@contrex,
Quote:Isn't deeming something "unnatural" a form of prescription? It feels kind of hard to have to give up saying or writing "Did he use to gamble frequently?", after growing up in a setting where practically everybody I heard, from humble to exalted, used that form,
No, that isn't prescriptive, C, because I certainly would never make the demand that another dialect change the form they are used to using.
Quote:after growing up in a setting where practically everybody I heard,
'heard'?, C?
I'm totally good with BrE
writing Did S use to?/S didn't use to. I was merely discussing the reasoning behind such a use.
You must have read at least some of my discussions with OmSig. If you have, you could have easily accused me of hypocrisy for my seeming demand that all English writers adhere to "logic" in their use of language.
Quote:and after having noticed it as the mostly-used form in written material.
Have you done a corpus study, or can you point to one which backs your anecdotal evidence?
