses “eaten” — the past participle of “eat”.

The second example uses “shaved” — the past participle of “shave”.

The third example uses “cut” — the past participle of “cut”.

The past participle of “run” is “run”, not “ran”, which is the past tense of “run”.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following combinations (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “has run” — 6,780,000 matches
  • “has ran” — 203,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors favor “has run” over “has ran” by a 33.4:1, which is good but not great.

Solution:
“He has run five miles.”