What's the Most Complicated Thing You Ever Did?

Joe: My grasp on any sliver of straw would be firmer than
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The great writer missed the connection - oh well.

Joe: your supposed one of Chapter Nine of The Language Instinct.

You keep rantin about that but you offer nothing of substance, Joe, master of words. Does your quill fail you just when you needed it most?

Joe(did I really write that?)Nation: but I'll say this: if the four of us were sitting in a pub and we were all buying rounds, I think I would think anything you sipped or said would be a waste of time.
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Disingenuous too. You allowed, though you were sneaky about it, that you were mistaken in your out of the blue silly notion about quotes. Your vain attempts to wiggle out of honestly discussing issues you have raised speaks volumes about what is the waste of time.

Now, what is your problem with Ch. 9? Did I get the number wrong? Why are you being so cagey?

I know from your admission in the past that you know nothing about how language works makes this contention of yours as silly as many of your silly contentions.

I would say it does as long as all other things are equal. Which they never can be. "Exactly" is the word I would question.

I have no idea what you are talking about when you say I've been "sneaky" or "cagey" or "wiggling" or whatever.
I described how I use quotations marks, you asked me for sources.
I replied that I couldn't find any and that I wasn't sure where exactly the notion of using " " just for quoting actual speech and written items and ' ' to indicate irony or euphemism had come to me. How is that any of the things you said?

You said it was silly and didn't make much difference. I agreed and said "No biggie."
I said I liked reading about languages and mentioned I was reading/listening to The Language Instinct at the present time. You immediately said:

Well, I thanked you for that, even though, once again, you were implying that I had ''snuck" or stolen the idea, <sigh> I'm such a sap I even went and got a pdf of the book, thinking maybe you were actually trying to be helpful. My mistake.

You were 'trying to helpful' in the way you so enjoy.

Do you see that I'm using the same words but not quoting them, I'm indicating that the meaning is the opposite of their regular useage?

Anyway, time's up, sir or madam.

Joe(Time's up)Nation

I have no rules. They are all habits I guess. I don't remember ever having thought about it.

Yeah, that's what he says too. Equal distance..blah, blah, blah..... BUT you should know that there are steeper hills to go up when running it counterclockwise and when you run it clockwise you get to run down those hills faster and with less effort. (Doesn't matter he says.)

It's just fun.

Joe(there he goes)Nation

I was thinking about being sheltered from the wind more when it is against than when it is behind. Or not quite running the exact same distance. And the resultant gravitational influence of congeries of celestial bodies.

Not that it's my idea of fun.

Joe--JT reminds me of one of those dogs that bark at everybody without discrimination.

Re: JTT:
Try it, Spendi, try to defend one of your favorite rules.

S: I have no rules. They are all habits I guess. I don't remember ever having thought about it.
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Then why on earth, for at least the second time do you attempt these phony intrusions as if you do know something.

You have untold numbers of rules that you fastidiously apply to blurt out the most minor of collocations, all without a conscious thought given to the grammar.

And you claim to have read Fowler.

Joe: You said it was silly and didn't make much difference. I agreed and said "No biggie."

If it was no biggee then why did you ever raise it, especially where you did?

Joe: I said I liked reading about languages and mentioned I was reading/listening to The Language Instinct at the present time. You immediately said:

"I had a sneaking suspicion you snuck it from there. Go to Ch 9, I think it is. If you can grasp it, it will illustrate for you how bonkers your "rules" are."

Clearly a misunderstanding, Joe, for which, if I am being quoted accurately, I take full responsibility.

The sneaking suspicion was about the joke you did sneak from the book. It had nothing to do with it being in Ch 9. My bad. I apologize for not being clearer.

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Joe: You were 'trying to helpful' in the way you so enjoy.

Do you see that I'm using the same words but not quoting them, I'm indicating that the meaning is the opposite of their regular useage?
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No, Joe, I don't and didn't see that at all. If it was a prescriptive rule of written English I most likely would have noticed.

"No biggee", you said.

I don't claim to have read Fowler. I consult it from time to time as I do many other books on my shelves. Partridge for example. Or Lempriere.

I was reading Swann In Love the other day when I came across a reference to the painting in the Sistine Chapel by Alessandro de Mariano (Boticelli) of Zipporah to whom Odette de Crecy was being compared. In Swann's eyes.

Now that I have Google I was able to see this picture and to read around certain arguments Proust had made regarding Ruskin. It was very illuminating. When I first read the book I did not have Google and simply let it slip by, as we often do with such things.

That's the sort of thing that a focus on minor matters distracts a reader from. And you can end up thinking you have read Proust when you haven't.

Proust's ideal reader would be expected to be familiar with such things and be able to understand what he meant by love. As I now do.

Just as with his reference to Giotto and the Vices and Virtues.

You completely avoided;

Then why on earth, for at least the second time do you attempt these phony intrusions as if you do know something?

But forget it, Spendi. Point made I gather.

The following is more important to understanding what descriptivism and language are really all about.

You have untold numbers of rules that you fastidiously apply to blurt out the most minor of collocations, all without a conscious thought given to the grammar.

With no rancor, you couldn't parse your way out of a wet paper bag. But you enjoy those little scribbles on the pages of Proust and others and that enjoyment comes with no consideration as to the grammar. You might ponder a meaning, for a good long time, but your internal grammar causes you no problem whatsoever. It sits quietly in the background doing its job, allowing you to read right over that which breaks the prescriptive rules.

Speaking of physics, have you ever asked Thomas, Joe, why he thinks three steel buildings that were designed to take a hit from a jet fully loaded with fuel, fell, in a single day, into their footprints?

Especially when no steel building, with major conflagrations involved, has ever before collapsed. Now if that isn't a complicated thing to do, I don't know what is.

It also seems an equally interesting and fun question to ponder.

What phoney intrusions? I don't remember any prescriptivisms that I went into bat for. I defended, to a limited extent, prescriptivism in general. I said it has some value and cannot be dismissed.

I don't have untold numbers of rules at all. I don't care about grammar. My style, such as it is, derives from habit.

I can't see what you are trying to get at. My posts are my posts. I had to look up "parse" for goodness sake. It is not a matter I ever give conscious attention to. It seems natural. We "parse" everything we see it seems to me.

Hadn't we better start again?

Ah. The gay couple. ((Communication.))

It does look to be a bit of a problem I must admit, tonto. I can't make head or tail of JTT. I keep getting accused of things I didn't know I was doing. I've been accused of a lot of things in my time but my not being able to parse my way out of a wet paper bag is a first. And if I was in a wet paper bag I know better ways of getting out that parsing.

If parsing means interpreting a series of symbols I have parsed myself into a few pairs of knickers during my earlier years. Or, more likely, been parsed into them by their owners.

She must be an American.

I think the job will be both complicating and risky for ed.

What does the above sentence tell you about language, Spendi?

I know what tonto meant. That's all there is to the sort of communication he posted.

What do you think it should tell me other than what it does?

Is not the question mark at the end of your sentence prescriptivist. The "what" says it's a question.

When I was first on A2K I used to not leave a space after a comma. Then somebody pointed out to me that I should leave a space, and two after stops. I saw that that (?) was what others did and adapted my typing, self taught I'm afraid, to accede to the general will. No sweat. With a bit of practice it soon became as natural as what I had done before. And it does look better.

Thank you, I think.
You should know that I'm old enough (and I'm a New Englander from birth) to have heard the "scrod joke" several times before reaching voting age. That joke included a cab driver who could say "pluperfect subjunctive", not many of those around these days.
I was happy to hear it again in the book. I was happy to share it on the Joke's thread.
Is it your contention that everyone should include attribution and, perhaps, proof of license before posting a joke on A2K?

How about elsewhere? If I tell you the one about 'the banker, the gambler and the dwarf' , do I have to say where I heard it? If so, do I do that before telling the joke or after? Meh.

I'm sure that there's lots of rules I don't know, but I think I write clearly and I'd like to think that I can be some help to others, especially for persons who use English as a second language, in writing more clearly. I'm sure you disagree, but I'm less sure that it's my attempts to be helpful that make you disagree and more that you are in so many ways simply a disagreeable person.

I wish you well, but I doubt if I'll be engaging in any further communication with you; I've already said what a waste of time you are, but, fear not, losing the chance to be my friend is most certainly no biggie.

Joe Nation