6
   

Why use "hold off", not "holds off"?

 
 
contrex
 
  3  
Reply Sat 16 Jun, 2012 01:08 am
@JTT,
JTT wrote:
A 'purist', aka a 'prescriptivist is not someone that anyone would want to rely on for accurate descriptions of language.


Prescriptivists do not, I would have thought, offer "descriptions" in the sense that -- I think -- you intend. Those shopping for "descriptions" are not likely to head for the purist store. Those wishing to learn a language would be prudent to note the pronouncements of the purists and the describers as well as those in between. Despite apparent opposition, prescription and description can inform each other.

JTT
 
  1  
Reply Sat 16 Jun, 2012 10:22 am
Who is the sniveling coward that added the tag Contrex Learns English?
JTT
 
  1  
Reply Sat 16 Jun, 2012 10:38 am
@contrex,
Quote:
Despite apparent opposition, prescription and description can inform each other.


Why would anyone want to chance it by going to a witch doctor?

Quote:
Those wishing to learn a language would be prudent to note the pronouncements of the purists


Why? A purist merely pretends to know the language. A purist operates on false premises. With those odd times that the purist actually makes an accurate description, a language learner is left with nagging doubts about the purist and what's really happening in language.

Why trust someone who believes in fanciful notions about language? Why trust someone who has merely memorized several old canards about such an incredibly difficult subject?

contrex
 
  1  
Reply Sat 16 Jun, 2012 12:10 pm
@JTT,
JTT wrote:

Who is the sniveling coward that added the tag Contrex Learns English?


Tee-hee! I promise you it was not I.
contrex
 
  3  
Reply Sat 16 Jun, 2012 12:14 pm
@JTT,
JTT wrote:
Quote:
Those wishing to learn a language would be prudent to note the pronouncements of the purists


Why?


Because even bad examples (that are not imitated!) can be instructive.

Otto Von Bismarck: “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. I prefer to learn from the mistakes of others”.

A widely roving and impartial eye is a useful thing.


contrex
 
  1  
Reply Sat 16 Jun, 2012 02:54 pm
@wmwcjr,
wmwcjr wrote:
By the way, you just used a word -- namely, "transpondial" -- that's not in my unabridged. Sad Of course, my unabridged also happens to be a Yankee. Smile


The pond is a jocular term for the Atlantic - to refer to pondial issues is a jokey way of referring to BrE and AmE differences, particularly on Usenet - alt.usage.english and alt.english.usage. LeftPondia/Transpondia is the US and RightPondia is Britain.
0 Replies
 
JTT
 
  0  
Reply Sat 16 Jun, 2012 04:35 pm
@contrex,
Quote:
Because even bad examples (that are not imitated!) can be instructive.

Otto Von Bismarck: “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. I prefer to learn from the mistakes of others”.

A widely roving and impartial eye is a useful thing.


But there's no need to send out roving eyes to seek that which is not a part of language. That's not impartiality, C. That's abject stupidity. That's like saying we should follow study the creationists to learn about evolution.
JTT
 
  0  
Reply Sat 16 Jun, 2012 04:36 pm
@contrex,
But it was a sniveling coward all the same.
0 Replies
 
contrex
 
  2  
Reply Sat 16 Jun, 2012 05:04 pm
@JTT,
JTT wrote:
That's like saying we should follow study the creationists to learn about evolution.


But it would be folly for a student (e.g.) of the sociology of religion to treat the sayings of Creationists as somehow evil/taboo/ritually polluting and put their hands over their ears and say "la la la I can't hear them".
JTT
 
  0  
Reply Sat 16 Jun, 2012 09:58 pm
@contrex,
Quote:
But it would be folly for a student (e.g.) of the sociology of religion to treat the sayings of Creationists as somehow evil/taboo/ritually polluting and put their hands over their ears and say "la la la I can't hear them".


That's not what descriptivists have done. They have exposed these charlatans time and again. When you have posted a prescription, I have shot it down. It's really incredibly easy, C. The proof for any prescription is nonexistent.

It's best summed up by G Nunberg.

Quote:
But while it is understandable that speakers of a language with a literary tradition would tend to be pessimistic about its course, there is no more hard evidence for a general linguistic degeneration than there is reason to believe that Aaron and Rose are inferior to Ruth and Gehrig.

Most of my fellow linguists, in fact, would say that it is absurd even to talk about a language changing for the better or the worse. [Yet you still persist in this "purist" nonsense.] When you have the historical picture before you, and can see how Indo-European gradually slipped into Germanic, Germanic into Anglo-Saxon, and Anglo-Saxon into the English of Chaucer, then Shakespeare, and then Henry James, the process of linguistic change seems as ineluctable and impersonal as continental drift. From this Olympian point of view, not even the Norman invasion had much of an effect on the structure of the language, and all the tirades of all the grammarians since the Renaissance sound like the prattlings of landscape gardeners who hope by frantic efforts to keep Alaska from bumping into Asia.

http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/correct/decline/



Added emphasis is mine.
McTag
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Jun, 2012 09:57 am
@JTT,

G Nunberg came up with a good paragraph there, and one cannot but be tempted to agree with what he says.
I am conservative by nature though, especially where language is concerned, and I think it is a shame that today's ubiquitous mass media and communications seem to be accelerating the process of change, and also the tendency to homogeneity.
Change is happening, with increasing speed, and not always imho for the "better". We seem too eager to be dumbing-down, seeking the least common denominator.
0 Replies
 
 

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