The expression quoted in the title of this piece was uttered by Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, and it has attracted public interest on the suspicion that it is ungrammatical. Contrary to the assumption of many, who have even generated memes, skits and tongue-in-cheek remarks to mock the minister, the utterance is grammatical. This piece will account for the grammaticality/correctness of the utterance and discuss the inherent grammatical features leading to the wrong inference by the public.
As an aside, let me state that the position of a minister attracts the preposition, ‘of’, especially when emphasis is put on an actual ministry, as instanced below:
The Minister for Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, was not grammatically wrong (non-standard).
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, was not grammatically wrong (standard).
Who is the incumbent minister for education (non-standard)?
Who is the incumbent minister of education (standard)?
Sometimes, however, ‘minister’ can collocate with ‘for’, particularly when a portfolio’s designation appears generic. This is the rationale behind the inclusion of ‘minister for the Arts’ in the Oxford Collocations Dictionary.
By striking contrast, ‘commissioner’ decidedly co-exists with ‘for’—not ‘of’.
An erstwhile Commissioner of Tourism, Arts and Culture in Lagos State, Mrs Olufunke Adebolu, was present at the opening of the museum (non-standard).
An erstwhile Commissioner for Tourism, Arts and Culture in Lagos State, Mrs Olufunke Adebolu, was present at the opening of the museum (standard).
Moving on, I shall address the minor issue in the utterance under contention: the repetitive use of the adverb, ‘very’. Some individuals have argued that such repetition makes the sentence incorrect, but contrary to this opinion, the repetitive use of ‘very’ is not out of place in spoken discourse. Features of spoken language include the use of fillers (erm, y’know, you see), as well as the repetitive use of intensifiers (very very, really really, so so). Therefore, language use, in its spoken form, cannot be adjudged ungrammatical on grounds of such features of spoken discourse.
Beyond this, the bigger misconception was the assumption that the word, ‘suspect’, can only function as a noun and a verb, as the sentences below reveal:
This man is a suspect (noun).
I suspect (verb) his moves.
Beyond these usages, the word can equally function as an adjective, with the meaning of something being ‘possibly false’ or ‘dangerous’. As an adjective, it can be used both attributively and predicatively. Attributive adjectives precede the nouns they qualify; as such, making them occur after nouns will result in ungrammaticality.
Such adjectives include: main, major and chief. It is permissible to talk about ‘a major point’, but it will be downright ungrammatical to say ‘the point is major’. Predicative adjectives, by comparison, are those that are permissible only after the nouns they qualify. Adjectives in this category include ‘alive’ and ‘awake’. While we can say, ‘My mother is alive’, it will be absurd to talk about ‘my alive mother’. Nevertheless, only few adjectives are position-restricted. Most adjectives can function attributively and predicatively without losing their meanings. One of such adjectives is ‘suspect’, as deployed below:
A suspect parcel was found at the station (standard).
Or
The parcel found at the station was suspect (standard).
Both sentences imply that a dangerous parcel was discovered. Moreover, the two sentences are grammatical, notwithstanding the position of the adjective.
As an intervention, this treatise hopes to school the readership on the concept of polysemy. This term is used to explain words that have more than one meaning. For every word we encounter in usage, it is essential to be open to the possibility of such a word having another meaning aside from the one we are acquainted with. This is the case with ‘suspect’, which embodies different meanings as a noun, a verb and an adjective.
Another important point to note, which will help us guard against hasty grammatical conclusions, is the behaviour of different word classes in sentences. When confused about the usage of any word, it is pertinent to consult a reputable dictionary and determine which word class(es) such a word belongs to. By deduction, one must not rely on form or a known meaning to determine how a word can be applied/positioned in sentence structures. This is because a word that appears like a verb may be capable of functioning as an adjective, and it may also have other meanings. For instance, the word, ‘commensurate’, appears very much like a verb, and that often results in its erroneous use, as depicted below:
Her salary does not commensurate her experience (incorrect).
Her salary is not commensurate with her experience (correct).
The faulty portrayal in the first sentence is that ‘commensurate’ has the form of verbs like ‘encapsulate’ and ‘enunciate’. That may prompt anyone to erroneously deploy it as a verb, whereas it can only be used as an adjective.
Essentially, this piece establishes that the appropriateness of grammatical structures is not spontaneously determined. That is to say, meticulous attention has to be given to the several meanings that words can possibly manifest, not forgetting the different word classes that such words can belong to.
