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[Victoria Waterfield]

No one was ever confused about the meaning of a sentence because of a split infinitive, for example.

But the rule about split infinitives is a made-up one that never had anything to do with proper English grammar to begin with, and so seeing it invoked leads to one of the more rarefied of pleasures: calling someone out for being a prescriptivist incorrectly.

[Choop]

game, set, match: ms. waterfield

[Bobby Isosceles]

I'd like to talk about prescriptivism vs. descriptivism in linguistics.  This has been bugging me for a while.

See, my mom teaches high school English, and as such I was brought up with the idea that there was correct and incorrect grammar, and if you didn't know the difference, it was basically over for you (I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea).  But when I took some linguistics classes in college, it seemed that that idea had fallen out of favor, and grammatical mistakes were considered a natural evolution of the language.  That is, if enough people are making the same mistake, it becomes an idiom or something and an accepted part of the language.

I can understand that approach, and obviously languages do need to evolve with the times.  My problem, I guess, is that in this form of evolution, there is no process of natural selection, no survival of the fittest.  There are some mutations that don't make communication any easier or clearer, but are used by a lot of people just because they don't know any better.  I'm talking about things like "could of," "irregardless," and "could care less."  All of those are ungrammatical and/or just make no sense, and they all have syntactically valid alternatives that do make sense.  So quite frankly there's no reason to use any of them.  But enough people do that they'll probably end up recognized in dictionaries soon (if they're not already), and while you and I know that dictionaries are descriptive by nature, thousands of people will use them to justify their use of these ridiculous terms, and we'll no longer have a leg to stand on when complaining about them.

So my conflict is that I recognize the necessity and inevitability of a language to be constantly changing, but I don't think we should just blindly accept any change.  I'd like to be all liberal artsy about it and say "ooh, isn't it interesting how 'could have' became 'could of,'" but considering that I do actually have to speak the language in question, I'd like it to be as clear and efficient as possible, and so I think a line has to be drawn somewhere.  But that sounds awfully prescriptivist of me -- which in linguistic circles, I understand, is pretty much considered fascism.  So I'd be losing a lot of humanitarian street cred.

Am I just a stodgy old fossil out of touch with the times?

Yours,
Troubled in Tallahassee

There are successful and unsuccessful attempts to "clean up" and standardize a language. Unsuccessful attempts are godawful - witness Young Avestan.* Successful attempts often have strange side effects -- Panini's grammar of Classical Sanskrit, for example, is a wonderfully cleaned up and standardized version of Old Indic (the Vedic stuff is more on par with Gathic Avestan); but even then, there are unintented consequences: certain things like the rigorous use of the instrumental + perfect for past tense actions (i.e. instead of saying "Gloomba hugged Wombat," I'd say "by Gloomba Wombat was hugged") lead to split ergativity in modern Hindi and Punjabi (where, in lieu of an instrumental case, it looks like the verb agrees with the object and not the subject)


* no, really, Young Avestan is garbage

[CortJstr]

And how about that Klingon? That is some weird syntax right there, buddy.

[Bobby Isosceles]

And how about that Klingon? That is some weird syntax right there, buddy.

Kidding aside, intentionally so. They took peculiarities from a variety of languages, mostly non-Indo-European, and crammed them together to create something that has a truly alien feel. The way cases are handled and the way agents are fronted is pretty strange. 

[CortJstr]

Kidding aside, intentionally so. They took peculiarities from a variety of languages, mostly non-Indo-European, and crammed them together to create something that has a truly alien feel. The way cases are handled and the way agents are fronted is pretty strange. 

Yeah. I'd heard that. And until ST 6 there was no verb to be. They had to add one when a character quoted Hamlet.

[Bobby Isosceles]

Yeah. I'd heard that. And until ST 6 there was no verb to be. They had to add one when a character quoted Hamlet.

With highly inflected languages, you don't really need the verb "to be". Most indo-european languages had two verbs "to be", one that usually was some variant of as/ah/is and one that was some variant of bu/bau/bav/bhu. The former tended to have more of an existential sense and the latter more of a sense of "becoming," but they were interchangeable. Yet, in almost all of the descendent languages, they were merged: hence English is/be, German ist/bin, Farsi hast/bud (vis. archaic bovad), and so forth. And moreover, in the earlier languages (Sanskrit, Avestan, Old Persian, Gothic, etc.) they were barely used at all: there is no need to when attributes (adjectives, adverbs, etc.) agree with their substantives (nouns, etc.)

[pmcd9]

Ok, now I remember why I stay away from this thread.  It's making my head hurt.  Since Wombat won't lock the thread can I appeal to you all to please shut the fuck up!

[wombat]

But the rule about split infinitives is a made-up one that never had anything to do with proper English grammar to begin with, and so seeing it invoked leads to one of the more rarefied of pleasures: calling someone out for being a prescriptivist incorrectly.

Nearly all of the classic prescriptive shibboleths have that property. You can write a whole website like that for one rule, too. Here's a good one.
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html

Hey Paul, last I checked, you're a mod too....

[greenkoolayd]

The 100 Most Beautiful Words in English

Ailurophile A cat-lover.
Assemblage A gathering.
Becoming Attractive.
Beleaguer To exhaust with attacks.
Brood To think alone.
Bucolic In a lovely rural setting.
Bungalow A small, cozy cottage.
Chatoyant Like a cat’s eye.
Comely Attractive.
Conflate To blend together.
Cynosure A focal point of admiration.
Dalliance A brief love affair.
Demesne Dominion, territory.
Demure Shy and reserved.
Denouement The resolution of a mystery.
Desuetude Disuse.
Desultory Slow, sluggish.
Diaphanous Filmy.
Dissemble Deceive.
Dulcet Sweet, sugary.
Ebullience Bubbling enthusiasm.
Effervescent Bubbly.
Efflorescence Flowering, blooming.
Elision Dropping a sound or syllable in a word.
Elixir A good potion.
Eloquence Beauty and persuasion in speech.
Embrocation Rubbing on a lotion.
Emollient A softener.
Ephemeral Short-lived.
Epiphany A sudden revelation.
Erstwhile At one time, for a time.
Ethereal Gaseous, invisible but detectable.
Evanescent Vanishing quickly, lasting a very short time.
Evocative Suggestive.
Fetching Pretty.
Felicity Pleasantness.
Forbearance Withholding response to provocation.
Fugacious Fleeting.
Furtive Shifty, sneaky.
Gambol To skip or leap about joyfully.
Glamour Beauty.
Gossamer The finest piece of thread, a spider’s silk
Halcyon Happy, sunny, care-free.
Harbinger Messenger with news of the future.
Imbrication Overlapping and forming a regular pattern.
Imbroglio An altercation or complicated situation.
Imbue To infuse, instill.
Incipient Beginning, in an early stage.
Ineffable Unutterable, inexpressible.
Ingénue A naïve young woman.
Inglenook A cozy nook by the hearth.
Insouciance Blithe nonchalance.
Inure To become jaded.
Labyrinthine Twisting and turning.
Lagniappe A special kind of gift.
Lagoon A small gulf or inlet.
Languor Listlessness, inactivity.
Lassitude Weariness, listlessness.
Leisure Free time.
Lilt To move musically or lively.
Lissome Slender and graceful.
Lithe Slender and flexible.
Love Deep affection.
Mellifluous Sweet sounding.
Moiety One of two equal parts.
Mondegreen A slip of the ear.
Murmurous Murmuring.
Nemesis An unconquerable archenemy.
Offing The sea between the horizon and the offshore.
Onomatopoeia A word that sounds like its meaning.
Opulent Lush, luxuriant.
Palimpsest A manuscript written over earlier ones.
Panacea A solution for all problems
Panoply A complete set.
Pastiche An art work combining materials from various sources.
Penumbra A half-shadow.
Petrichor The smell of earth after rain.
Plethora A large quantity.
Propinquity An inclination.
Pyrrhic Successful with heavy losses.
Quintessential Mose essential.
Ratatouille A spicy French stew.
Ravel To knit or unknit.
Redolent Fragrant.
Riparian By the bank of a stream.
Ripple A very small wave.
Scintilla A spark or very small thing.
Sempiternal Eternal.
Seraglio Rich, luxurious oriental palace or harem.
Serendipity Finding something nice while looking for something else.
Summery Light, delicate or warm and sunny.
Sumptuous Lush, luxurious.
Surreptitious Secretive, sneaky.
Susquehanna A river in Pennsylvania.
Sussurous Whispering, hissing.
Talisman A good luck charm.
Tintinnabulation Tinkling.
Umbrella Protection from sun or rain.
Untoward Unseemly, inappropriate.
Vestigial In trace amounts.
Wafture Waving.
Wherewithal The means.
Woebegone Sorrowful, downcast.

[pmcd9]

Hey Paul, last I checked, you're a mod too....

Yes, but not of this fora.  Although, Bozack hasn't been around in several years so maybe I could take his place.  

[wombat]

I've got locking privileges on all the fora, not just the ones I'm listed as modding. Just sayin'.

Also, any list of beautiful words that does not include 'obelisk' and 'wombat' is bullshit.

[jaydub]

That list contained entirely too many French descended words.  I expect some rigour from those efforts.  Pretty French words are gimme's.

[jaydub]

Also, with Quentin Tarantino's new film coming out, I'm expecting to see plummeting levels of correct spellings of "Bastard" in society at large.  I should probably look at upping the dose for my OCD meds.

[wombat]

Also, with Quentin Tarantino's new film coming out, I'm expecting to see plummeting levels of correct spellings of "Bastard" in society at large.  I should probably look at upping the dose for my OCD meds.

Yeah, I thought of that too. But you can't blame people if they're going to be screwed with like that. You learn what correct spelling is from what you read in sources that have been proofread by a bunch of people before you read it. If you can't trust movie titles, what can you trust?

Don't get me started on spelling. I have been dealing with a PR person this week who sent me emails with TWO names spelled wrong. I only just caught the second one at the last minute, because the last thing I do on a story, after checking the spelling several times, is copy and paste all the names into Google and get suspicious if I don't get any hints.

Seriously, people, do NOT go into PR if you don't understand that newspaper stories need to spell names correctly. It's not a field where that is a trivial detail.