I appreciate your apologies, truly. But around here, if you’re going to assert that someone is wrong, full stop, you should be prepared to prove it. Since matters of style and usage are not amenable to proof, you probably will draw less fire if you don’t state your opinions as if they are factually provable (necessarily “correct”) and others are factually disprovable (necessarily “wrong”), because they aren’t.
I don’t think “abnormal” is a value judgement. Ok, how about “unusual”?
I don’t think that many people really avoid saying things like “The boss says I can leave early from work today” in favor of “The boss says I may leave early from work today”, but this is an empirical claim of mine and I should bring evidence.
I deny the utility of doing so by the particular means of this “may”/“can” distinction. As I’ve pointed out before, even those who are ok with permission-“can” are able to distinguish between “is able to” and “has permission to”. They just do it a different way (perhaps by using the phrases “is able to” and “has permission to”, for example). So given that the distinction can already be drawn, what is the utility of forcing it upon the particular words “may” and “can” in this particular way?
I have also defended the rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit. But I have furthermore noted that some of the things parents may see fit to enforce or encourage are silly.
I think it is a pretty much gone distinction, outside of usage manuals which vestigially report all kinds of things that no longer have or never had any relation to actual speech. (Your second and third cites support the silliness that “which” is to be used solely for non-restrictive clauses, silliness which has never accurately described the way people actually speak. As a result, they lost credibility in my eyes. Your first cite seems to be from someone knowledgeable, though. I’m surprised his usage note on “may” vs. “can” doesn’t give any acknowledgement at all of the fact that some people use “can” for permission.) It’s been on its way out for more than a century. I think in conversational American English, it’s a gone distinction (in the sense that the vast majority of speakers do not consistently follow it or notice its violations) and to “bring it back” would therefore be an innovation. But this is an empirical claim on my part again; I hope to get some numbers on this. Of course, one is free to speak as one wishes regardless, but the numbers may bolster my perspective that some things are silly in the futility of swimming against an overwhelming opposite mainstream (for what I would not consider compelling reasons).
Not at all. You can speak however you like. But if you are committed to speaking in an unusual way for reasons that don’t strike me as particularly compelling, I may think it is silly of you.
Well, I put a conditional in there, which your quoting leaves out… I explicitly acknowledged that it may be a natural distinction for you. Though the admission that you don’t draw the distinction religiously makes me wonder just to what extent it is a part of your natural speech and to what extent it’s something you consciously remember to do in certain moods. But I can take your word for it, that’s fine. I’m curious, then; where are you from? (In the sense of your formative years). Is this distinction a common part of the dialect there?
I think there is some extent to which sloppiness is a factual assertion rather than an opinion. At any rate, I don’t see anything sloppy with speaking as one learned to speak. Or, rather, if this is to be counted as sloppiness, it’s the same kind of sloppiness as using “may” for both possibility and permission, or of any other word or construct in the English language having two meanings. It’s a kind of sloppiness which doesn’t matter, I think; one for which I can’t see the reason in being concerned about.
Incidentally, in case anyone accuses me of just replacing terms and continuing old ways, when I speak of silliness, that is of course a value judgement of a sort, but I think it’s a defensible one in the situations in which I use it. Obviously, others will feel differently, but I would defend my uses of it without guilt.
It’s NOT unusual. It’s the historical distinction; it’s a distinction that is still drawn. What, you were unaware that anyone draws the distinction?
And yet, you never do.
So you deny the utility of the distinction because people can draw the same distinction using three words instead of one? That doesn’ t make much sense. In any event, assuming you recognize the utility of “is able to” versus “has permission to,” you’re not in a position to quibble with people who would substitute those phrases with “can” and “may,” respectively. And, for the zillionth time, it’s not a distinction that is being “forced;” it’s a distinction that already exists.
Agreed. But IMO this isn’t one of them, and it’s not one that’s any of my business in any event.
And still no cites, no numbers, nothing but your opinion presented as if it is fact, which it isn’t. I think I’m done here. I’ve spent pretty much all the time I’m inclined to in refuting your unsubstantiated bare opinions.
I’m perfectly well aware that lots of people mention the distinction; however, in my personal experience, very few people actually follow it, even of those who mention it with passion. It’s difficult for me to give numbers and evidence convincing beyond my own experience, which would of course put us at an impasse. Would you find Google results of some sort sufficient?
Would you find Google results of some sort sufficient? Of course, that would only demonstrate that many people fail to proscribe permission-“can”; it wouldn’t show that few people follow it, as such.
Or perhaps if I showed examples of repeated violations even from those who advocate proscribing permission-“can”, would that count as evidence that it is not a generally followed rule? Perhaps we could even analyze posts from the SDMB itself. We could pick a variety at random and see how many support proscribing permission-“can” and how many don’t. That may be fun. Help me out to a way to settling this (or, any linguists reading this who know of relevant literature, point the way).
It makes a lot of sense to me. Why should I care much that some things are one word and some things three? Besides, if we’re really quibbling about word-counts, I can say “Sarah physically can bake a cake” and do it in two. Or whatever. But quibbling about word counts seems so very… quibblesome. It doesn’t seem like a matter of great utility, that a distinction which can currently be very easily drawn can be made to be drawn in a new way with slightly lower word-count.
Well, if it already really exists with any popularity, one doesn’t need any explicit instruction in it; one will just pick it up with osmosis from common language. If one does need explicit instruction, then, yeah, it’s something that has to be forced, to that extent.
I’m sorry to have raised your ire in that way; you are certainly under no compulsion to stay. But, if you are willing to stick around for some substantiation and numbers, would any of the methods I proposed above (Google results, uses of permission-“can” even among those who decry it, analysis of the corpus provided by the messageboard itself or other similar things) suffice?
Maybe you have, but I think that the point you wanted to make in this thread is still worth making. People should realize the negative effects of prescriptivism. I live in Quebec, and while it thankfully seems to be on the way out, our culture has internalized the (wrong) idea that we speak an inferior variety of French. People here will refer to overly formal or pompous spoken French as “France French”, and from time to time you’ll see reporters deploring the quality of our written and spoken language, as compared to other francophone countries. (I think this was more common in the 60s though.)
This may not seem like much, but it’s perverse in the sense that it affects the opinion we have of ourselves as a people, and even the opinion that others have of us. I was surprised to see this meme of Quebec French being inherently uglier or inferior to France French rear its ugly head on this very board, under the fingers of someone not even involved in this debate, being I believe American. And we’re not unique in this regard. I recently visited Maine’s State House, and our guide was a francophone, which I found interesting since while I knew that many New Englanders were of French Canadian ancestry, I didn’t know many of them still spoke French. Still, he told us that the French he and his peers spoke wasn’t very good, it was anglicized, etc. I told him it was the case for everyone, but I should have pointed out that there is no objective way to say that a dialect is “better” than another one. It’s a vicious circle: the language of peoples that are seen as culturally “inferior” gets stigmatized, and afterwards using this dialect is a social stigma.
This isn’t to say that I don’t recognize the importance of grammar and spelling in language. I’ve worked for two years as a proofreader and I find it infuriating when published documents contain obvious mistakes. But it’s important to make people realize that objectively speaking, there is no such thing as inferior or lazy language. It’s all a question of how people were socialized. I guess, though, that it should be expected that prescriptivism would be popular on this board, where people take pride in being “elite”. 
As for the can/may distinction, I think I would use one or the other indiscriminately when asking for permission. And Indistinguishable is right: people would understand me regardless. This is why I think it’s academic to discuss whether it’s still worth maintaining the distinction between can, to ask for capacity, and may, to ask for permission. Even those who would answer “I don’t know, can you?” understand what I’m asking very well; they just don’t like the way I’m saying it.
I’m guessing that’s because they perceive a fundamental difference between the two words.
.
I theorize it originates as a kind of sarcasm, though meant to be taken literally. “It’s just possible for me to care at least slightly less, I admit, but still, the amount by which I do in fact care is quite miniscule.”
-FrL-
I wish to note that I have made a conscientious practice of teaching my kid always to ask permission by asking “Can I…”
Seriously. I’m serious.
What’s funny is, after he asks (as we have taught him) “Can I such-and-such?” his mom and me sometimes answer “Yes, you may.” 
After noting that my wife was doing this, I chose to do it as well on occasion, on purpose.
That’s how you teach a kid to speak his own native language.
-FrL-
Maybe they do, but they’ve still understood what I was saying without any loss of meaning. (Unless they’re Dutch: I seem to recall reading here that Dutch retains the can/may distinction, without any semantic drift, so native speakers of Dutch who learn English may not realize that “can” may be used to ask permission in English.) So the purpose of my sentence is fulfilled. They understand that I’ve used “can” to ask for permission, they just don’t think I should have.
I’m dead serious. After high school, welll even in junior high, I had a job and knew I would be working in a manual way forever and honestly, until I joined this board I haven’t even written so much as a paragraph other than some poetry for a few women that I’ve know through the years. I’m sure that in even what I have written here you can see errors in my sentence structure and syntax. What can I say? Somebody has to do the dirty work as it were. I can download a spell check but a can’t download a grammar check but it’s always nice to hang out with people smarter than yourself, you know?
Really?
God, you can be such a dick. Why all the dramatic crybaby shit? **Indistinguishable ** has been perfectly courteous in this whole discussion with you. Damn patient with you, too. You haven’t refuted diddly. If you need a fucking cite saying that a significant number of people use “can” and “may” interchangeably, then your head has been up your ass for far too long. The world has passed you by.
And that’s exactly why it’s useful and constructive for people to continue to do it.
[soft anouncers voice/]: Ladies and gentleman, redfrost is going for the impossible here today at the grammar olypmics. He is going for the triple negative. He steps up to the board…
Redfrost: I ain’t not never seen this before.
[sav/] AND HE STICKS IT!!!
::applause and cheers from the crowd::
I suppose the key word in the OP’s post is “constantly”. After six months on a message board seeing “could of”, “would of”, “should of” from one particular poster - and bearing in mind that to me this is painful in a nails on a blackboard, want to stab myself in leg with sharp object type of way - I politely pointed out that it was incorrect. Naturally, my comment was met with the usual barrage of “it’s not important” type carp. Now, I don’t understand half of what you English major spilt conjuctives are on about in this thread however “of” instead of “have” is a basic error so I felt quite justified in pointing out that in all honesty, I was just trying to help, because using “of” instead of “have” makes you look (and sound, if you are using it while speaking) uneducated.
It went down really well.
Mind you, this was a board where I actually managed to have a conversation with some-one who had such bad written English that I ended up using only phrases from this website, and he didn’t notice.
I’d be curious to read that thread. Do you have a link?
-FrL-
[QUOTE=Redfrost]
[soft anouncers voice/]: Ladies and gentleman, redfrost is going for the impossible here today at the grammar olypmics. He is going for the triple negative. He steps up to the board…
Redfrost: I ain’t not never seen this before.
[sav/] AND HE STICKS IT!!!
Impossible? Slightly rearranged, it’s tolerably common: “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like this.”
No need, it took a bit of Googling, but here’s what this cite has to say on the matter (you’ll need access to JSTOR):
Excerpts taken from “College English, Volume 11, Number 4, Page 215”.
I think that should adequately settle the matter. I was also sure that the “Language Log” had covered this matter, although the words “can” and “may” are too common to perform any decent search of their site.
I haven’t read all through here, but I trust that someone in these three pages has pointed out the split infinitive in the OP’s thread title.