I have a question about the marriage vows:
Why is it "till death do us part" and not "Till death do we part," is anybody able to explain that to me?
Why is it "till death do us part" and not "Till death do we part," is anybody able to explain that to me?
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Portland
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Re: To death do...
Mon, March 28, 2005 - 1:17 PM"Till death do us part" is a poetic inversion of "Till death do part us." "Death" is the subject, "us" is the object -- death is parting the couple, the couple is not parting death. As a result, "us" is appropriate. -
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Re: To death do...
Mon, March 28, 2005 - 3:09 PMVery good question. I'm not as certain of this answer, but I'll give it a shot......
I think DO is used rather than DOES because that part of the vow is in the future subjunctive tense. Anyone out there have any ideas? -
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Re: To death do...
Mon, March 28, 2005 - 3:23 PMI'm guessing too. . . but here is my guess: It's "do" instead of "does" because the people are parting, not the death. Since it's "us" and thus plural, you use "does." ( we do/death does)
~smile~
Meredith -
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Re: To death do...
Mon, March 28, 2005 - 3:26 PMI don't think so. Death is parting the people from each other, and death is singular, so there must be some reason for it to take the verb DO instead of DOES. -
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Re: To death do...
Mon, March 28, 2005 - 3:40 PMHmm. . .but isn't it actually a vow, saying we will not part until death arrives? Meaning that the people are still the ones parting, death merely being the cause, not the act of parting? And if they people are the ones parting (or rather agreeing not to part) the verb must still be plural?
(again, just guessing, so I'm throwing out ideas.) -
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Re: To death do...
Mon, March 28, 2005 - 3:43 PMIt just occured to me that this whole thing might be easier if we used the whole sentence:
Do you, Tom, take this woman, Martha, to be your loving wife, to have and to hold; in sickness and in health; for richer for poorer; til death do you part? -
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Re: To death do...
Mon, March 28, 2005 - 4:12 PMA good idea to post the whole thing, but I'm afraid it doesn't answer our question.
In terms of the entire sentence TOM is the subject, TAKE is the predicate, and MARY is the subject. TO BE YOUR LOVING WIFE and TO HAVE AND TO HOLD, IN SICKNESS..., FOR RICHER..., and TIL DEATH are adverbial clauses modifying the predicate TAKE.
The adverbial clause we're dealing with -- TIL DEATH DO YOU PART -- has a subject, predicate, and object of its own. respectively: DEATH, DO PART, and YOU.
But that still doesn't tell us why DO rather than DOES is correct.
Someone help! -
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Re: To death do...
Fri, April 1, 2005 - 4:20 PMMost of this thread has assumed that "death" is the subject of the last phrase. But, what if there's an implied "at" in the phrase? In other words, "until at death do you part." Then the subject is "you." In the marriage vows, the two people are considered to become one person, which would make this a singular "you," not a plural.
Just a thought. I'm not good at the language and terminology of grammar. I'm here to learn, more than advise. :) -
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Re: To death do...
Fri, April 1, 2005 - 8:22 PMUgh, just realized that my logic was backwards on the "do" vs. "does" part. It would be "do" if you were referring to the two people as two units, not one.
Still think the other part is plausible, though. -
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Re: To death do...
Sat, April 2, 2005 - 5:43 AMThat would certainly explain the use of "DO" rather than "DOES." Has anyone else understood the vow in that sense? I'll confess that I haven't.
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Re: To death do...
Mon, March 28, 2005 - 4:06 PMSorry, I can't buy it. "Death" is clearly the subject of the clause.
The only other possible grammatical role I can see for it would be as the clause's subject, but that would yield a nonsensical meaning: the couple are parting death.
So, we still need a reason for why the vow uses DO rather than DOES. -
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Re: To death do...
Sat, April 2, 2005 - 8:42 AMSorry if I'm going to make horrible mistakes in English pretending to address English speaking people about their own language -- which may sound a little idiot, I agree -- but I'm utterly self-confident about the content of the following statements...
Some theories expressed here look curious and interesting enough, but "death" is without any doubt the subject of the clause.
Have a look at the way other languages translate the vow for a "logical confirmation":
"Finche' morte (subj) non ci (obj) separi" in Italian or
"Jusqu'a' ce que la mort (subj) nous (obj) se'pare" in French.
As for "do" rather than "does": it is a subjunctive. English speaking people completely lost linguistic memory of it, but most of dependent clauses require subjunctive in many languages - and they did require it also in English at the time the liturgical vows were written.
Now the task to explain the reason why would be too huge for my modest skills, so, if you feel like trusting a foreigner, take it for good ;) -
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Re: To death do...
Sat, April 2, 2005 - 8:57 AMYou do NOT need to apologize for your English! Not only is it substantially better than my Italian, it's also better than the English of many native speakers!
I had guessed that the future subjunctive might explain "do" versus "does" -- I suppose it's an archaic construction that doesn't survive in current usage, or perhaps a construction that an outside observer who has learned the language through instruction rather than organically is better able to pinpoint.
Thanks for the contribution! -
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Re: To death do...
Sat, April 2, 2005 - 11:58 AMI've been so caught up in this thing, my boyfriend and I have been going back and forth on stuff. . .we ended up actually pulling down my Book of Common Prayer and looking up the marriage ceremony in there. . .
Interestingly enough, in my Book of Common prayer, this phrase "Til Death do us part" isn't part of any of the 4 ceremonies offered. Whether it was the editors or some part of change in the ceremony as the Church has moved towards colloquial services (i.e. not as many latin services) the grammer question we're discussing isn't in the marriage services.
The vows as written are:
In the Name of God, I Frank, take you, Nancy, to be my wife to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in healt, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death.
Frank, you have taken Nancy to be your wife. Do you promise to love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health; and forsaking all others, to be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?
In the name of God, I, Frank, take you, Nancy, to by my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward for better for worse, for richer for pooer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death.
I, Frank, take thee, Nancy, to my weeded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for pooer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I pilight thee my troth.
It should be noted that my copy of the Book of Common prayer is for the Episcopal Church, so if someone has the Book of Common Prayer for the Catholic Church, it might be interesting to see if they have also updated the language. (You may also notice the "honor and obey" phrase has been removed from the vows in my book!)
So my idea, is that the phrase is part of an English lexical we don't use anymore. That the phrase is left over from a time when the English language had a more tangible link to it's latin roots and that the phrase is a result of shoddy translation to begin with. . .or as J.D. said "I suppose it's an archaic construction that doesn't survive in current usage, or perhaps a construction that an outside observer who has learned the language through instruction rather than organically is better able to pinpoint."
Anyway. . . just my Saturday thoughts on the subject.
~smile~
Meredith -
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Re: To death do...
Sun, April 3, 2005 - 10:22 AMInteresting discussion! Thanks for the input everyone. I'll probably never hear the wedding vows in the same way again. -
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Re: To death do...
Mon, April 4, 2005 - 9:55 PMI thought the subjunctive was only for contrary-to-fact statements, not for conditionals (or in this case absolutes). Although I'm not even sure of Part A (what I just said), I'll proceed with Part B, which has the new problem of being a complete stretch. I wonder whether the use of the subjunctive tense here implies a religious question of whether death parts a couple. -
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Re: To death do...
Tue, April 5, 2005 - 2:09 AMThanks J. D. W, I am still learning the proper way to accept compliments without sounding too dumb, but I appreciate one made about my English in this very tribe (transl.: I will brag about it for a looooong time)
Ok, time to google: of course assertive statements do need a bit more solid evidences...
Concerning Part A: the whole vow was translated from Latin, and this is the clause we're analyzing:
"donec mors nos separaverit"
donec - subordinating temporal conjunction (till)
mors - subject (death)
nos - object (us)
separaverit - verb - singular, third person, second future tense (part, divide, separate)
There's no syntactic way the verb can be attributed to a plural subject "nos".
As for Part B, I just renounced to a poorly written mini-essay on the beauty and the variety of the subjunctive mood, intended to support my weak points -- it wouldn't, but it could prove an efficient WMD to bore you to death. Google was very compassionate and let me find this excerpt from a, uhm... vintage English grammar:
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SUBJUNCTIVES. The word is very variously used in grammar. The subjunctives here to be considered (1) exclude those, often so called, in which the modal effect is given by an auxiliary such as may (that he may do it; cf. that he do it) let (let it be so; cf. be it so) or shall (until he shall be dead; cf. until he be dead; & (2) include any verb that is understood to be modally different from the indicative but is either indistinguishable from it in form or distinguished otherwise than by an auxiliary; in “that he learn” it is clear that learn is subjunctive; in “that we learn” it is not; in “that we, he, may learn” there is no subjunctive that concerns us in this article; any verb of the kind that has now been loosely indicated is for our present purpose a subjunctive, whether or not it is more specifically known as imperative (sing we merrily), conditional of the apodosis (it were more seemly) or of the protasis (if it please you), optative (had I but the power!), indirect question (When I ask her if she love me), ****indefinite future clause (till he die)****, or by any other such name.
Fowler HW (1926). A dictionary of modern English usage (Oxford).
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In this "indefinite future clause" the subjunctive mood stresses on the fact that bride and groom will love, respect, blahblah each other till the day they die, *whenever this is going to happen* and *as long as it might take* (scary to put it this way). Or at least that's the sense it positively has in Latin, Italian and French, and that it might have at the time the Anglican liturgy was translated from Latin -- I'm assuming before 1926.
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