"There was two Mini Cooper parked in front of my house", or "there WERE two mini coopers"?

@JTT,

You have no sense at all about subtlety.

3 Replies

@ossobuco,

Quote:

You have no sense at all about subtlety.

Go ahead and explain, Osso.

1 Reply

@JTT,

There's nothing to explain. You make it plain yourself.

You are supposed to be explaining to me.

I asked you to--

Quote:

Okay. Go back to the beginning. I said "if I was you" and you made a comment about me doing so. Go from there and explain eh?

Now you're saying you didn't correct me and adding a few meaningless, asserted insults with a "seem" inserted.

Quote:

"Were" is the past subjunctive form of to be in English, not was.

Is that not correcting me? Is that not prescriptivism?

I prefer "if I was you". Assertions are not even language. If you assert that I'm this or that and I assert that I'm not how do you distinguish between the two without the claim that your assertions have priority over mine? Which I can also say about my assertion.

Hence, there is no communication and thus no language.

Unless you put a gun to my head and I agree that I am this or that. Which is exactly a microcosmic form of what you accuse the US of doing to the world. For example--Saddam has WMDs.

Just reading in a small corner of A2K it is obvious that luxuriating in a warm bath of assertions is very common. Whether it dates back to the Wild West, which wasn't as wild as many another place has been, or to the Roosevelt/Adams/Lodge agenda that was "pummeling the nation into shape" in the late 1890s with the idea that "there really is such a thing as being overcivilized (sic), and the constant proclamation that Americans were bred to be warriors and that after all at a certain point a punch in the nose beats talk."

Quotes from Prof. Larzar Ziff's great book The American 1890s.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

Now you're saying you didn't correct me

You're definitely not bright enough, Spendius. I didn't correct you. I posted a comment from Setanta, something I've already explained to you more than once. It was in italics.

I wasn't correcting you, and again, if you were able to understand the terminology, if you were able to understand the discussions on language you would know this. You don't. You've proved it time and again. You're an old fart version of young Matt, another clueless individual on language issues.

Quote:

Is that not correcting me? Is that not prescriptivism?

What the quote from Setanta showed, with you not following the prescription, in your own words,

Quote:

Prescriptivism, as I have said without reply, is concerned with manners, etiquette and form as well as with communication. Fetish. Even superstition.

It also helps to form a disciplined mind.

is that you are a seriously confused fella when it comes to discussing language and how it works.

Even without the prescription and your arrant nonsense about it helping to form a disciplined mind, you don't come anywhere close to having a disciplined mind. You're all over the map. Whenever you have offered your thoughts on language they have been out to lunch, picked from dog knows where.

Quote:

I prefer "if I was you".

That's completely fine. And you can't even explain the language reasons why. That too is fine.

Quote:

Assertions are not even language. If you assert that I'm this or that and I assert that I'm not how do you distinguish between the two without the claim that your assertions have priority over mine? Which I can also say about my assertion.

Hence, there is no communication and thus no language.

Codswallop. You have understood everything. You have discussed the same and yet you think yourself bright with these silly arguments.

We can easily distinguish because you show repeatedly that you don't even understand the meanings of the words you so carelessly toss about. We've seen you, in the thread where the subjunctive was discussed [with Aidan and Frank, Aidan offered excellent views, Frank wisely kept out], offer nothing but piffle.

We see you in almost none of the discussions on language, and when you are there, it's usually more piffle. We've seen you, in a rare moment of honesty, admit that you know little about the workings of language. And still you presume to pontificate about things you know so precious little about.

0 Replies

@ossobuco,

Quote:

You have no sense at all about subtlety.

Quote:

I graduated from high school and I have purchased a couple of books.

That's apparent.

That wasn't subtle enough for you, Osso?

0 Replies

@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

Considering that this has largely devolved into a dialogue between JTT and Spendius, I wonder how many members here are just seeing a blank page?

Prior to this post of yours, I had twelve posts hidden in a row.

Which really ought to be some kind of record, but it's not even close. BillRM and Waterboy arguing with each other have that distinction, I think.

2 Replies

@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

You have no sense at all about subtlety.

FTFY

0 Replies

@DrewDad,

Oh the joys of coming on a thread to have twelve hidden posts. It must be like going in a brothel where they hide the whores.

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

It would be beyond you anyway, DD.

0 Replies

all right, I give up, WTF is FTFY?

0 Replies

Fifty Tightly-Fitting Yarmulkes?
Fling The Frisbie Yourself?
What?

1 Reply

@MontereyJack,

I looked it up on Urban Dictionary -
Fixed That For You, and another couple of possibilities.

0 Replies

@spendius,

spendius wrote:

Oh the joys of coming on a thread to have twelve hidden posts. It must be like going in a brothel where they hide the whores.

I think you are mistaken, I assume if you visit a brothel you plan to hire a working girl and hidden girls would frustrate you (on the other hand, if you were not already frustrated you wouldn't be visiting a brothel). Hidden posts are a delight because you are spared the bother of reading posters who are accustomed to writing on rest room walls. I love my hidden posts.

3 Replies

@glitterbag,

Rest room walls? Oh you mean like: Yo' ignore is so fat, that it's got more hidden in the rolls of post than the rolls on my mom.

0 Replies

@glitterbag,

You have a hostage to fortune in that gb which I am far too polite to pursue.

Also--hidden posts have other consequences besides the one you mention.

And what is wrong with writing on rest room walls might I ask?

I had a longish career in the demolition business. Old cotton mills, zones of worn out terraced houses. Anything really apart from nuclear power installations.

One of the smaller jobs was a town centre pub. A delicate task actually. Anyway, I was inspecting these premises and I noticed that the ladies' toilet doors, panside, were covered in writings and drawings. I thought this is it. The female psyche revealed. Or that of ladies who go in pubs at least and I have much experience of pubs and the ladies who do go in pubs seem very typical to me.

I had them removed and stored in one of my outbuildings. My intention was to preserve what I thought to be a valuable historical document. It was a big pub and there were 10 doors each covered from top to bottom, panside as I said, with symbolic, and not so symbolic, references to the honest lady's estimation of men.

Years later I was given about 200 quite servicable school desks which had been replaced in order to allow the Education Minister to go on a spending spree. The lids of these desks were also covered in writings and drawings, as was, I think it's "was", a fair part of the insides. The basic theme was what the adolescents thought of adults and all their doings.

I had these stored with the doors and after I failed to persuade the Local Authority's Cultural Supremo to mount a public exhibition of these items I sort of forgot about them and one day the outbuilding burned down, some kids had been playing in them I was told, and that was the end of that. I had sold a few desks to those types of parents who seek to create an authentic studious outlook in the offspring of their loins in order to prove that their genetic material is not as hopeless as they had shown it to be. They had them sanded and varnished obviously.

I bet you peep at writings on rest room surfaces sometimes.

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@glitterbag,

Quote:

I love my hidden posts.

A cowardly behavior that many Americans love to brag about using.

0 Replies

@ossobuco,

Quote:

I haven't finished reading it yet, just saw a link yesterday.

Have you finished it yet, Osso? It's a dandy example of the ignorance surrounding these issues. Much of this same ignorance can be found here at A2K. I could probably, off the top of my head, name 20 or so A2Kers who are at least as terribly confused as Joan by this issue.

This one little quote is all you need to read to grasp that Joan doesn't know her proverbial from a crater.

Do NOT, under any circumstances, read all of the following article. It will NOT, without elaborate explanation, help you.

Quote:

False Fronts in the Language Wars
Why New Yorker writers and others keep pushing bogus controversies.

By Steven Pinker

...

Acocella’s points were then reiterated this week in a post by Ryan Bloom on the magazine’s Page-Turner blog. The linguistic blogosphere, for its part, has been incredulous that The New Yorker published these “deeply confused” pieces. As Language Log put it, “Either the topic was not felt to be important enough to merit elementary editorial supervision, or there is no one at the magazine with any competence in the area involved.”

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

If you're determined to understand you could ask Frank Apisa to help you. He read the title and at least a couple of sentences which had him thoroughly convinced that Steven Pinker was supporting his "position".

1 Reply

@JTT,

Quote:

New Yorker writers and others keep pushing bogus controversies.

They do that to arouse certain types of people and facilitate them seeing the ads more readily than if they didn't arouse them.

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@InfraBlue,

Quote:

InfraBlue: One thing is non-standard speech being acceptable on a personal level, whenever one chooses to do so. Another thing is telling a non-native learner of a language that non-standard speech is acceptable,

Quote:

jtt: In your ignorance, Infra, which has caused you to wildly misrepresent both what I have said at A2K and what language science has said and continues to say, you have advanced another common lie. In your case, it's likely just the aforementioned ignorance.

Quote:

InfraBlue: What's the common lie that I've advanced, JTT?

Two of them, actually, Infra.

Nonstandard speech is acceptable, even more than acceptable, it's expected in everyday language. It fills the majority of our language needs.

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and that prescriptions for standard speech are ignorant of the language. This second instance is derelict and irresponsible.

"derelict" Smile

I'd say that continuing to advance the prescriptions that are not of the English language, that are based on flat out falsehoods is what is irresponsible, maybe even derelict. Smile

You can't think of any number of prescriptions that are completely bogus rules??

Tell me it ain't so, Infra!

0 Replies

@MattDavis,

Quote:

My impression has been that you wish to dismantle the evil empire of prescriptivist grammar teaching, but that you offer no way to rebuild. I've asked for your alternative and apparently this is "too broad a question".
I guess I will just have to take it on faith that in addition to your expertise in linguistics you also have an expertise in education.

I know, Matt, that your lack of understanding vis a vis language and how it works leads you to the false conclusion in your first sentence. What you are in effect saying is, "For Geography, you want to throw out the idea of a flat Earth, but you offer nothing else for us to teach children so we should keep that".

Would you want to keep in Biology, "Grizzly bears fly south for the winter" and "Despite popular notion, grizzly bears don't **** in the woods", because you don't know what to teach about them?

Quote:

Swing that wrecking ball and know that I will not stand in your way, since you promise to build something better.

Don't you consider the truth about language to be enough?

0 Replies

"There was two Mini Cooper parked in front of my house", or "there WERE two mini coopers"?

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