“Whose”
Descriptivism and prescriptivism aren’t at odds with one another. The descriptivist studies language and the rules that it inherently follows. The prescriptivist then promotes those rules as “correct.” The prescriptivist keeps language from changing too quickly and not being understood. But they still have to what the descriptivists say about the language. If they make up rules, those rules will be ignored.
Using “him and I” is still considered a mistake in the top registers of English–the ones that are concerned about “correctness.” It is possible this may change through usage, as the lower registers get adopted in the higher ones.
It need not be logical or follow any preset rule. We could very well end up in a place where the rule about taking out the other person doesn’t work.
No, this is not a good account of descriptivism vs prescriptivism.
All of the true rules of language are empirical rules that everyone agrees upon. We all know that “Henry cheese eats” is not grammatical in any dialect of English (although it is in Japanese). There are many other such rules that we all tacitly (and usually unconsciously) agree on: if you take a dozen words, only a tiny fraction of the millions of possible arrangements of those words are grammatical, and all native speakers know instantly which are valid in their language.
Descriptivist linguistics (among other things) studies empirical language and works out what abstract unconscious consensus rules native speakers are following.
We take for granted the vast majority of rules in our language - we absorb them unconsciously when we learn language as young children, and every native speaker of a given dialect follows and agrees on the same rules without conscious effort. Most of us can’t consciously articulate what those rules are, yet we use them flawlessly to build sentences. And nothing in this vast majority of real rules requires prescriptivists to coach us.
So how do prescriptivists fit into this picture? Prescriptivists ignore the vast majorty of rules that I have described above - of course, because we all agree on them and follow them effortlessly and flawlessly. Instead, the prescriptivists obsess over is a tiny fraction of insignificant semi-rules. These are either situations on which there is no clear empirical consensus - perhaps something in flux in the language, or variation between close dialects or registers; or they are completely invented notions, not rules that native speakers ever follow at all in practice. And prescriptivists generally express a concern that if we don’t all follow their precise recommendations on the tiny proportion of “rules” that they obsess about then nobody will be able to communicate clearly and civilization will rapidly disintegrate.
To the OP: objective case vs. subjective case. Since “between” is a preposition and whatever follows is the object of the preposition, then “between you and me” would be correct.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
“To” is a preposition, and so the object of the preposition must use the objective form, as in, “Marge gave a gift to me.” It’s really not that complicated if one realizes that there are subject and object forms for all personal pronouns, though some are the same (like “you”).
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
If the editors of the OED would be offended by such a description of their role, maybe they should stop doing it! You should also advise them to change their motto, “language matters”.
With regard to the use of “that”, that’s pretty much what I said here:
… “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”.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=19600548&postcount=28
With regard to authorities, I would rely on the principle of consensus. There may be pedantic debates among language mavens over all kinds of things that are ultimately unimportant to most of us, but there is also broad consensus on semantics, grammar, and usage. There is, after all, such a thing as standard English.
The page you linked to is not a dictionary. So the OED “brand” has a sideline shtick of giving prescriptive style advice. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not the dictionary, and it’s not the core of what the OED or any other dictionary is about.
And really, you can surely do better than yet another ad nauseam restatement of the ignorant trope that descriptivism means “anything goes”, and that only prescriptivists “care” about language. I’m not going to refute it again, since I know that you know better.
But your statement was that my understanding of the purpose of the OED was so far removed from reality that they would actually be “offended” at the idea that they had a prescriptive role in language. This seems incongruous with the fact that a significant portion of their online resources are devoted to doing exactly that, under the aphorism that “language matters”. And of course the OED is not unique in providing such guidelines.
Indeed even stepping back from grammar, the same principle holds in the core function of a dictionary to simply define what words mean. Can someone use a word or phrase to convey a meaning that is subtly or entirely different from anything in the dictionary? Of course they can, and maybe they’re the leading edge of an avant garde group that have enriched the language and will later see their creativity acknowledged in that same dictionary. On the other hand, maybe they’re just using it wrong! Only time will tell, though I suspect the latter is far more common.
Of course I don’t really think that descriptivists believe that “anything goes”, although I might draw your attention to this exchange, where I stated that the use of the word “which” was incorrect in that sentence, and Derleth responded by saying (paraphrased) that it was manifestly not incorrect because he had just used it! (“My variety of English doesn’t work like that … You just saw how I do not follow that rule …”)
It seems reasonable to think that an organization that puts forward “language matters” as their operating philosophy may safely be assumed to be an organization that has a good deal to say about the subject. That it may all have been empirically derived is irrelevant. Dictionaries may not “make” rules out of thin air, but they observe, infer, analyze, and write down rules as they apply to the contemporary language. So as much as we all participate in the great experiment of evolving the language, at any given time there is indeed an authoritative reference to which we can appeal, and we can reasonably say, “that’s not what that word means in present-day English”, or assert that something is not grammatically correct. (Obviously I’m speaking here of the variants of standard English and not addressing the matter of regional or cultural dialects.) We can take it as given that it may all be different 100 years from now, but so what? It may be a remarkable fact that we unconsciously acquire basic language skills at an early age, but the most effective use of language still requires such a framework of formalisms. I think LSLGuy nicely described why this is so here.
Again, I don’t claim that descriptivists demand that “anything goes”. By the same token, no one I know harbors the kind of inflexible language pedantry you seem to impugn to prescriptivists through this imaginary caricature you’ve created out of whole straw. Some people simply lean more in one direction than the other. Prescriptivism is just a word for an approach to language usage that is more heedful of consensus rules and guidelines in the belief that it serves the purpose of clarity and harmony in communication. I use the word “harmony” in the same sense that I used it earlier, to denote a harmonious consistency in semantic and syntactic elements so that the reader’s brain isn’t forced to do a “WTF?” and rescan the verbiage to try to figure out what the writer actually meant.
And that’s why (getting back to the OP) misuse of “I” and “me” is just wrong – plain wrong, period, and the misuse of “I”, specifically, is indeed probably a case of hypercorrection. The logical basis is that using a subject pronoun as an object or vice versa is inconsistent, and even though it may not cause rampant confusion, the illogic is (to me) just uncomfortable, slightly jarring, like a bump on a car ride, a momentary blip on a TV screen, or a tiny bit of static on the radio. Because when I see the subject pronoun “I”, I expect to see said subject as the subject of a verb, perhaps engaged in some kind of action. “Jane and I went to the movies”. Fine. But “That doesn’t make sense to Jane and I”. Not fine. I’m thinking, “Jane and you … what? What are Jane and you doing? What verb is “I” referencing? Or did you just effectively say ‘that doesn’t make sense to I’?”
And yet, in the very next paragraph…
Let me make this perfectly plain to you:
is empirically wrong in every dialect of English, because there is universal consensus among all native speakers (including the majority who do know know what a subject, verb and object are) that English is a S-V-O language, not a S-O-V language.
is certainly not “just wrong – plain wrong” as you claim in the same sense. Native speakers certainly do speak this way. You give no evidence to support your claim that it is wrong, just “logic” (language doesn’t work this way) and personal opinion that it annoys you.
Now, I certainly agree that in the current English language in most dialects that I’m aware of, this usage in any register above casual speech might mark a speaker as unsophisticated and perhaps ignorant. It almost certainly derives from hypercorrection. So, for example, if I were proofreading a resume I would certainly agree with the style advice to avoid it.
The problem that you have, as with virtually all prescriptivists (and this is certainly not a straw man), is that you are unable to distinguish between universal empirical rules of language (by which a sentence may certainly be described as “right” or “wrong”) and subjective style advice. When discussing subjective stylistic matters you persist in using rigid terms like “right” and “wrong” and appealing to “logic”.
[ that should read “including the majority who do NOT know what a S-V-O are”]
We can in fact, form a general principle here:
There is universal unconscious consensus on the important majority of true rules by which a language is constructed - S-V-O or S-O-V being an example.
Since, in general, no native speaker violates these true rules without acknowledging the violation as a slip, prescriptivists are never motivated to comment on the majority of the true & important rules of a language; nor can they generally even articulate them, any more than any non-linguist.
Prescriptivists only get upset when they hear some speakers using a construction that is different from the the one that they personally prefer. Therefore, anything a prescriptivist peeves about is by definition an empirical variant.
So Riemann’s principle of prescriptivism:
And, for the avoidance of doubt: none of the above is intended to impugn sound & practical style advice.
Very good work. That really captures how grammatical rules actually work, as opposed to what prescriptivists peeve about.
Ford’s old Special Vehicle Operations hot-rodding division?
When I saw the current GQ thread entitled
…not having a background in retailing, I thought at first this was a question about machines that were, let’s say, not very good at what they are supposed to do. (i.e., see Urban Dictionary for “P.O.S.” as opposed to Wikipedia.)
No, some whikkey that’s Special, and Very Old.
Nah.
It means Subject-Verb-Object. It’s a very simple template most English-language sentences fit into, which means we say “The person ate the apple” to mean that a human being ate a piece of fruit, as opposed to a fruit eating a person.
Not that there’s anything wrong with the other way, plenty of perfectly good languages are O-V-S, such as Apalaí and Hixkaryana.
So the only “true” rules of language are unconscious ones? Where does that come from? Where does the idea come from that a prescriptivist is some kind of absolute thing, like a demon, as opposed to a philosophical inclination on a complex issue? As an example, are all of the Oxford Dictionary usage discussions (on the right-hand pane here) useless non-rules because they may require conscious learning?
There is a vast continuum of prescriptivist advice and some of it is stupid. “Never end a sentence with a preposition” is one that I have particular disdain for. (heh!) Though I probably wouldn’t do so in a formal register. But a lot of it makes sense and what I mean by “wrong” is that a particular usage is discouraged by a broad consensus of authoritative sources who cite good and valid reasons for doing so. This state of affairs can co-exist with said usage being quite common, which may even lead to it eventually being accepted. Or not. Because the same factors that led to hypercorrection may actualy lead to a better general understanding of this particular issue.
We could get into a Clintonesque argument here about what “wrong” means! I don’t use “wrong” to claim that violators should be jailed for crimes against the Queen’s English. I use it to claim that the following kind of stuff is a disservice to the language, even if we more or less understand what was meant (I think!):
[ul]
[li]“The family lawyer will read the will tomorrow at the residence of Mr. Hannon, who died June 19 to accommodate his relatives.”[/li][li]“Police negotiated with him, minutes before being shot dead by marksmen.”[/li][li]“Sipping cocktails on the balcony, the moon looked magnificent.”[/li][/ul]
Or the fatal absence of commas here:
[ul]
[li]“I enjoy cooking my family and my dog.”[/li][/ul]
Anyway, thanks for an interesting discussion, and here’s an interesting fun fact that is only peripherally related to the discussion (or maybe not at all).
Much has been made of the fact that humans possess the FOXP2 gene which is associated with the language acquisition skills you describe. Know who else has the FOXP2 gene? Dogs. And recent research has shown that dogs process language in a much more sophisticated way than was once believed. MRI brain scans show that dogs process intonations with the right hemisphere of the brain but the actual words being spoken are processed by the left hemisphere, just as in humans, so in a real sense they understand spoken words and not just the way we intone them, as was once widely believed. I mostly just mention this because I love dogs and think we sometimes underestimate their intelligence, but I’m also trying to get across the idea that there’s much more to human language than anything that is unconsciously learned or genetically enabled. Granted, however, that dogs have no sense of grammar and that this is a skill that humans seem uniquely equipped to acquire.
The whiskey (or cognac) is usually “VSO” – which, curiously, is the standard construct for Gaelic languages and a few others. SOV seems to be common to a lot of languages, especially the older ones (I saw a big list once, SOV was most prevalent).
English can support reordering, usually with auxiliaries. An OSV example would be, “The geoduck Henry, with relish, did eat.” English seems to prefer the verb proximal to the subject, so SOV constructions tend to fail. For some reason, to me, to auxiliary (“did”) makes that sentence more palatable, but I am not sure why
Raising the bar to an absolute does not refute my point that the vast majority of the true and important rules for constructing oral language are acquired in young children unconsciously through implicit learning. Very few of us can articulate the rules that we follow in constructing sentences, yet we do so almost flawlessly, regardless of our level of education. See here, and the surrounding conversation (with you):
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=19371192&postcount=154
I did not make that claim. As I have said, there are is certainly well-informed and helpful prescriptivism in the form of sound and sensible style advice.
I specifically criticize your kind of prescriptivism, and your use of the word “wrong” when you persist in saying things like:
[my bold]
And you do indeed represent the archetypical “bad” prescriptivist inasmuch as you profess an affinity for and love of language, yet you persistently fail to grasp the fundamental principles of how language actually works.
Me concede the point. The argument be to great for I. Mine head hurts I. Me go now to enjoy cooking my family and my dog.
I believe the above constitutes flawless S-V-O construction, and prescriptivist peevers be damned! 
You know, I actually agree with you that rules are only guidelines, and I readily concede that some of the educational techniques we use in grade school are flawed. The nature of language is such that experience and exposure is more important than being force-fed rules of grammar and usage by rote. But I object to the idea that the basic language paradigm is all unconsciously learned and that’s the end of the story. The ability to communicate well is far more complex than that. I think this is a good quote:
Students leaving high school and entering university do not have, for the most part, the necessary skills to make themselves consistently understood in writing … We teach students skills in physical education class so they can play sports; we teach them skills in music class so they can play instruments. But somehow, since the revolution of ’66, skills have been seen as an enemy to writing.
http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/case-teaching-grammar
Riemann is correct and their posts are good. You should all listen to the points put forth in them (particularly “the vast majority of the true and important rules for constructing oral language are acquired in young children unconsciously through implicit learning. Very few of us can articulate the rules that we follow in constructing sentences, yet we do so almost flawlessly, regardless of our level of education”, an insight I was often fond of noting myself back when I had the energy for the never-ending descriptivist-vs.-prescriptivist threads on these boards).