Ticomaya wrote:You, in particular, have lately taken umbrage with me, to the point where you have felt the need to both troll and insult me. You apparently find me smug, and that obviously pisses you off.
JTT: No, I love smug, Tico. Sometimes you do it well and it works. The times that I take issue is when you use it to deflect and obfuscate. That's what you've done in this thread.
... And yet you haven't pointed out ignorance, faulty thinking, or naivete on my part, as you indicate.
Sorry, Tico. [incoming, incoming] Are you brain dead? You have ignored every aspect of the results of language science on this issue. You have failed to address the very clear results of a long term scientific study into how language is actually used that/which show that your "helpful" little rule has no merit.
You continued to mislead even after you were given documentary proof that, at the least, would cause a thinking person to say, "maybe this isn't competely accurate". You vacillated with the speed of a metronome, and finally, you resort to this whining.
At the risk of being reprimanded by George,
is this not a common ploy? When you've lost on the reasoned issue, just complain that you're being badly treated, that your "faith" is being attacked.
For you edification, I've reposted a previous posting that proves the prescription you've plugged to be in error. I don't expect that the following will clear up all your questions on this issue, but it should suffice to prevent you from continuing to mislead on this one aspect.
I've put in bold the parts which/that specifically "point[ed] out ignorance, faulty thinking, [and] naivete on [your] part". They are not the only ones.
Quote:
JTT: Funny, Tico, but Fowler isn't even mentioned in any of the modern grammar books stacked on my desk. He isn't cited in any of the bibliographies, nor is Michael Quinion. That's why Professor Nunberg [a source I cited and a renowned language scientist] stated that Fowler is "out of date".
Would you like to know why? Because these two fellas are not language scientists. They are/were prescriptivists who haven't studied language enough to know how it works. I know how tenaciously you hang on to the flimsiest of "evidence".
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Source: The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English
In corpus based studies of actual usage for Fiction, News, and Academic Prose, 'which' is common in both restrictive and non-restrictive clauses.
In which category, restrictive or non-restrictive is 'which' more commonly used? In all three categories, 'which' is more common in restrictive clauses, and note well, by a fairly wide margin.
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JTT: I failed to include the source for this material. My bad.
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Source: The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language
ii.
a. The necklace which her mother gave to her is in the safe. [integrated]
b. The necklace, which her mother gave to her, is in the safe. [supplementary]
The terms 'integrated' and 'supplementary' indicate the key differences between them: an integrated relative is tightly integrated into the matrix construction in terms of prosody, syntax, and meaning, whereas a supplementary relative clause is related only loosely to the surrounding structure.
... but it must be emphasized that punctuation is ... not a wholly reliable guide: it is by no means uncommon to find clauses that are not marked off punctuationally even though the syntax and/or meaning requires that they be interpreted as supplementary.
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JTT: As you can plainly see, Tico, the identical sentence, with 'which' operating as the relative pronoun, can function as both a restrictive clause (integrated) or a non-restrictive clause (supplementary).
Also, commas are not always a sign of non-restrictiveness.
I'm beginning to enjoy it, Thank you, Tico! Think I'll stick a while...
