Back to the basics for you, Mr. President!

The BBQ Pit
41

The funny thing about that, is that you’re right. And one example of the language changing, is that periphrastic comparisons are becoming more common. Earlier writers would say things like beautifuller. Now we say more beautiful. Maybe Shakespeare pushed this trend, maybe not. But my point is that people were already using the periphrastic form 400 years ago. It hasn’t decreased since then, it’s increased.

And why weren’t you so quick to point out that “language changeth” in defense of Bush saying “more free”? At what point do you transition from “this particular [rule] has not changed yet” to an admission that language indeed changes? Who do you think is changing it? The ones belly-aching about “more free”, or the ones actually saying it?

From what I can see, English teachers study American and British literature in college.

I was so annoyed in high school when English teachers would try to teach grammar. They seem to have never grasped the fact that language is a natural phenomenon, not something to be regulated in the classroom.

It would be fine, for example, if they merely told us not to use double negatives because there was an arbitrary stigma against them. But to say that they are logical fallacies is both insulting to speakers of dialects that use them, and scientifically inaccurate. But they don’t seem to have the proper training in syntax, sociolinguistics, or historical linguistics to do this.

Back in junior high, I actually had a class called “language arts”, and I specifically remember being told that sentences such as “everyone take out their book” was “grammatically incorrect”. The teacher obviously had no background in actual linguistics, but rather just a collection of prescriptive rules ignorantly written with some notions of logic, or the superiority of Latin, in mind.

Maybe you’re not like that, but then again, you did start a thread about someone violating your prescriptive rule.

I hope you were joking when you said “Shame on those of you who defend his usage because more free sounds right! No need for grammar books and schooling! Go with what sounds right! Hmpht!” No linguist worth their (that’s right, their) salt would ever say such a thing. The only way to judge the well-formedness of a sentence is to see if it sounds right to a native speaker. Then the rules are written based on that, not vice versa.

42

Certainly it decreased. “More free” fell out of favor all together. Using “more” with any one syllable adjective for purposes of comparison has not been considered standard until more recent times. In fact, the change is so recent that authoritative sources still disagree on its acceptability. That is what I was conceding.

I waited until I had been proven wrong. And then I conceded that the rules of comparison of adjectives have changed or at least are changing.

You need to practice your reading skills.

I stand by both parts of that statement. I have always been aware that language changes. Any child who struggles through 19th Century poetry knows that. Who changes it? It changes in the street, on the internet and in the world of academia.

One day Norman Mailer gets a wild hair up his ass and splits an infinitive in the opening sentence of a novel. I doubt that he would have done it forty years ago. Yet I suspect that he didn’t look to a style manual for the go ahead.

They do. And other literature also. But they also study advanced grammar, composition, drama, communication, semantics and linguistics.

I’m not ready to throw out the glue of our language yet. I’ve already described why in iambs. That doesn’t mean that I think that grammar is a moral issue or that words can’t be used in outrageous ways. I admire both the playfulness of Gertrude Stein and the simple “one true thing” statements of her friend Hemingway.

But when I read the newspaper, I expect certain syntax and grammar. And when I am reading a post such as yours, I value the way in which it is constructed. If that were just a “natural” thing, then languages would all have the same basic word order.

Cite? Just curious.

Oh, please. End of transmission…

43

What correct form? Some people say freer, some people say more free, some people say both. Who is anyone to say that one or the other is better?

What rules of parallelism?

I don’t even think that rule says what you want it to say. It’s of the form X does not violate rule Y. That doesn’t mean that the lack of X does violate rule Y.

Also, how do you know when the rule has changed? Please let me know when it has, so that I can breathe I sigh of relief that the language I speak is once again in harmony with these high-falutin’ “rules”

There was never any basis whatsoever for the rule against using split infinitives, and anyone who conforms to it is a tool. I really doubt there are any good writers anywhere in the history of the English language that never split infinitives.

Cite for beautifuller, from online edition of OED:

44

For what it’s worth, I am skeptical of Zoe’s apparent fallback position – that at some point in the late 20th century, “more free” was considered to be grammatically incorrect.

As you allude to, Zoe seems to be confusing things by suggesting or assuming that because one form is acceptable, another form must be wrong.

I’m hesitant to get on her case about it though, since she did withdraw her initial flame, and I suspect she’s just looking for a face-saving out.

45

My God.

Zoe, this is now a formal pitting of you.

Apparently, if it’s not in a dictionary, it’s not true. My linked quote to a usage manual is no good for you. Someone has to quote the correct usage from a dictionary in order for you to concede the point. You do know that there are other reference works on language other than a dictionary, don’t you? Your inability to grasp the limitations of what a dictionary can record is astounding.

Good language is determined by usage. But it seems that usage is meaningless to you (unless it happens to be documented by a dictionary, which doesn’t ordinarily document periphrastic forms of a word). If a particular usage is widely used over a long period of time, then it’s correct usage. Again, your prescriptivism is not only outdated, but like most prescriptions, inaccurate. All the old prescriptions fall by the wayside in these days of digital searches which show that the ‘rule’ is routinely broken by the great writers of English literature.

And, for all your poo-pooing of parallelism, the most common use of ‘more’ with a one syllable word is because of parallelism with ‘less.’ E.g., “Is this less clear or more clear? Less bright or more bright?”

Read a modern book on grammar, will ya?

46

Read a book on grammar? A whole book on gerunds, prepositions, etc? Have a heart, offer her at least the option of lethal injection.

47

Perhaps when you went to college, Zoe, but as an ex-English major at MTSU, I can tell you that pretty much all the courses I took dealt solely with, well, to be honest, regurgitating pap at the instructor. We were given reading assignments, and then told to write a paper which simply recounted what we read. There was no critical analysis (for the most part) of the subject the author was discussing. Any effort to refute an author’s point on any particular matter was met with same kind of reaction one could expect to recieve if they proceeded to violate another student in front of the class.

Many of the instructors I had were unfamiliar with the contents of the textbooks, and quite often, the textbooks had utterly useless footnotes (I’ll never forget, in one class we were reading Hamlet [Gee, like I haven’t read that play in nearly every other English class I’ve taken.] and where the ghost of Hamlet’s father instructs Hamlet to “be like the plants along the river” there was a footnote which said something like “Most likely such and such species of reed. Probably unimportant.” If it’s so fucking unimportant, why footnote it?) and inaccurate biographical information (that same textbook listed William S. Burroughs as having died in 1988 [the same year the book was printed], they were a about a decade too early.)

So, while you no doubt got a fine education in college, it’s not the same today.

48

“More free” is perfectly cromulent, you Bush-bashing bastard.

49

That is so obscenely quote-worthy. :smiley:

50

Although I do consider some dictionaries to be authoritative – Webster’s for American usage in particular – I have given careful readers* no reason to think that dictionaries are my only source or even my primary source on current linguistic and rhetorical practice. I am speaking of academic practice. I like knowing current standards and having the choice.

*I mentioned Harbrace, Eleventh Edition. That is the latest edition that I have. The earliest is the Fourth. If I had the most recent edition and it said the same as the Eleventh, I would have stuck to my guns.

I also referred to Libertarian’s cite which was Practical English Usage (even though it is more likely to address British usage) and I referred to your own cite:

Notice that even with this statement, I did not surrender my right to disagree with Webster’s pronouncements. What I said was that I couldn’t argue with their stated intentions. Of course, disagreeing with Webster’s would require a great deal of knowledge of prescriptive grammar and only then, dismissal of its value.

Meanwhile, back on the streets: If you wish to make this thread a formal pitting of me, it is long overdue! Have at…

51

Tuckerfan, I know that standards have changed – and I think that you know where I went to school and that it had and has (I hope!) pretty high standards.

That really pisses me off about MTSU. It would be great if some of the new lottery money were used for course offerings and not just funding new students.

Just a bit of trivia about MTSU. When I was first teaching in the late sixties and early seventies, Playboy listed MTSU as one of the top ten party schools in the nation. (Not very comforting, I guess.)

Thanks for your insights. (Go Raiders anyway!)