On Sun, May 29, 2005 at 10:46:13PM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
On 29/05/05, Chad Perrin <perrin(a)apotheon.com>
wrote:
Say what? If you're so convinced you know what my opinions are and how
I'll respond, perhaps you should just write a bot with my name and have
a conversation with that instead of me.
If I knew a programming language, perhaps I would. But that would
probably be an enormous waste of time.
That was sorta my point.
All of that seems to indicate positive evolution
of the language.
"Positive"? What do you mean?? That "snotor" just plain doesn't
make
sense as a word meaning "wise"? That phonetic spelling is bad (that is
actually how those words were pronounced at the time - the spelling
used in the original _is_ phonetic)? Or something else that makes more
sense?
I mean that changes that arise because of a need rather than because a
bunch of people start misspelling things due to a lack of education are
positive. By contrast, then, changes that arise because people are
uneducated and don't know how to use a dictionary are negtive.
As far as I'm concerned, anything that arises from willful ignorance is
a "negative".
See, "corruption" is where I believe you're wrong, and what is
essentially the problem between descriptivists and prescriptivists
(more like proscriptivists).
Maybe people with the attitude you're trying to ascribe to me are not
actually "prescritivists". Maybe you should be referring to
"proscriptivists" instead.
You characterise all those letter-droppings and corruptions of
perfectly good existing words and improper usages which got the
language from Proto-Indo-European all the way to Modern English as
"good" and "making sense", yet anything that occurs _now_ is bad,
ignorant, "corrupt", and "incorrect". Except, of course, the things
that happened before you were born, which you accept as prized
innovations (contractions, for example - they save oh-so-much time!
the fact is that contractions have always been used, they have just
been kept to speech most of the time)
No, actually, I don't. I do, however, object to the addition of a K to
the word "renowned" just because some critical mass of people who can't
spell all make the same mistake on a regular basis. The same goes for
use of "infer" to mean something that is almost precisely its opposite.
I don't much care when it happens: if it's a good change, it's a good
change, and if it's a bad change, it's a bad change. The coining of the
neologism "cyberspace", which did indeed occur within the span of my
life, is a good thing. So, too, is the arrival of terms like "Linux"
and "wiki" in the English language.
To judge by the descriptivist approach, though, we should start calling
it "The Wikipedia", rather than "Wikipedia", because so many people
call
it "The Wikipedia" out of ignorance. By the same token, "Perl"
should
be changed to "PERL", "Linux" should start being pronounced
"Lynucks"
(the spelling soon to follow), and Internet Explorer should be called
"The Internet" now.
The simple fact is that prescriptivists, in any language at any time,
have been saying the same thing. You can find it in the Appendix Probi
- it's _bad_ to use anything other than the most proper Latin! But
then through the magic of language change, the same language
one-and-a-half millenia later is being praised by French
prescriptivists as the most logical language ever, and they want you
to use it a certain way that would've given the author of the Appendix
Probi a heart attack because it's such an abomination of Latin.
I'm not the most strict subscriber to prescriptivist notions in the
world, obviously, but I certainly sympathize more with the notion that
there's a "correct" way to use the language than the attitude that
supposes it's okay to confuse words with their antonyms.
And finally with English. The writers of Beowulf were probably not
prescriptivists, but they would've told you that the language we're
using today is most certainly not "Englisc" as they knew it, or if it
is it is a nasty vile corruption of it. Not just the spelling - no, to
them our grammar, syntax, and usage of foreign words would sound like
a foreigner's poor attempt at producing coherent speech.
Maybe so. Too bad. The change is already accepted practice in
academia. What I'm not happy with is the acceptance of any old change
at all based on nothing more than a statistical survey among those who
don't care.
B) a given example of
linguistic "evolution" you presented only looked like it differed by way
of spelling changes.
So, o snotor guma, work you use such sel words at least once a decade
in your English speech and writing as "bearn", "wrece",
"drihtguman",
"gebidan", or "unlifgendum"?
I meant a previous example. I thought that was clear, since I was
talking about something I'd said prior to your example from Beowulf.
Modernising their spelling doesn't help much either, seeing as they
have no cognates in modern english and quite simply can't be
modernised.
Words falling into disuse hardly constitute an argument against
prescriptivism, anyway.
Now that
you are so sure that Old English is only incomprehensible
because of the way it's spelled, let's see how you handle some respelt
Chaucer:
When did I say that?
Just now - "a given example of linguistic "evolution" you presented
only looked like it differed by way of spelling changes."
So you're using something I said AFTER you made that assertion to
support the assertion, as though that was your justification at the
time? That's absurd. Furthermore, as I stated, my reference to
something only looking like it differed by way of spelling changes was
about your archaic-spelling modification of original content, not your
quote from Beowulf or Chaucer.
Also,
there's the use of the pronominal triplet he - him - hir meaning
actually they - them - their. And words which you probably don't know
at all (at least not in such a normal sense) such as "anon" which
means "forthwith", and you wouldn't say "befell that" but rather
"it
befell that" or "it so happened".
It's nice to see that occasionally grammatical rules that make sense
become more widely used.
"That make sense" - can you give me, please, some examples of
grammatical rules YOU enforce that are nonsensical? Or do you believe
that they all make sense?
What the heck is that all about?
Like any believer in any religion believes that his is the one true
path, the only RIGHT religion, any prescriptivist from any language at
any time believes that the form of the language HE promotes makes the
most sense, and would like to beat to a pulp with a pencil those
future prescriptivists who would say differently.
As far as I'm concerned, anyone suggesting a better use of the language
than the current standard who presents a reasonable method of
implementing it is welcome to do so.
Other
than those examples, to point out that prescriptivism changes...
contractions are much more widely accepted today than perhaps a
century ago.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
You would probably have no problem with the sentence "A girl riding on
a bus", but it is quite 'wrong' because it 'should' read "A
girl
riding on an omnibus". You probably have no problem with "Zoology is
fun", but I do. It 'should' be (and I would write it as) "Zoölogy is
fun" (dieresis on the second o because it is pronounced separately -
it's not z+eulogy, it's zoo+ology). You would have no problem with "A
trip to the zoo" but it 'should' infact be "A trip to the zoölogical
garden". This isn't having to do with the dieresis so much as the
usage of "zoo" rather than the more 'proper' "zoölogical
garden" which
nobody would expect today.
Since when did I express a problem with contractions and abbreviations?
You never did. That's exactly my point. Had you been a prescriptivist
of yesteryear, you would've. But you're not. So you don't. What was
once illogical, ignorant, and incorrect, is now greasing the wheels of
communication without invalidating the more lengthy and precise terms
from which they're derived.
Frankly, if I thought there was a way to rewind that, I might actually
like to do so. I have the language I currently have, though, and I'll
work with it. Contractions are a mixed bag, though. It's difficult to
determine whether or not they're for the best, at least from where I'm
sitting.
I certainly try to avoid them in most formal essays.
They grease the wheels of communication without
invalidating the more
lengthy and precise terms from which they're derived.
If I said "I go store tomorrow in blue bus with Jenny", that would
certainly be more compact than "I'm going to go to the store tomorrow
in the blue bus with Jenny", and in that way it would grease the
wheels of communication without invalidating the more lengthy and
precise rules from which it was derived, but would you allow it or
would you look down your nose at it and scoff at its ignorance, lack
of education, etc etc etc?
Compactness that actually violates grammatical rules by omitting terms
useful to clarity of meaning are not particularly good. Compactness
is not the sole point of measure for the worth of a contraction or
abbreviation. Your first example in that paragraph is actually
confusing and lacks clarity of meaning due to the structure of the
sentence, even after staring at it for a while. For one thing, "store"
has more than one meaning. Replacing "store" with, say,
"supermarket"
would make it clearer in that one instance, but it still creates a
structure that fails when other words are substituted. As such, it's a
net loss as an "evolution" of the language.
On the other
hand, I am a little disappointed that in cases where longer terms are
appropriate people have chosen to eschew accuracy without any particular
good reason. Then, of course, other people have chosen to chronicle the
abbreviated terms as "official" parts of the language. The word
"zoo"
was, orginally, an abbreviation of "zoological [noun]" (modify spelling
as necessary to make it strictly accurate, using the correct character
set -- which I apparently don't have installed on this computer). A
dictionary reference to "zoo" as a slang term is appropriate when zoo
enters common usage, and ultimately removing the "slang" reference might
be appropriate as well, but including (for instance) reference to
"imply" as a synonym of "infer" in the dictionary is absolutely NOT
appropriate. Given a couple decades, however, it might end up being an
accepted synonym for a significant portion of the population because
dictionary editors have started making unironic reference to this
supposed synonymous meaning.
"because" dictionary editors have? In a century, imply will probably
mean the same thing as infer even according to the most conservative
of prescriptivists, and the fact that they once meant what they
supposedly do now (I must admit, I use them "correctly" and am
irritated when they're used "incorrectly", but I am irritated with my
irritation because I know it's silly since language change is natural)
will be an interesting footnote in the long history of English.
Yes, because dictionary editors (and others in similar positions) do
that sort of thing. If it was never acceptable to educators (whether by
trade or by accident), it would never become common practice. Do you
really think it's a good idea to reverse the meanings of words like that
and declare it official? How confusing do you think it would be to be
commanded to refrain from touching something because it's hot if
"refrain" and "hot" both had alternate meanings that made perfect
sense
within the context of that sentence? What if that confusion led you to
third-degree burns on your hand?
Communication is important, and accurate communication moreso. Giving
"infer" both its proper meaning and the meaning of "imply" strips
communication of all that value of accuracy.
That's a brief explanation of how your
attempted characterization of my
intent missed the mark, and how I actually feel on the matter. I want
accuracy and precision, not stultifying adherence to tradition.
Like this sentence because not long but still accurate? (Do you like
this sentence, because it is not long, yet it is still accurate?)
Like? No, not particularly. Accept, because this is a casual
conversation and not likely to be taken as a canonical example of proper
English? Well, sure. You may note that my adherence to strictly proper
use of language has slipped a bit here and there in this discussion, but
this isn't exactly a textbook, either. Slang and colloquialism have
their places. Textbooks meant to teach a language aren't those places.
Some of your later examples of shortened sentences, on the other hand,
ARE really bad. They modified the meanings of the sentences, which
isn't really even acceptable for casual, colloquial conversation. The
mere omission of the word "may" is a clear example of that.
Essentially, as far as I'm aware,
prescriptivism is about defining the
language according to its rules, and descriptivism is about defining the
language according to the way people who don't know, or ignore, the
rules use it. As far as I'm aware, neither one is trying to say that
the language did or did not evolve from any given set of standards,
though they may say that it should or should not have evolved the way it
did.
No, it's about who is competent.
Presciptivism takes those nose-in-the-clouds approach and says that
only people who study "rules" which are not based on modern usage
"know the rules of the language", while descriptivism takes the
down-to-earth approach and says that any native speaker who is fluent
in the language "knows the rules of the language".
I reject your definitions of prescriptivism and descriptivism on the
grounds that they don't even seem to apply to observed behavior of
prescriptivists and descriptivists, let alone their self-described
purposes.
--
Chad Perrin
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http://ccd.apotheon.org ]