Periods Meeting Quotes

I guess the upside of this is that you will no longer be chastising folks, mildly or otherwise, on their language use. That's a good thing, Frank, because there are so many incredible things to learn about language. Also, it lends itself to reducing the chances that another generation will be saddled with these fictions.

there are so many incredible things to learn about language.

Fair enough, Frank. You've made a decision to refrain from offering advice on English grammar. I commend you on that wise choice.

See, Frank, it's not a general ignorance that you possess.

You have, so far as I'm aware, only shown ignorance in two areas; English grammar/the workings of English and language generally and US war crimes/terrorism.

Your usual tripe, Spendi. You say a lot but you rarely say anything of value.

Anyway--tripe is £3 a pound. Even your cliched metaphors are hopeless. You broke one of the important rules by employing a figure of speech that you copied from a very long list of cliche-mongers. And you were warned too. But I can see that a mind-set [cliche] that sees little value [cliche] in what someone has instructed you in will be emotionally precluded from you having noticed it and you will thus continue mouthing trite, unoriginal banalities [cliche] for ever and ever [cliche] without the slightest intention of interesting anybody.

The reason you have got like this is your position on prescriptivism. It allows you too easy a ride. It's always easy when you make your own rules. Prescriptivism forces effort.

No pain--no gain.

You might have said, with a little effort, "your usual farrago of fanciful, far-fetched, fermented flapdoodle"

The rules of language are exceedingly complex, Spendi and you don't have near the focus to address these tough issues.

What did I say about aidan's "was"? "Out to lunch" is a bit corny. I was dictating to my secretary. "... you disappeared, knowing that you weren't up for the tough stuff." That's news to me. What "tough stuff"? When did I disappear?

So, (to use Joe from Chicago's pet peeve) as it's not subjunctive, but conditional- would it still be correct if I were/was to use 'were' as in:

And then there'd even be more nuance and differentiation depending upon if your speaker 'were' white, black, hispanic, a debutante, etc., etc.'?

I mean, I'm just clarifying in terms of 'rules'. I know it sounds fine to my ear either way. I think I could have used 'was', 'were', 'is' and everyone would have known what I meant.

I guess what I'm asking is if the same 'rules' a prescriptivist would apply to the subjunctive also apply to the conditional?

Sound logic is expressed thru proper English grammar (for the most part).
Words fit together like numbers in math.

U can be held responsible for what u say.

Beyond that issue, there is the matter
of avoiding expressing yourself with enuf
conspicuous error to appear to be a fool.

Concerning the Bible, I dunno whether the logic of grammar
had been figured out back then, nor whether its authors
were familiar with those concepts.

"Many people are under the impression that the facts about a given language are all known. Nothing could be further from the truth. Much is not known about English, particularly at the level of discourse and in the dimension of pragmatics."

The Grammar Book - An EFL/ESL Teacher's Course @ page 6

nor whether its authors were familiar with those concepts.

Pinker seems to be saying the same thing I am...but I must acknowledge that he said it much, much better.

And now we come to the biggest and most bogus controversy of them all. The fact that many prescriptive rules are worth keeping does not imply that every pet peeve, bit of grammatical folklore, or dimly remembered lesson from Miss Grundy’s classroom is worth keeping. Many prescriptive rules originated for screwball reasons, impede clear and graceful prose, and have been flouted by English’s greatest writers for centuries.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_good_word/2012/05/steven_pinker_on_the_false_fronts_in_the_language_wars_.single.html

Sometimes an alleged grammatical "error" is logical not only in the sense of "rational," but in the sense of respecting distinctions made by the logician.

Consider this alleged barbarism:

Everyone returned to their seats.

If anyone calls, tell them I can't come to the phone.

No one should have to sell their home to pay for medical care.

The mavens explain: [everyone] means [every one], a singular subject, which may not serve as the antecedent of a plural pronoun like [them] later in the sentence. "Everyone returned to [his] seat," they insist. "If anyone calls, tell [him] I can't come to the phone."

If you were the target of these lessons, you might be getting a bit uncomfortable. [Everyone returned to his seat] makes it sound like Bruce Springsteen was discovered during intermission to be in the audience, and everyone rushed back and converged on his seat to await an autograph.

If there is a good chance that a caller may be female, it is odd to ask one's roommate to tell [him] anything (even if you are not among the people who get upset about "sexist language").

Such feelings of disquiet -- a red flag to any serious linguist -- are well-founded. The logical point that everyone but the language mavens intuitively grasps is that [everyone] and [they] are not an antecedent and a pronoun referring to the same person in the world, which would force them to agree in number.

They are a "quantifier" and a "bound variable," a different logical relationship. [Everyone returned to their seats] means "For all X, X returned to X's seat." The "X" is simply a placeholder that keeps track of the roles that players play across different relationships: the X that comes back to a seat is the same X that owns the seat that X comes back to.

The [their] there does not, in fact, have plural number, because it refers neither to one thing nor to many things; it does not refer at all.

On logical grounds, then, variables are not the same thing as the more familiar "referential" pronouns that trigger agreement ([he] meaning to some particular guy, [they] meaning some particular bunch of guys).

Some languages are considerate and offer their speakers different words for referential pronouns and for variables. But English is stingy; a referential pronoun must be drafted into service to lend its name when a speaker needs to use a variable. There is no reason that the vernacular decision to borrow [they, their, them] for the task is any worse than the prescriptivists' recommendation of [he, him, his]. Indeed, [they] has the advantage of embracing both sexes and feeling right in a wider variety of sentences.

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1994_01_24_thenewrepublic.html