On Sun, May 29, 2005 at 07:36:27PM -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
Although you'll probably complain now that it's not "authentic" and that you can't judge anything with it, I have replaced the "special" characters with their not-so-special equivalents (keep in mind though that the original used thorn, eth, and aewhateveritscalled):
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.
"Ne sorga, snotor guma; selre bith aeghwaem thaet he his freond wrece, thonne he fela murne. Ure aeghwylc sceal ende gebidan worolde lifes; wyrce se the mote domes aer deathe; thaet bith drihtguman unlifgendum aefter selest."
In modern spelling, that would be (keep in mind though that the words were pronounced differently - 'sorga', although equivalent to the modern 'sorrow', was actually pronounced 'sore-gah'):
"Not sorrow, (snotor) (guma); (selre) be each that he his friend (wrece), than he full mourn. Our each shall end (gebidan) world life; work se the must doom are death; that be (drihtguman) (unlifgendum) (selest)"
List of words without cognates: Snotor = wise; guma = one; "sel" is an adjective meaning "good" so "selest" is "best"; wrece = avenge; gebidan = pray; se = the; drihtguman = ??; unlifgendum = ??; selest = best.
All of that seems to indicate positive evolution of the language. I'm surprised you didn't try to make a case for "evolution" of the language by way of the sort of inclusionary modifications that are popular with strict descriptivists, since that seems to be your point. Of course, I never said that the language doesn't change according to the whims of descriptivists, or that it doesn't change at all: only that A) it shouldn't change because some radio-friendly song popularizes a particular corruption of the language and B) a given example of linguistic "evolution" you presented only looked like it differed by way of spelling changes.
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?
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.
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? They grease the wheels of communication without invalidating the more lengthy and precise terms from which they're derived. 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.
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.
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.
-- Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]