Oh, hermaphroditium. Sorry, man...
words you want the writers to work into their story
- Thread starter JoeZhang
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Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
"Pedants" ? I'm in fear of what sort of person Christopher would call a pedant.
it's also strange to sya that focusing in grammar that way is for pedants, and then follow up with that much verbiage after.
What I said was that it was a mistake pedants often make; it doesn't follow that all pedants make the same mistake, or cannot learn to outgrow the mistake. Pedantry isn't always wrong; sometimes it's just overzealous.
Actually, I'm coming at this as a reformed grammar pedant myself. I used to buy into all the prescriptivist (or proscriptivist) dogma, until I learned that it was based on false and recently imposed assumptions about how the English language worked.
Back in the late '80s, when "My bad" first caught on as an expression (at least in my region), I turned livid whenever I heard it. It made no sense to me. Your bad what? How can you modify an adjective with another adjective? It's like saying "Orange perfidious." It's just gibberish, I insisted. And why coin new usage when there are perfectly acceptable synonyms already, like "My mistake," "I'm sorry," or "Oops"? I knew language evolved, but I insisted that only beneficial mutations would survive and that this phrase was an evolutionary dead end. But now it's 20 years later and the phrase is still in use, so I guess it does serve a purpose. And it does convey a clear meaning, regardless of the grammatical niceties. So while I still don't use the phrase -- I think it's ugly, and it just doesn't fit my idiom -- I no longer claim it's a meaningless or unnatural construction.
I'd like to see someone sneak in the immortal Doctor Who line "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow".
It would draw me out of the story, but I'd laugh me ass off.
Maybe a Pakled could suggest it.
We have a winner!
I would like to see "Orange perfidious" used in a Star Trek book, please.
Quoth Peter Griffin: "Testicles. That is all."
Sci, I've read Doctor Who stories written in Shakespearean iambic pentameter, Dr. Seuss-ian poetry, Chaucerian poetry, even "Run, Spot, Run." Believe me, there are authors out there who will take on the challenge of writing a story like that. And not as a stunt, either. They'll do it because it's the right way to tell the story.
Grammar is, of course, both descriptive and prescriptive: without the aid of prescription, we would not have speech in common; without willingness to describe, our language becomes dictated by dogma. There are rules to how language is used, but grammarians - even linguists - find it very difficult to get them right. English especially is exceptionally complex, and our grammarians seem unusually willing to apply foreign strictures where they do not belong. But do not mistake the errors of grammarians (and inadequately curious English instructors) for grounds to deny prescription. Language is not solely determined in the motions - and until the death-knell is not for ignorance to describe.
Uneducated speech is not correct English not because those who use it cannot speak with one another (they can, doubtless), but because correct English is the only language we have in common with each other. The separate drift of tongues gives us Europe where once was a single Roman word. Language should be left to react - permissionless, it always does - but let's not accept the ignorant alongside the clever - not until it overwhelms (at which time, of course, it will be correct).
Sci, I've read Doctor Who stories written in Shakespearean iambic pentameter, Dr. Seuss-ian poetry, Chaucerian poetry, even "Run, Spot, Run." Believe me, there are authors out there who will take on the challenge of writing a story like that. And not as a stunt, either. They'll do it because it's the right way to tell the story.
Awesome!
That structure, however, is nonsensically redundant. 'The reason is' and 'because' are the same element, repeated to no particular effect. Poetically, it has utility (I wish I may, I wish I might), but it's use is seldom poetic - and usually unconsidered.
Look sometime into the etymology of man and woman, male and female, and girl and boy. The modern grammatical arguments in those cases are especially absurd.
'Douche' neither is nor is derived from the Latin words for vinegar or water. The spelling alone indicates its French extraction, and the etymology runs through Italian (from a word for pipe) to Latin, where its antecedents related to leadership.
While our current word for vinegar originates (in Old French) from two Latin roots, the Romans themselves knew it as acetum - which still means 'vinegar' in English today.
The Latin word for water was, of course, aqua.
Well, the construction is still unnatural within English; its pidgin.
It's amusing how you can always find linguistic mistakes in people's insistence on linguistic precision. Yours is one of misreading; I was addressing the matter of proscription, not prescription. Yes, there is value in defining a set of basic guiding principles, but it is misguided to treat grammar as a set of rigid "thou shalt not"s and engage in a futile war against common, accepted usage just because it doesn't fit some arbitrary rule somebody wrote in a book. Yes, every language has patterns, but it also has exceptions and variations. Language evolves through use and interaction; it isn't designed and constructed and imposed from on high.
By coincidence, there was a post on Language Log four days ago debunking this very argument:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005504.html#more
Personally, I think that if something is used by millions of people in their daily conversation, it's elitist and condescending to call it "ignorant" just because it isn't handed down to them by the elites. There are millions of people who are fully conversant with the rules of formal English and use that dialect in formal contexts, but who still use vernacular or "street" dialect in informal circumstances, with friends or family or peers. It's insulting, even prejudiced, to call that the result of ignorance.
Yes, that is blindingly obvious, so it's needless pedantry to explain it. You're also missing the point I just made in the passage you quoted. It is redundant, yes, but it is an error to assume that redundancy in language is nonsensical. There are many human languages wherein redundancy is an integral part of proper grammar. Take double negatives. The modern English convention is that a double negative represents a positive, as though it were a mathematical equation, so that using a double negative to express a negative is a "nonsensical" redundancy. But in French and other Romance languages, a double negative is entirely correct in certain forms ("Je ne sais pa"), and in Slavic languages like Russian, as well as in Afrikaans, the double negative is the only correct way to express a negative, and a single negative is what's nonsensical. Indeed, double negatives were good grammar in Middle English; Chaucer made extensive use of double, triple, even quadruple negatives. In these languages, the logic is different: the two (or more) negatives are seen as reinforcing each other, not arithmetically cancelling each other out.
So it is an error to assume that a grammatical redundancy is nonsensical. It depends on the language, the dialect, and the custom. Yes, the redundancy in question is a nonstandard usage in terms of the current formal dialect of American English. But informal dialects have different rules and standards. It's not nonsense, just variation.
"Unnatural?" That's getting it backward. It's not "natural" for languages to be constructed according to rigid rules and handed down by textbook learning. That's an invention of civilization. What's "natural" is for languages to evolve dynamically and messily through everyday usage and interaction. And the emergence of pidgins, borrowings, and other hybridizations is an integral part of that natural process of linguistic evolution. Indeed, pidgin and creole languages around the world, which are invented by children in bilingual areas, show a remarkable consistency in their grammar, suggesting to some scholars that they represent the most natural, fundamental human grammar of all, the kind hardwired into our brains.
Actually, I wasn't sure if you were correctly using the term "pidgin," which technically means a simplified language used for communication between groups without a common language, but your usage might be borderline-correct in this case, given the reputed origin of the phrase:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002693.html
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I need a prescription painkiller.
Stat.
Stat.
You're right, I misread your statement. I'm sorry; I was visiting the board last night to distract myself from a high fever, and my vision wasn't especially good. I'm still quite sick, so I apologize in advance for the mistakes I'm likely to make today, too.
I'm not sure why it's amusing that mistakes can always be found in linguistic discussion; mistakes are present in most comments and statements - your use of people for person, for instance.
No, language is neither designed nor constructed on high (a place extant in only debate). It does evolve through use and interaction, via the mechanisms of both cleverness and mistake.
Common, everyday usage should sometimes be fought. 'I could care less,' for instance, is an ignorant use of a phrase (misrepeated from 'I couldn't care less') which obfuscates the speaker's intended meaning. That something is common makes it neither worthwhile nor reprehensible.
The page you cite displays an arrogant dismissal of learned expertise (linguistic facility is not self-appointed, but self-apparent, recognized easily by a neutral observer), but is otherwise only thin in its support. The first examples offered are of nonstandard literary use, which of course excepts itself from the general rules of English (and is accepted in context, but not in general use). Also, the structure and vocabulary identified in Gibbons's writing are fully acceptable (if infrequently used) in English today (the placement of 'only' could easily cause ambiguity, though, even if most audiences would recognize its intent).
Ignorant English is unaddressed.
As you point out ad nauseam, English changes over time. What was acceptable in Chaucer's day (when educated English was closer to French, incidentally) is not necessarily acceptable now. In our language (the rules of others are here irrelevant), double negatives - and other repetitions for emphasis, such as 'jin jin' (delicious delicious) in Chinese - are incorrect. They no longer fit with English's patterns.
What's more, as I noted (without condescension; I don't consider myself superior) 'the reason is' and 'because' do not produce an effect of exaggeration, just of redundancy. This usage is wrong.
No, 'the reason is because' is nonsense. It structurally lacks sense, and doesn't convey additional meaning; it's a mistake. More, that speech is correct in one dialect does not bear on its accuracy in another. ('Skilful' is correct in Britain, for instance, but not the United States.)
Pidgin is neither accepted nor expected outside of its home context; therefore, it is unnatural when occurring amid another language. To the point of textbook learning, while such books are a new development, careful instruction in language is not; it has been with us for as long as has the luxury of specialization - well longer than the total of recorded history. Instruction has been natural for even longer than that - and is not confined to merely our species. Language is learned - one cannot come to speak a common tongue by any other means - though not all teachers are equally knowledgeable, and not all students are equally observant or concerned.
'Pidgin' can also refer simply to simplified language, amalgamation unneeded.
Of course it isn't addressed, because linguists, as opposed to grammarians, would not acknowledge "ignorant" as a valid description. Linguistics is about describing and categorizing how language is actually used, not making judgments about whether a usage is right or wrong. What you call "ignorant," a linguist would call simply a different dialect or an unconventional usage. Linguistically speaking, slang and vernacular are just as valid as subjects of study as whatever grammatical rules are currently taught as "proper."
That is obvious and not in dispute. But it has nothing to do with my point. My point is that "incorrect according to the rules" is not synonymous with "nonsensical." If you had just said "incorrect," I would not dispute that, insofar as formal English usage is concerned. But it is not nonsensical, because as you yourself acknowledge, it can convey a comprehensible meaning in other languages or in nonstandard dialects of English. "Sense" does not mean "consistency with grammatical rules." It means "meaning." If the phrase conveys meaning adequately, then by definition, it is not nonsense, even if it is grammatically wrong.
Anyway, all this pedantry and counterpedantry is getting us way off topic. The point is that, right or wrong, real people do employ unconventional grammar and usage in their everyday speech. You can call it "incorrect" or "ignorant" all you like, but the fact is, it's how people talk. So it's a mistake for copyeditors to insist on book-perfect grammar in the dialogue of fictional characters.
As it happens, "googolplex" is used in The Future Begins.
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