Periods Meeting Quotes

@Frank Apisa,

All is well here, Frank.

Not to raise a Frankenstorm, but I'm sure that you can see that S Pinker did not agree with you. Both blurbs come from him.

Just as you didn't fully understand the subjunctive/conditional, again in a conscious sense, meaning that you can't describe how it is used in English, you don't understand why they/their/them has always been used by speakers of English.

It follows the pattern of 'you' acting as both a singular and a plural, with, as you have noted, the singular 'you' with a plural verb.

Note that the use of 'they/them/their' in these situations is as different as the use of 'we' in the singular sense, or the royal 'we. It doesn't change the plural use of 'we', nor does it make it any less important or less understood in its other uses.

Language needs all these usages to be clear and precise. We use past tense for the future, we use present tense to describe always, we use the present continuous to describe the future. None of these uses make it confusing when we use these grammatical structures for their "normal" usages.

I'm sure you can see that,

Everyone brought her/his kids simply isn't as clear as Everyone brought their kids when the meaning is "Each person under discussion now brought their own kids".

I hope you can get back on the links soon.

1 Reply

@JTT,

Quote:

Everyone brought her/his kids simply isn't as clear as Everyone brought their kids when the meaning is "Each person under discussion brought their own kids".

"Everyone brought his/her kids" still sounds better to my ear...and probably I will use that form when writing, although I will acknowledge than when speaking I probably tend toward the other.

However, I posted a comment in another forum just a few minutes ago that I noticed bends that rule...which indicates to me that I am not being obsessive about this.

Quote:

I hope you can get back on the links soon.

Ah...so do I. As the members of House Stark often mention, "winter is coming"...and I want to get a few more rounds in before snow makes that too difficult.

2 Replies

@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

"Everyone brought his/her kids" still sounds better to my ear...and probably I will use that form when writing,

That's really quite funny when you think about it, Frank. It shows how people can get wedded to some pretty dumb ideas. Even with all the facts, the tradition, the reality showing that this was a fictitious rule, it "stills sounds better to your ear".

[With 'your', did I mean Frank's ear or the general 'your' ear?]

In writing, that would be the worst time to do so. What will you do for those instances where you actually want to say that everyone brought his/John's kids or her/Mary's kids.

Remember, prescriptivists tell us that these "rules" are meant to maintain clarity in language and yet, you want to reduce clarity just to maintain an errant rule.

Don't make no sense to me, Frank. Perhaps you have a good explanation.

FORE!!!!!

1 Reply

@JTT,

Quote:

Perhaps you have a good explanation.

No explanation needed, JTT. My explanation of earlier makes plenty of sense to anyone with an open mind. In fact, it would make plenty of sense to anyone with an open mind.

In any case, you seem to be enjoying yourself...and what more can one ask of a person?

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

My explanation of earlier makes plenty of sense to anyone with an open mind

It makes no sense at all to language scientists, Frank. Steven Pinker described how illogical it is, as did I. It breaks the first rule of prescriptivism, which prescriptivists never followed of course, but they were big on mouthing it - Be clear!

Remind me, what was your explanation? Was it, "it sounds right to my ear"?

Remember where your ear took you vis a vis what you thought was a subjunctive in one of Aidan's posts.

1 Reply

@JTT,

Frank lives in New Jersey JT and that's his last post a few hours before Sandy arrived there.

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@spendius,

That must have got him off the links.

1 Reply

@JTT,

Quote:

A links is the oldest style of golf course, first developed in Scotland. The word "links" comes via the Scots language from the Old English word hlinc : "rising ground, ridge" and refers to an area of coastal sand dunes and sometimes to open parkland. The land "linking" the sea to the arable farmland is typically characterized by dunes, an undulating surface, and a sandy soil unsuitable for farming but which readily supports various rye grasses. It also retains this more general meaning in the Scottish English dialect. It can be treated as singular even though it has an "s" at the end and occurs in place names that precede the development of golf, for example Lundin Links, Fife.

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@Frank Apisa,

our editors will decide the rules. I find that the rulesfor "correctness v vernacular" are broken frequently depending on the target audience. In A2k we slip comfortably between 'Hood speak" , business jargon, to almost Victorian, and as long as we understand each oher why have a cow?

(Unless , of course, that your immediate topic is another ESL
demanding to be heard out

1 Reply

@farmerman,

Quote:

I find that the rulesfor "correctness v vernacular"

While it seems you are trying to help, Farmer, you still stick in this, above, which only perpetuates the ignorance.

1 Reply

@JTT,

I have some considerable experience of farmers JT and they never help anybody but themselves. And I don't blame them. It's a terrifying, nasty and risky job and they get **** on left, right and centre by city folks who can outvote them and who demand cheap food. And, indeed, need cheap food.

An American sociologist once heard some starry-eyed American who had been on holiday in rural Ireland effusively holding forth on the matter of how friendly all the farmers were with each other and helping each other out at harvests and other things in a sort of bucolic idyll. So he set off to study them for a year and recorded all the acts of kindness they performed for each other. At the end of the year, after converting the services provided into money terms at the going rate, he found that all the books balanced. And a great deal of tax had been avoided.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

they get **** on left, right and centre by city folks

Not to mention the cows, chickens and pigs.

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@spendius,

Quote:

Frank lives in New Jersey JT and that's his last post a few hours before Sandy arrived there.

Saved by Sandy.

0 Replies

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