OK, that’s the classic descriptivist vs. prescriptivist debate which we won’t get into here. I’ll just say this:
prescriptivists often get a bad name because they’re unfairly associated with surly schoolmasters brandishing a ruler who sometimes try to instill a useless level of pedantry. Pragmatic prescriptivists simply place a high value on the core mission of language which is to clearly communicate.
many aspects of the rules of grammar, semantics, and punctuation (and our patterns of speech) are inter-related and provide for clarity-enhancing redundancy. When these redundant elements are semantically consistent, they support each other and the language is clear and harmonious. When they are inconsistent and are fighting each other, the reader or listener at some level has to prioritize the conflict and decipher the meaning. In the vast majority of cases, correct usage has a utilitarian purpose and is not mere pedantry.
You don’t need artificial rules to communicate clearly. Non-prestigious dialects are no less clear than the prestige dialects. I’m not going to let you smuggle in that premise, as it has bore some very strange fruit.
Again, prestige dialects don’t have a monopoly on clarity, consistency, or anything else. If you think the rules of a dialect or language are unclear or confusing, I have two things to tell you: Literally every natural language humans use is “bizarre” by one standard or another, especially to outsiders, and it’s likely that you don’t understand it very well, which is certainly the case if you think the language is inherently unclear.
Languages which actually get used are as clear as their speakers require them to be, in grammar and vocabulary, and if linguists don’t understand a given language (or dialect, which distinction is often without a difference anyway) it is no fault of the language, any more than an entomological confusion over insect behavior is a fault of the arthropods. Besides, linguists aren’t prescriptivists for the same reason primatologists aren’t troop leaders…
All well and good, and I have no argument with that. But when you claim your use of “which” is correct simply because you used it, you aren’t invoking the defense of any consistent dialect – you appear to be asserting the right to make up your own rules. “That” and “which” can in some cases function as synonyms (but not in your example), but in many cases the inappropriate use of “that” vs. “which” is simply not standard English. It destroys the clarity-reinforcing redundancy and harmony I mentioned and it therefore sounds jarring and it may obscure the intended meaning.
Suppose we take the non-restrictive clause example I gave before, “The cars, which were well cared for, were in good condition after ten years” and substitute “that”, giving us “The cars, that were well cared for, were in good condition after ten years”. Can you discern what this even means? It’s now become completely ambiguous. The commas say one thing, the jarring inconsistency of “that” says another. It either says that all the cars were well cared for (non-restrictive interpretation because of the commas) or some were well cared for and only those turned out well (restrictive interpretation because of “that”) and it’s impossible to tell which one is meant.
Do you have any evidence that it’s just me? Or do I take the premise of the post of yours I first responded to to mean it’s more than me, and that I’m following a common practice, which is likely evidence of the rules of a non-prestige dialect at work?
Linguists have a way of figuring this out, you know. It’s called corpus linguistics. It’s concerned with filtering through large amounts of text to determine how people actually use language; the rise of informal registers (and, therefore, non-prestige dialects) in written work has been a boon for this, as has the rise of computers with great big hard drives and huge tracts of RAM. But that wouldn’t help a prescriptivist do anything but peeve, knowing how language is actually used. It certainly wouldn’t validate the existence of any of their rules among the largest body of speakers.
You’re joking. You must be joking. Oh my God you’re not joking, are you? I just said that setting off the phrase, either with smaller pauses (prosody) or using commas, determines the meaning.
I once heard a teacher say to a class I was in that she couldn’t understand something for us. You’re attempting to not understand something for me. You’re insisting that I cannot possibly understand something I understand just fine.
Being prescriptive about language is one thing. Being prescriptive about the cognitive states of another person is something else.
There is no such absolute. Prosody, maybe, but that doesn’t necessary translate into writing: the misuse of commas – sometimes sprinkling redundant commas around like decoration – is one of the most common writing mistakes. The salient fact is that the person making such a statement has created a contradiction between the prescribed usage of “that” and the prescribed usage of the comma syntax. You may believe that in the case of such a contradiction, the syntax takes precedence, but to be assured that your interpretation of the intended meaning is correct you’d have to know that the writer shares the same belief. That’s what rules do – they establish a common understanding of how to use language to convey meaning.
Furthermore, you may be thinking of the fact that “which” is frequently, albeit incorrectly, used to introduce restrictive clauses, as in your “apples” sentence. But the opposite is decidedly not true: according to the Oxford Dictionary and other sources and the instinct of every literate native English speaker, “Non-restrictive clauses can be introduced by which, whose, who, or whom, but you should never use that to introduce them”.
So the person is using a syntax that always implies a non-restrictive interpretation in conjunction with a word that always implies a restrictive interpretation. Recalling also the propensity for misuse of commas, it seems strange to be able to know for certain which part of the contradiction to discard and which part was the intended meaning. I think I’d probably agree with you that setting off the phrase would be the more plausible interpretation, especially prosody in speech, but I think it’s far from humorously obvious, and my point is that the virtue of correct language use is that it minimizes such ambiguities.
I think this is a case of being spoiled by The Master’s decision to hire an actual “copy editor”. Just about every other media outlet quit bothering with this step. The OP is just one example, the problem is more wide-spread than that. This whole notion of the 24-hour news cycle and the rush to get published it seems people don’t even read their own work before it’s out there. I read a piece a few weeks ago where the word “do” was never used, instead it was “dew” … just no one even trying to copy edit.
We love you, Lil’ Ed, keep up the great work … serve the higher need … you’re the last of a dying breed …
wolfpup: You are right that shared conventions are important. My whole point is that you refuse to learn the conventions people actually share and instead demand they share a set of conventions most of them have never heard of, and, indeed, would not understand. How is that more correct? By what standard? By whose standard? The OED is a useful book, but it isn’t the arbiter of anything other than its own house style. No other book is any more authoritative, nor is any other person or group; in fact, no such body or group could even theoretically exist, given that English is a natural language.
Constructed languages are defined; natural languages are discovered.
Consistent conventions between participants is like looking at one another through a clean window. Inconsistent conventions between participants is like looking at one another through a dirty window. The broad view is discernable but the details are ambiguous or missing altogether.
When English profs talk only to English profs and hillbillies talk only to hillbillies then each group will communicate well enough for their purposes. But neither group can accurately predict the effect of their words on the other group; the window is so cloudy it can scarcely be seen through.
As well, different groups have different ideas of what constitutes “… well enough for their purposes.” I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of listening to somebody who’s really uneducated or inarticulate try to resolve a customer service problem. In this case the customer’s habit of very imprecise (non-)thinking, sloppy word choice, and ambiguous inconsistent sentence structure precludes them from successfully communicating anything beyond frustration and anger to the returns clerk at WalMart.
In some egalitarian moral sense we can say the speech of the customer is as good as that of the clerk. In a utilitarian sense that’s not quite so true.
If language is a tool for human interaction it can be either a well-balanced katana or a rusty length of bent wrought iron. Commonality of standards, arbitrary though they ultimately are, is what puts the fine edge on language and sets the upper limit on quality of communication. You / we / all y’all can’t make accurate unambiguous complex communication out of fuzzy words and fuzzy grammar.
Languages simplify over time. Cases/declensions get reduced, etc. This is especially true in melting pot situations where there are people from different language backgrounds.
It’s hard to justify having both “me” and “I” in a language other than “We’ve always done it that way.”
Note also that people are spread out across a wide range for any measure. E.g., some people are tone deaf and others have perfect pitch. Same with grammar. Some have a very hard time understanding all sorts of cases and such. Others wince when they hear the slightest bit of barely misused grammar. And it really isn’t as teachable as way too many think.
The rules of grammar are arcane and frequently wrong. Once in a while get a question posted here asking people to parse a sentence or identify what part of speech something in a sentence is. And the replies are sometimes all over the place with large disagreements! So if people sort of get things kind of right with a few errors here and there, so what.
Descriptivists: don’t you agree that, in most contexts, most English speakers use "I’ for subjects and “me” for objects? Even without calling it a “misuse,” we could still ask the OP’s question as “Why is ‘between you and I’ a special case?”
