35

At a family dinner, my 18-year-old niece asked my sister, "May you please pass the salt?" My sister said that she was impressed with her daughter's politeness, but that that particular wording was not correct. My niece said that she had been taught to say that (by whom she could not say, but probably by her father—the parents divorced years ago.)

Despite our best attempts, we were unable to convince her of the illogical nature of the "May you please" construction.

How would you explain it to her?

herisson
  • 81,803
sarah
  • 2,688
  • 4
    It should be "may I" and either "could you", "would you", or "might you" depending on your dialect. – Kate Gregory Jul 06 '13 at 14:49
  • 4
    There's some confusion here along several dimensions, including: (1) the various senses of may (decoded by Fillmore in his famous analysis of the sentence May we come in?); (2) indirect requests versus yes/no question forms; (3) polite versions of requests versus more polite versions of requests; and (4) deontic ("pragmatic", as Fillmore calls it) can falutes lower than deontic may, which results in overproduction of polite questions with may used as an initial politeness marker, regardless of syntax or semantics. Logic it ain't. – John Lawler Jul 06 '13 at 15:58
  • 2
    If I was trying to be that polite, I'd ditch the question entirely: "It would please me were you to pass me the salt." – AJMansfield Jul 06 '13 at 17:09
  • @KateGregory - "Might you please pass the salt?" What dialect would that be? – Tortoise Jul 06 '13 at 22:28
  • 1
    @John Lawler Certain aspects of your comment are above my comprehension level, as are some parts of the "May we come in" analysis, but both were interesting and enlightening as much as is possible considering my ignorance. Would you say Filmore's analysis deems my niece's utterance an indirect request or a yes/no question form? Indirect because instead of saying, "Pass me the salt, please," which she means, she is phrasing it as if she is asking the salt might be passed? – sarah Jul 07 '13 at 03:20
  • 7
    No, I think (from what little evidence there is, really, it's "guess") that your daughter learned a zombie rule saying something like "May is more polite than can in requests" and another rule defining "Can you please Verb Phrase" as a polite request, and added them together. Most such politeness phrases are learned by rote, and accompanied by whatever zombie rules infected one's teachers, which can be anything at all. – John Lawler Jul 07 '13 at 03:54
  • +1 My niece, actually. Her sister said that she had been taught that as well. It seems likely it was their father who either arrived at it via the process you describe or learned it from someone who did. He does tend to follow zombie rules in general. – sarah Jul 08 '13 at 00:29
  • 8
    @JohnLawler and others: I love the term "zombie rule", but a more polite way to refer to what's going on here is hypercorrection. Having been taught that "Can I go now?" must be rephrased as "May I please go now?", this girl concludes that "Can you pass the salt? should be "May you please ..." It's the same phenomenon as "Me and him are going" being judged inferior to "He and I are going", leading many to conclude that "This is between me and him" should be replaced by "This is between he and I." – H Stephen Straight Jul 09 '13 at 18:55
  • 1
    If X Y Z is polite, and A is more polite than X, then A Y Z is surely more polite yet. Unfortunately, politeness is not an additive phenomenon. – John Lawler Jul 09 '13 at 19:53
  • 2
    If your niece were to swap the modal verb may with the subject you she would get the affirmative sentence: "You may pass the salt", which is bequeathing permission and would be, considering your niece's young age, extremely rude and inappropriate! :) – Mari-Lou A Jul 15 '13 at 03:08
  • 2
    @Mari-LouA: though still superior to "Pass me the salt fortwith, you smelly lower-class person." – Teemu Leisti Jul 19 '13 at 13:53
  • 1
    Definitely an improvement, yes! :) – Mari-Lou A Jul 19 '13 at 20:36
  • I have heard this usage only from young children who are still using early language acquisition logic to parse grammatical rules (i.e. *runned). For a teenager to make this mistake is learned and unchecked hypercorrection, dare I say Night of the Living Mass Media. – livresque Jul 10 '14 at 06:38
  • As a child, if I asked 'Can I leave the table please?' My Father would answer 'I've little doubt you 'can' but whether you 'may' is a different issue - you'll have to ask your Mother!' I was often confused as a child. –  Mar 22 '16 at 18:10
  • You're making this a lot more complicated than it seems: the pedantic distinction between 'may' and 'can' in polite requests is transmuted to polite commands, where it no longer works. – Roister Aug 18 '22 at 14:46

3 Answers3

34

I think that there is possibly confusion here between may, can and would.

It is possible that she once used to say expressions like:

Can I have ...
Can I get ...

and was taught that it was more polite to use may rather than can in that context.

Although strictly, can relates to the ability to do something, whereas may concerns permission to do something, can is often used instead of may in constructs such as the above. That works acceptably in the first person: "Can/May I [do something]".

Can and may are also used interchangeably is expressions such as:

You may leave now.
You can leave now.

Although both are intended to give permission, again - strictly - the latter relates to the ability to leave (as if the person were previously locked in!).

So can and may are often interchanged when asking or giving permission, but, in your niece's case, she was doing neither: she was requesting someone else to do something. In that case, can still works, strictly meaning "Are you able to pass the salt?" (maybe the other person couldn't reach it!), although it is really being used to mean "Would you please pass the salt?". In this case, may is wrong because she is not asking or giving permission: she is making a request.

So:

may and can are used interchangeably when asking or giving permission.
would (or will) and can (or could) are used interchangeably when making a request.

[I was going to support this by referring to dictionary definitions, but @terdon's answer (with definitions) got posted while I was still writing mine, so I've omitted doing that.]

TrevorD
  • 12,206
  • 2
    What about could? – Tortoise Jul 06 '13 at 22:28
  • "Would you" and "could you" border on hypercorrection of will you. – livresque Jul 10 '14 at 06:36
  • As a side note, could or would could nicely replace may in the OP's example. – Cullub May 31 '18 at 20:29
  • @Cullub Yes, I already suggested them in the third line from the bottom of my answer! But Q. was "How would you explain it?" - not what alternatives should be used. It seems implicit that OP already knew what expressions should / could be used. – TrevorD Jun 01 '18 at 22:55
  • The first two reputable dictionaries I checked in have 'be permitted to' as non-caveated definitions. This would imply that 'Although strictly, can relates to the ability to do something, whereas may concerns permission to do something' is inaccurate – perhaps an example of the etymological fallacy. – Edwin Ashworth Apr 28 '20 at 14:31
13

There is nothing illogical about it at all. It is just misplaced in this particular case.

May I is asking for permission while can I is asking whether an action is possible. However, as you can see in the following definitions (both come from the online Merriam Webster, can and may), this distinction between can and may seems to be in the process of becoming obsolete:

can, transitive verb
1 a : know how to
b : be physically or mentally able to
c —used to indicate possibility ; sometimes used interchangeably with may
d : be permitted by conscience or feeling to
e : be made possible or probable by circumstances to
f : be inherently able or designed to
g : be logically or axiologically able to <2 + 2 can also be written 3 + 1> h : be enabled by law, agreement, or custom to

2 : have permission to —used interchangeably with may

 

may, verbal auxiliary
a archaic : have the ability to
b : have permission to : be free to —used nearly interchangeably with can
c —used to indicate possibility or probability ; sometimes used interchangeably with can ; sometimes used where might would be expected

This was always illustrated to me by my father with the following example, which I just found out is adapted from The Hickory Limb :

Mother, can I go swimming?

Yes, my darling daughter; Hang your clothes on a hickory limb.

And don't go near the water.

In the example above, the daughter of an admittedly annoyingly literal mother, is asking whether she is physically able to go swimming, not if she has the permission to do so and the mother answers accordingly.

In the case of your niece, if you wanted to be pedantic, you could say that she is asking her mother whether she—her mother—has permission to pass the salt, while what she wanted to do is to ask her mother to please pass the salt.

terdon
  • 21,559
  • Surely, the first line of your quotation should read "can I .." for the daughter to be "asking whether she is physically able to go swimming". – TrevorD Jul 06 '13 at 13:03
  • Hah, @TrevorD indeed it should. I had first quoted from memory (using can) and then found the actual quote that used may and blindly copy pasted assuming my father was quoting directly. Apparently he wasn't. – terdon Jul 06 '13 at 13:07
  • +1 But the story is based on the song, which is at least a generation older. – StoneyB on hiatus Jul 06 '13 at 13:33
  • 1
    @StoneyB I'll take your word for it, I had no idea of the source my father (who was born in '38) loved quoting it to me (who was born in '80), that's all I know. – terdon Jul 06 '13 at 13:35
  • Still seems illogical to me. I agree that they are becoming interchangeable in the case of using can in place of may to ask permission. And using can you? when one means to ask is will you? is also common. But using may in place of can to make a request is not. Your last paragraph describes the attempted but unsuccessful pedantry we perpetrated. Maybe that's the best/worst that could be done. – sarah Jul 07 '13 at 02:18
  • @sarah yes, absolutely, it sounds strange, not sure what you mean by illogical. The words are in the process of becoming interchangeable but they are not quite there yet so "may you ..." is still heard as a query rather than a request. However, the sentence "May you pass me the salt" is perfectly correct if one is in fact asking about whether you are allowed to do so. It sounds strange and stilted and archaic but it is not illogical. – terdon Jul 07 '13 at 03:27
  • 3
    OK, so, she asked "My you please pass the salt." I think the please makes it illogical. What is that asking? If one is allowed to please pass something? What is "please passing"? It just doesn't make any sense to me. Also, I'd say it's illogical to use words that mean "Are you allowed to pass me the salt?" when you have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the person is allowed to and all you really want to say is "Please pass me the salt." – sarah Jul 07 '13 at 07:34
  • 2
    @sarah ah, OK, I see what you mean. I agree, the please makes it even stranger. I can sort of wriggle out of that by saying that the please is addressed as an aside to whoever can give her mother permission to pass the salt, but that really is stretching it, you're right. – terdon Jul 07 '13 at 12:59
  • @terdon - a slightly different take: I agree that this strange construction is because of a historic difference between 'may' and 'can," but I can't agree this this difference still holds today. The OP"s problem is their friend is using that they're using the 1st person construct in the 2nd person. Isn't that the issue? – Roister Aug 18 '22 at 14:57
  • 1
    @Royster I still differentiate between can and may, personally, so it isn't completly gone yet, but I know I am a dying breed in this respect. I don't quite get what you mean about the 1st and 2nd person constructs though. 1st and 2nd person construct would be identical here: I pass the salt, you pass the salt. – terdon Aug 18 '22 at 17:40
  • @terdon - I acknowledge your right to differentiate! In the 1st person, you'd politely request, 'May I kiss the Queen,' but it falls apart if you politely command me: 'May you kiss the Queen.' That's what I mean by a 'construct' depending on the person... – Roister Aug 19 '22 at 18:24
3

My explanation would be that when she says, "May you please pass the salt?" she is saying "Do you 'have permission' to please pass the salt?" Instead she should be saying, "Would you please pass the salt." which means, " 'Are you willing (it is at your discretion) to please pass the salt?"

Benjamin Wade
  • 403
  • 2
  • 7
  • 'Will', 'could', and 'can' all work. +1 for quickly honing in on the problem with the illogical phrasing, though. – lly Jun 01 '18 at 18:04
  • This would work with no politeness marker or with one at the start or the end of the sentence (a polite request for an answer to the question). It's impossible with medial 'please'. – Edwin Ashworth Apr 28 '20 at 14:34